Waitlist Email Template not found – does it need to go into the child theme?

You can see here that I should be able to modify the HTML of the email template directly within WooCommerce > Settings > Email
https://xtemos.com/docs-topic/waitlist/

Our Waitlist feature allows you to edit the Email content via WooCommerce -> Settings -> Emails -> Waitlist – Product back in stock.

I can also see that I can use variables e.g. {product_title}in the email template or subject. This all worked just fine.

WoodMart: 8.1.2
WooCommerce: 9.8.3
Loco Translate: 2.8.0 (however, actually the translation should come directly from the HTML that could be edited in WooCommerce settings)

My questions:
1) Should the Email templates be moved from wp-content/themes/woodmart/woocommerce/emails/waitlist-confirm-subscription-email.php to the child theme folder? Otherwise, isn’t each WoodMart update overwriting those again?

2) I am actually troubleshooting why the emails get sent but the placeholder variable {product_title} is not translated but output in plain text in the actual sent email. Also, the email translation that I added months ago to the HTML is gone now. It does not even show me the field to edit but instead it shows me “HTML template File was not found.” in the WooCommerce Email settings. I can also see via FTP that the files exist (see screenshot) and were modified on 6th of May when I updated WooCommerce to 9.8.3 from 9.7.1 and also updated WoodMart to 8.1.2

I cannot just update WooCommerce and WoodMart without doing a lot of checks to the latest version. However, I have a DEV environment as well and I can see the same behavior there as well (updated to Woo 9.9.5 and WoodMart 8.2.5)

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Hello,

1. Yep, you need to override emails via child theme (woocommerce/emails)

2. Send me access to the staging site so I can check whether it is rewritten on your end.

Kind Regards

Hello,

shouldn’t this be mentioned somewhere in the documentation and within WooCommerce > Email itself? It’s not clear that this should go into a child theme. From a user/admin perspective I can only see that I am able to edit the email (html template) directly within WooCommerce > Email. There is no indication that a WoodMart update would overwrite those customizations.

Find the access to the staging site in the private content. You can see that Yaymail is also installed there, but those emails about wishlist were never customized with Yaymail. Please also understand, the live/staging site are not in sync. The staging site is far behind in the development. The wishlist feature was only activated on the live site but not on the staging site. However, you’ll be able to see also on the staging site the “HTML template File was not found” at the very bottom of the Wishlist emails in WooCommerce.

best regards
Markus

Hello,

Sorry, we are going to update the documentation.

1. In the next update, it will be fixed so the file path will always be shown.

2. We have removed those options for editing the email via WooCommerce, so that you can override these templates through a child theme. That is why the translation stopped working after the update. You need to translate it again.

Kind Regards

Hello Luke,

Thanks for looking into this – I do not fully understand though. In my opinion there is a lot going on when it comes to email, I am surprised about those changes just like that without any warning.

about 1:
What do you mean by “file path will always be shown”? In native WooCommerce the email templates cannot be edited directly, only the file path is shown to the php files that generate the content of the email. Email content (e.g. New order email), cannot be edited as HTML, but only via PHP. For native WooCommerce emails it shows the following.

> To override and edit this email template copy woocommerce/templates/emails/admin-new-order.php to your theme folder: woodmart-child/woocommerce/emails/admin-new-order.php.

Does it mean you’ll make it work the same for the WoodMart Wishlist emails? Basically that means it is kind of a downgrade, because editing the email via HTML directly in WooCommerce Email Settings as shown in the (outdated) documentation was a very good and convenient feature.

Note: Woo introduced also some new features but those are only about design and not about content.
https://developer.woocommerce.com/2025/04/09/woocommerce-9-8-modernized-designs-and-email-previews/#h-modernized-email-templates-and-previews

about 2:
When you say you have removed those options for editing the email via WooCommerce, do you mean the following was removed?

https://xtemos.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/w_email_2-1024×499.png

I checked the WoodMart Changelog and cannot find this important and breaking change. As our DEV and LIVE run on different Woo + Woodmart versions, can you show me which WoodMart version came with that change? Such a change will obviously break and impact all sites where the email content was edited via HTML, therefore it’s even more important to include it in the changelog and warn accordingly.

I hope you can elaborate to fully understand.

Furthermore …
Does it also mean that {product_title} used in Email content or Email subject will not work anymore like it used to?

Shouldn’t I be able as an alternative to translate those email texts via Loco Translate? I tried but it was not applied and did not work.

Thanks

Markus

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Hello,

1. I meant this path – https://take.ms/RAnld , when you enable the Child theme, the path is shown as “was not found”, so in the next update, the path will be displayed always.

Yes, now if you want to override the email, you need to do it via the Child theme (via PHP).

2. It was removed in the 8.1.2 update. Those changes were included in this ADDED: Support for live preview for transactional emails changelog item.

Yep, those shortcodes like ” {product_title}” will not work, if you want to change something there, you need to do it via PHP code.

As for the translation, clarify which text you tried to translate: https://take.ms/tqgEtW -> https://take.ms/MEGW6 -> https://take.ms/FLbnf . As I mentioned above, you need to translate it again.

Kind Regards

I understand I must translate again. You took away the email html editor feature for wishlist emails without informing anyone. This is more than just translation. No person in the world will understand that ADDED: Support for live preview for transactional emails means also that the email html editor is gone. With it also the shortcodes e.g. {product_title} is gone.

We only learned about it months later by running a test on the wishlist feature. Sorry to say, but this was not good how this went down.

About the translation: Instead of messing with the PHP file and adding it to the child theme I thought an easier attempt to fix this is by just using Loco Translate like I also do for other situations. It did not work though. I can imagine this goes back to child theme vs. parent theme and syncing of the terms.

You see, quite a lot to mess around with because of this change. I hope such important things will be in the Changelog in the future, otherwise why reading the changelog in the first hand.

Okay, I will send your message to the team.

As for the translation, synchronize strings and then search for the text: https://take.ms/H1pVP

Kind Regards

Hey again Luke,

I noticed you copied waitlist-confirm-subscription-email.php to /themes/woodmart-child/woocommerce/emails

I please ask you if you ever do such things, do inform me or us users who request support. Good that it’s only DEV, good that I spotted it. You cannot just do that without letting me know. I hope you’ll understand this, but if I need support, I cannot always lock the system down like fort knox when I share access with you – I must trust you and rely on you. Moving files around without letting me know, is a no go in my opinion.

About the topic itself. “Sync” in Loco Translate messed something up and I am still analyzing what’s going on.

However, so that others also know, I think it’s like that: I can either …

a) … modify the php file that generates the waitlist email, e.g. waitlist-confirm-subscription-email.php – if doing so, it is highly recommended to use a child theme and copy this template to the child theme and edit it there, otherwise it’ll be overwritten with the next update. That approach would allow even more than just editing content. The option to edit inside the WooCommerce settings lived only for a short time and does not exist anymore.

b) … do not touch the PHP files at all and use Loco Translate. If I am not mistaken this will allow only to translate text that is wrapped into something like this and comes with a translation domain like shown here “woodmart” (see attachment)

<p><?php esc_html_e( 'Thank you for requesting to join the waitlist for this item:', 'woodmart' ); ?></p>

I’ll try to fix Loco Translate and whatever is going on now because of this all.

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Hello,

Sorry for the inconvenience.

a, b) Yes, you are right.

If you have any additional questions, let me know.

Kind Regards

I want to close this support topic now. No more question on my end, but if someone runs into the same problems I give some final hints on that topic.

—

As shown in my previous response there are basically 2 approaches on how to modify content of emails for WoodMart Wishlist.

If opting for Loco Translate approach you must be careful.

Languages and Translation in WordPress are a very old concept. I do not understand how Loco works under the hood 100% but I understand the most important parts.

WoodMart and WoodMart Child use the very same Text Domain: woodmart. This can lead to issues when clicking “Sync” in Loco Translate.

I think when generating WoodMart Child it would be best if “Text Domain: woodmart” in /wp-content/theme/woodmart-child/style.css is either deleted or another text domain e.g. woodmart-child is used.

The topic of this ticket due to the change in WoodMart was the trigger for what messed up my site.

The Wishlist emails were not showing the customized text anymore → WoodMart’s fault because of the downgrade they performed

Because of that I tried to solve it with Logo Translate but I mistakenly added the translation to the Child Theme. As soon as hitting “Save” and “Sync” things went south.

——

ChatGPT Input about this troubleshooting process / maybe not 100% accurate but can help others who are facing the same chaos

What caused the problem

1. I used Loco Translate to translate my Woodmart parent theme.
2. But my child theme was set up with the same text domain (woodmart).
3. Because of that, Loco saw the same .pot file for both the parent and child — so both bundles looked identical in Loco.
4. I accidentally clicked Sync while inside the child theme bundle instead of the parent.
5. That caused the .po to re-sync in the wrong context: new strings, old translations lost or mismatched, progress reset — even though the real strings come only from the parent.

How I fixed it

1. I removed the text domain from the child theme, so Loco can’t see it as having its own .pot.
2. I restored my .po and .mo files from backup to get my real translations back.
3. I ran Sync only on the parent theme, so the .po was aligned with the real woodmart.pot file.
4. I made sure the .po file lives only in the proper /languages folder for the parent — not under languages/loco/ for both.

Key takeaway:
Never translate the child theme with the same text domain as the parent — unless the child really has its own PHP strings. Always translate the parent directly — it avoids double entries, accidental overwrites, and sync confusion.

Hello,

Thank you for your comprehensive insights and concluding remarks on the issue. Your detailed analysis and steps for troubleshooting will certainly benefit others facing similar challenges.

We will review and consider your feedback for future documentation improvements and changelog transparency. Should you have any further concerns or require additional support, feel free to reach out.

Kind Regards

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