is_front_page breaks with url parameters generated by a plugin

Question

I have a website that displays a specific layout feature only on the homepage, and this is working fine. However, the client has suggested that they would like the website to be bilingual, and so I added a plugin to allow the transition between two languages.

Unfortunately, the plugin adds /?lang=cy to the URL and I fear it's causing my layout feature to break.

The conditional is relatively straight forward:

if (is_front_page()){ ?>
    RENDER HOMEPAGE FEATURE
<?php }

When I choose to switch language, the layout feature disappears.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if lang is a reserved/used query variable in WordPress, but if it's not, then adding might help. Use a filter on query_vars like this:

function my_query_vars( $vars ) {
    $vars[] = 'lang';
    return $vars;
}
add_filter( 'query_vars', 'my_query_vars' );

Although WordPress will now know about the language query variable, I'm not sure what's causing your is_front_page() to stop returning true, perhaps it's not about your query variables but about the query itself, because is_front_page() depends on the $wp_query global object.

So how does your language plugin work? If you've set a page with an id of 10 as your front page, then is_front_page() for that page will return true, but if your language plugin is filtering the query and grabbing a page with an id of 50 (which is page 10 translated into Italian) then it's no longer the front page.

Give us a little bit more info about which plugin you're using to handle translations and if you wrote it yourself let us know how it works :)

Cheers!