[Resolved] My site is much slower after adding WPML

I tried a few more things on our Cloudways test site from a longer list that I will share below and I also increased the WP memory, made the uploads folder writable, updated all the WPML plugins plus other outdated plugins and I also disabled 2 plugins (Query monitor, Stage file proxy):

[ ] - So the first step is to make sure that your site is adequately resourced. The minimum requirements for WPML (https://wpml.org/home/minimum-requirements/) are very much a minimum, and larger sites should have more memory and server resources to function well.

[ ] - Use PHP 8 (performance improved a lot compared to PHP 7), but not the most recent versions (at the time of writing, PHP 8.2 versions) because it takes time for themes and plugins, and WordPress itself, to catch up and ensure compatibility.

[ ] - Caching is invaluable. You can use page caching plugins such as Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, or WP-Rocket, and preferably also object caching, for example via Redis and a plugin like https://wordpress.org/plugins/redis-cache/.

[ ] - Do not use any kind of SSL-helping plugins. They produce significant overhead by redirecting every request. To use https properly, just convert all links in the database using a safe search-replace plugin such as Better Search Replace or via WP-CLI.

[ ] - Consider using the plugin Index WP MySQL For Speed (https://wordpress.org/plugins/index-wp-mysql-for-speed/). WordPress table indexes are not optimised, and this plugin updates the table indexes to improve performance.

[ ] - Don't have debugging plugins like Query Monitor active in production, they add overhead. (Likewise make sure Xdebug is not active on your production server.) Review your list of plugins more generally to ensure you are only using plugins that are actually needed. (That includes WPML Media, which is only needed if you need to display different images when showing translated content; it is not needed to translate image texts such as captions.)

[ ] - Naturally, you page weight should be as low as possible, which means optimising assets such as JavaScript and CSS files, as well as compressing images.

More specifically, relating to WPML:

[ ] - Consider disabling "display as translated" (Fallback mode) from post types and taxonomies (in which case content will only be shown on secondary languages where translations exist; the resulting queries are much simpler).

[ ] - Try disabling the setting to "Adjust IDs for multilingual functionality" at WPML > Languages > Make themes work multilingual. Recommended themes should not need this setting.

[ ] - Turn off "Track where strings appear on the site" in String Translation if it is active.

[ ] - Remove untranslated strings and strings that are not needed, as described in https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/string-translation/#attachment_9608145

[ ] - From the troubleshooting page (via WPML > Support) at wp-admin/admin.php?page=sitepress-multilingual-cms/menu/troubleshooting.php try the "Cleanup and optimize string tables" and "Clear invalid strings" options. It might also be helpful to "Remove ghost entries from WPML tables".

I did not try all of them, still going through the list, things feel a bit more faster now but I have a strong feeling that in the end, I might get to the point where I will further escalate this to our developers to take a closer look to more in-depth areas like the database.

I will keep you up to date as soon as I have more news.

PS: Also, please do not make any changes on the Cloudways server that I created for the moment so that I can see accurate results.

I can assure you that this ticket will not get closed, so have no worries. 🙂

Me and our team will do our best to try to find out why things take such a long time. There might be a chance that the database might also need optimization.

I will keep you up to date and I will wait for your response.

Enjoy your vacation and we will keep in touch.

I'm leaving the ticket assigned to myself.

Hi there.

I am back.

After our developer's investigation, it seems that the issue appears to be a combination between Admin Columns Pro plugin, ACF and ACFML.

This accounts for quite a big performance chunk.

A workaround is to go to "wp-content/plugins/acfml/classes/Strings/FieldHooks.php" and look for the method "\ACFML\Strings\FieldHooks::translateField".

And there change:

if ( self::isAcfFieldGroupScreen() ) {

to:

if ( self::isAcfFieldGroupScreen() || is_admin() ){

The situation has been further escalated so that it will be further investigated and handled in a future update of our ACFML add-on but for the moment, I wanted to take the time and share the quick workaround that we have available right now as I don't know how much time it will take until there will be a fix in the future updates.

I hope that you are having an amazing time off and I hope that when you get back, this workaround will make you happy 🙂

Hi there and welcome back.

I hope you had an amazing vacation!

I wanted to double check with our developers first before I get back to you on your latest question.

It seems that the assumption that this will improve the performance only on the front-end is incorrect.

On the frontend this has to be executed.

The workaround will bypass the further logic from executing by returning prior to running translateGroup

public function translateGroup( $fieldGroup ) {
		if ( self::isAcfFieldGroupScreen() || is_admin() ) {
			return $fieldGroup;
		}

		return $this->translator->translateGroup( $fieldGroup );
	}

So this workaround should improve the performance in the backend, too.

I hope that you will find this information helpful. 🙂

Hi there.

I am happy to hear that you are seeing improvements 🙂

Yes, there's definitely an addition to the loading time taking into consideration the multitude of WPML functionality.

As soon as there's gonna be a new version, you will definitely see it in the correct URL that you shared.

I am not sure when this fix will be launched.

We, supporters, don't have access to that kind of information and there are a lot of fixes that are worked on daily by our developers, taking into consideration how big is our database of customers and plugins that support WPML.

All the issues are split into priority levels, and they are handled and launched based on that.

So what I can tell for sure is that this issue, as long as it was already confirmed by our developers at the time when you reported the issue and when you received a workaround, will definitely be added to the future updates but I have no idea when that will be.

Thank you so much for your understanding and I wish you an amazing rest of the day.

Hi there.

I definitely understand the situation.

However, I don't think it would help if we leave this ticket hanging as the issue has already been escalated internally but I am not sure when a more improved version of the fix will be launched.

So I would say that it would be better to mark the ticket as resolved for now until a future update of ACFML will be launched that will include a fix for this exact situation.