WPML for user-editable strings

In this article, there was some discussion about how to enable WPML to get at the user-editable strings, such as the “call to action” text:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wpml-123/

WPML has the ability to retrieve these strings when they are saved properly in the options table: https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/translating-theme-options/

This works because all options should be stored as serialized data, which WPML can then scan and do the substitutions on the fly, like it’s supposed to.

However while trying to do this, I discovered that you’re saving the options for this plugin as JSON, and not as serialized data.

This is an unfortunate decision for a few reasons. Generally, as described here ( https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/61088/why-does-wordpress-use-serialize-rather-than-json-encode-for-the-options-table) and here (https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23753).

In my specific case, WPML now can’t “see into” JSON, making the plugin untranslatable.

I’m hoping the WPML will have a work-around for this atypical options data, but I’m not optimistic. Anyway, just some FYI in case this does ever get into your todo list.