Scan Not Working
Scanning works by having the plugin fetch your own site’s pages in the background and extract the text from them. This means anything that interferes with those background requests — a caching plugin, a firewall, a login redirect — will silently break the scan. Work through these checks in order.
Before you start: keep the dashboard open
Section titled “Before you start: keep the dashboard open”Omnalingo’s scanner is driven by your browser session. The dashboard tab must stay open while scanning. If you close the tab or the browser, scanning stops entirely — it does not continue in the background. Open the Omnalingo dashboard and leave it open while you run a scan. Progress is not lost; reopen the dashboard to resume.
Symptom: scan doesn’t start at all
Section titled “Symptom: scan doesn’t start at all”Check 1 — API key is active
Section titled “Check 1 — API key is active”Scanning requires a valid, active API key. Go to Omnalingo → Settings → License and confirm your plan is shown. If the key is missing or invalid, enter a valid key first. See License & API Key.
Symptom: scan starts but stalls at 0% or a low number
Section titled “Symptom: scan starts but stalls at 0% or a low number”Check 2 — Your server can make requests to itself
Section titled “Check 2 — Your server can make requests to itself”When Omnalingo scans a page, it sends an HTTP request from your server to your own site. Some hosting environments block these “loopback” requests — the server isn’t allowed to call itself.
How to check: Go to wp-admin → Tools → Site Health. Look for a “Loopback Requests” item in the results. If it shows a failure, that’s why scanning isn’t working.
What to do: Contact your hosting provider and ask them to enable loopback requests (self-referencing HTTP requests). This is a server-level setting your host needs to configure.
Check 3 — A caching plugin is intercepting scan requests
Section titled “Check 3 — A caching plugin is intercepting scan requests”Scan requests include a special identifier in the URL so the plugin knows they’re scan requests and not regular page views. If your caching plugin intercepts these requests and serves a cached page instead, the scanner never processes the content — it may appear to complete instantly with zero strings found.
Symptoms: The scan finishes very quickly, finds 0 strings, or always finds the same strings regardless of which page is being scanned.
What to do: Configure your caching plugin to bypass cache for Omnalingo’s scan requests. In most caching plugins this is an “excluded query strings” or “bypass cache” setting. Contact Omnalingo support if you need help with the exact configuration for your caching plugin.
Check 4 — The page requires a login to view
Section titled “Check 4 — The page requires a login to view”If a page redirects to a login screen before it loads (for example, a members-only page or a site with forced login), Omnalingo’s scanner sees the login page instead of your content.
- For pages behind login, make sure the relevant user role is added to Settings → Advanced → Scan Roles.
- Check that the page’s URL is included in your content types (Settings → General) and hasn’t been excluded (Settings → Exclusions).
Symptom: scan completes but finds 0 strings
Section titled “Symptom: scan completes but finds 0 strings”Check 5 — Content types aren’t configured
Section titled “Check 5 — Content types aren’t configured”If no content types are selected in your General settings, Omnalingo has no list of URLs to scan.
Go to Omnalingo → Settings → General and make sure at least one post type or “Translate All Content” is enabled, then save your settings. After saving, return to the dashboard and try scanning again.
Check 6 — Exclusion rules are too broad
Section titled “Check 6 — Exclusion rules are too broad”A CSS selector exclusion that matches most of the page (for example, main, .content, or div) will exclude nearly all text from extraction, resulting in zero or very few strings found.
Go to Settings → Exclusions and review the CSS selectors list. If you see broad selectors, remove or narrow them, save, then re-scan. See Exclusions.
Symptom: scan completes but misses some pages
Section titled “Symptom: scan completes but misses some pages”Check 7 — Content is loaded by JavaScript
Section titled “Check 7 — Content is loaded by JavaScript”Omnalingo scans the HTML your server sends — it can’t see text that’s added to the page by JavaScript after it loads. If certain content only appears after a JavaScript interaction (a tab click, a dynamic component rendering, etc.), the scanner won’t find it.
To check: Right-click the page in your browser and choose View Page Source (not Inspect Element). If the text you’re looking for isn’t in that source view, Omnalingo can’t scan it. This is a current platform limitation.
Check 8 — Role-specific content needs a scan role
Section titled “Check 8 — Role-specific content needs a scan role”Content that’s only visible to logged-in users (members, subscribers, shop managers) won’t be scanned by a visitor-only scan pass.
Go to Settings → Advanced → Scan Roles and add the role that can see that content. Re-scan after saving.
Isolating the problem
Section titled “Isolating the problem”If you’re not sure where the problem is, try scanning a single, simple public page instead of your whole site:
- In the Omnalingo dashboard, find a basic page (like your About or Contact page).
- Click the scan icon for just that one page.
- Check whether strings are found.
If a single page scans successfully but a full-site scan doesn’t, the issue is likely with specific page types or a timing/load problem under heavier scanning.