The biggest update since the launch of the Polla Mundial 2026 plugin is here.
Version 1.5.0 is not just a visual refresh — it’s a major upgrade focused on internationalization, theme compatibility, smarter match imports, UI improvements, and overall performance across modern WordPress environments.
This release prepares the plugin for global communities while making the prediction experience cleaner, faster, and far more reliable.
🌎 Native Multilingual Support
Until now, the plugin was available only in Spanish.
Starting with version 1.5.0, the plugin now includes native support for:
- 🇪🇸 Spanish
- 🇺🇸 English (
en_US) - 🇧🇷 Portuguese — Brazil (
pt_BR) - 🇵🇹 Portuguese — Portugal (
pt_PT)
All translations were rebuilt using proper .po, .mo, and the modern .l10n.php format introduced in WordPress 6.5+, allowing significantly faster loading through PHP opcode caching.
The plugin automatically detects the website language — or even the user’s personal profile language — and renders the interface accordingly.
For example, if a user has Brazilian Portuguese configured in WordPress, the plugin will automatically display messages like:
“Palpite salvo com sucesso”
No manual configuration required.
We also included a translation builder inside the repository, making it easy to add additional languages such as French, German, Italian, Arabic, or Catalan in just a few minutes.
🛡️ Theme Shield — Built to Work with Any WordPress Theme
One of the most common frustrations with WordPress plugins is broken styling caused by aggressive theme overrides.
Unexpected underlines, distorted tables, inconsistent buttons, broken spacing — all of that is now prevented by the new Theme Shield system.
Every plugin component now lives inside the .polla-laooz-root CSS namespace, creating an isolated visual environment that protects the plugin UI without affecting the rest of the website.
What Theme Shield prevents:
- ✅ Forced link underlines and decorations
- ✅ Broken table styles and zebra stripes
- ✅ Unwanted list bullets
- ✅ Typography overrides
- ✅ Inconsistent form controls and buttons
- ✅ FontAwesome icon rendering issues
- ✅ Forced uppercase headings and letter spacing
Most importantly, the protection is fully scoped to the plugin only.
Your WordPress theme keeps its identity everywhere else on the site.
⏱️ Smart Timezone-Aware Match Imports
The included JSON match data ships using Colombia timezone (UTC−5).
But communities using the plugin may operate from Brazil, Mexico, Europe, or anywhere else in the world.
Version 1.5.0 introduces a fully timezone-aware import system.
New import workflow:
- Select the timezone used by the source file (
America/Bogota,Europe/Lisbon, etc.) - The plugin automatically converts all match times into your WordPress site timezone
- Original data is preserved through metadata fields:
_polla_fecha_origen_polla_hora_origen_polla_fecha_origen_tz
The importer also remembers the last timezone used for future imports.
Result: match schedules now feel local for every community.
🎨 Completely Redesigned Match Cards
The prediction interface received a full UI overhaul.
Main improvements include:
- Unified score selector with a modern pill-style design
-
Cleaner horizontal layout:
Home Team | Score | Away Team | Actions - Better responsive behavior using CSS Grid
- Icon-based save button with loading/success states
- Proper wrapping for long team names
- Cleaner spacing and match separators
- Smarter help messages with less visual noise
The entire prediction experience now feels faster, cleaner, and significantly more polished.
🏆 Improved Ranking System
The [polla_ranking] shortcode is now far more flexible.
New behavior:
[polla_ranking]
Displays all participants with native pagination (100 users per page)[polla_ranking limite="10"]
Keeps the elegant podium-style Top 10 layout
The old “View Full Ranking” button was removed because pagination is now integrated directly into the component.
Usernames also automatically link to their profile pages.
👤 Smarter User Profile Resolution
The [polla_perfil_usuario] shortcode no longer depends on strict URL slugs or manual configurations.
A new intelligent resolution system was implemented with multiple fallback layers:
- Admin-defined profile page
- Developer filter support
- Automatic shortcode page detection
- Legacy slug compatibility
- Graceful fallback handling
Additionally, when used without parameters, the shortcode now automatically loads the currently logged-in user profile.
🔧 Quality-of-Life Improvements
Several smaller improvements make the plugin more reliable and easier to use:
[polla_mis_pronosticos]now works as an official alias- Prediction tabs display both pending and finalized matches
- Support for
cantidad,limite, andlimit - Better empty states for users without predictions
- Full cache busting support using the
POLLA_LAOOZ_VERSIONconstant
🚀 Performance and Compatibility
Version 1.5.0 also delivers major internal performance improvements:
- Faster translation loading using
.l10n.php - Automatic fallback support for older WordPress versions
- Optimized CSS isolation
- Controlled usage of
!importantrules only inside the plugin namespace
📦 What’s Next
We are currently working on a one-click update system directly from the WordPress dashboard, eliminating the need for manual plugin replacements in future versions.
For now, updating is simple:
- Download the v1.5.0 ZIP package
- Replace the existing plugin via WordPress or FTP
- All data remains intact:
- Matches
- Predictions
- Rankings
- Settings
