manifest / i18n / polylang-toolkit

Polylang Toolkit

Battle-tested helpers and fixes for multilingual WordPress sites running Polylang

by Oleksii Kyievskyi · github.com/kyievskyi88/polylang-toolkit · website

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Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/kyievskyi88/polylang-toolkit/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.

Readme github.com/kyievskyi88/polylang-toolkit ↗

A small WordPress plugin with battle-tested helpers and fixes for multilingual sites running Polylang. Every piece of it was extracted from problems I actually hit (and solved) on production multilingual WordPress projects — nothing speculative, no framework ambitions.

What's inside

1. Language-aware template helpers (`includes/helpers.php`)

Helper	Problem it solves
`plltk_home_url( $lang = '' )`	A hardcoded `home_url('/')` in the theme always points at the default-language front page, so the logo link "drops" visitors out of their language.
`plltk_get_term_by_slug( $slug, $taxonomy, $lang = '' )`	`get_term_by( 'slug', … )` returns the term of whatever language owns that slug — templates that look terms up by a known slug break on translated pages. This resolves the term, then translates it to the target language.
`plltk_count_posts( $post_type, $lang = '' )`	`wp_count_posts()` is language-blind: on an EN + UK site it reports the total across all languages, breaking "N items" counters on translated archives.

All helpers degrade gracefully — with Polylang inactive they fall back to core behaviour instead of fataling.

2. Regional `.mo` fallback (`class-mofile-fallback.php`)

Your theme ships uk.mo, but WordPress runs the uk_UA locale (or the other way round) — translations silently don't load and the site shows source strings. Instead of renaming files on every deploy, the plugin retries the sibling variant when the requested file is missing:

requested uk_UA.mo, missing → tries uk.mo
requested uk.mo,    missing → tries uk_XX.mo found on disk

3. Translated front page canonical guard (`class-frontpage-canonical-guard.php`)

With a static front page and its translation assigned, the clean language root (/uk/) can 301-redirect to the translated page slug (/uk/holovna/). The language root is the URL you put in menus, sitemaps and ads — the slug URL duplicates it and leaks into search indexes. The guard suppresses that canonical redirect exactly on the translated front page and nowhere else.

Opt out any time:

add_filter( 'plltk_guard_translated_frontpage', '__return_false' );

Requirements

WordPress 6.0+
PHP 7.4+
Polylang (free or Pro). Without it the plugin stays dormant and shows a single admin notice.

Installation

Download or clone into wp-content/plugins/polylang-toolkit.
Activate Polylang Toolkit in the admin.
Use the helpers in your theme; the two fixes work automatically.

Philosophy

Small, readable, hook-based. No options page, no autoloader, no build step — a plugin you can audit in five minutes. Behaviour is controlled with WordPress filters, the way it should be.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

Author

Oleksii Kyievskyi — WordPress / PHP developer, 14+ years of custom themes, plugins and multilingual builds. Telegram: t.me/DevCode_Man