wp_installer_settings is autoload and large

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Tagged: Account Issues, Known issue

This topic contains 56 replies, has 0 voices.

Last updated by Bobby 1 month ago.

Assisted by: Bobby.

Author	Posts
June 25, 2025 at 4:12 pm #17170296
frankyn	same problem size: 126680
June 26, 2025 at 9:34 am #17172536
roy-edvardE	We are an award-winning agency, and we have the same problem on all WPML sites. Can someone from WPML please provide us with an update? Unless this is fixed ASAP, we will terminate all licenses, and move all of our clients on to a different solution. We are horrified to see that this ticket has not been flagged as critical, as it should! UPDATE 26/06/25: We have created a separate support ticket for this issue, and will update this post as soon as we get any viable feedback.
July 1, 2025 at 5:25 pm #17189631
peterL-60	I updated WPML today to the latest version hoping to find that this has been resolved. But the wp_installer_settings is still there and still a huge performance issue on our site. Additionally I am now seeing an almost equally sized autoloaded item called "_icl_cache". This has made performance issues even worse on our site. Looking inside of _icl_cache it is full of metadata for every single possible language and flag information a person could potentially use in WPML. Not just the 9 languages supported by our site. So just like wp_installer_settings it is questionable if this data should even be getting stored in wp_options to begin with. And it is clear that it should not be autoloaded data which WordPress is forced to query and load for every. single. request. on the site. I don't feel like WPML fully understands or takes seriously the implications of autoloaded data. I've had issues going back almost 5 years now when I first implemented WPML with autoloaded data causing performance issues. One was quickly resolved, the other 3 remain.
July 1, 2025 at 5:27 pm #17189635
peterL-60	Instead of fixing the 'wp_installer_settings' autoload issue. Now we have that + '_icl_cache'. Doubling the problem. What the heck!?
July 8, 2025 at 8:54 am #17212552
JP	Hi, I tried the following on my staging site: I made a full backup of the dbase, I deactivated WPML, then deleted the wp_installer_settings string in the database completely. Then I reactivated WPML again with the license key. This process took 4 minutes in total. Now the big autoload is gone and have a good performance improvement of the site. I see no negative side effects on the site and on using WPML after 4 weeks now. In future I will update the plugin via FTP and not via the plugin dashboard. This will also prevent the string to grow in size as long the WPML developers do not have an 'auto clean function" for this string during an update. if these steps are not advised to do for reasons I am not aware of, please let me know. JP
July 14, 2025 at 10:22 am #17233030
serenaC-6	Hi, is there any news?
July 22, 2025 at 12:38 pm #17259307
charikleiaK	Hello, Same here, top 3 autoload options by size are from WPML. And they account for more than 30% of the size of all the autoload options together. Any updates?
July 25, 2025 at 8:21 am #17270266
mantasS-3	Same problem. Waiting for update
August 6, 2025 at 12:58 pm #17299590
andreasS-58	As an agency, we're experiencing the same issue with many WPML sites. The autoload caused by WPML is clearly affecting performance. Something like this can't go unaddressed for so many months. C'mon...
August 11, 2025 at 10:31 am #17309217
caterinag-2	same on my small website and performances are drastically compromised
August 11, 2025 at 6:33 pm #17311200
Adam	Same problem with "wp_installer_settings" at 129612. Is it safe to just turn the autoload setting in the database from "on" to "off" for now?
August 14, 2025 at 3:13 pm #17321502
johnS-29	I found this after going into the WP site health page and getting a "CRITICAL ISSUE: Autoload option could affect performance." Well, I went down the rabbit hole and came up to this support forum, with a wp_installer_settings size of 128,772. I would say that if WordPress itself says it's a critical issue, the developers need to put this as a priority #1 to fix.
September 1, 2025 at 2:02 pm #17362966
sanderK-17	Same problem here: wp_installer_settings 128676 icl_st_settings 29358 icl_sitepress_settings 29049 wpml_strings_need_links_fixed 18289
September 2, 2025 at 12:45 pm #17366130
Paolo	Same problem.
September 2, 2025 at 2:03 pm #17366498
Paolo	I can confirm, after logging the content of the option, the whole WPML changelog is saved in a wordpress option. This is an insane and unacceptable level of incompetence.