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Last updated by Bigul 3 months, 3 weeks ago.

Assisted by: Bigul.

Author Posts
March 17, 2025 at 2:09 pm

hildeM-2

Background of the issue:
We're currently working on improving our website's performance. It seems like the WPML plugin is the plugin that takes the most time to load, potentially slowing down the website. We ran some tests in the backend control panel, also via the network panel of Chrome's developer tool, and checked the final time of index.php. On the frontend, the numbers came from the web root. These are the results so far: Running the standard theme: No plugins: BE about 3s, FE about 0.7s Translation plugins only: BE about 7.5s, FE about 1.8s All required plugins: BE about 14-18.8s, FE about 3.5s Now adding the Neve theme, the same numbers were like this: No plugins: from 6.6s to almost 8s Translation plugins only: BE 12.4-14.1s, FE about 2.8 All required plugins: BE 14.8-17.5s, FE about 4.2s Interestingly, the difference in response time wasn't that big between the standard theme and Neve with all plugins on, but Neve definitely added more time with no plugins or only the translation plugins. I have not been able to pinpoint any single plugin that adds a significant amount of extra delay in the response. The plugins that seem to have the greatest impact when only the Translation plugins and it is activated (no other plugins running), seem to be 'Menu Icons' and 'Otter - Page Builder Blocks & Extensions for Gutenberg'. Both of these seem to add nearly 2 seconds on top of a translation plugins only install. It is possible that there have been some edits on the templates of the Neve theme. Though I don't know what may have been done, if at all. If necessary, we can provide a Duplicator package for further testing.

Symptoms:
WPML plugin is potentially slowing down the website, with significant load times observed in both backend and frontend.

Questions:
How can we improve the performance of our website with WPML installed?
What steps can we take to identify the specific cause of the slowdown?
Is there a way to optimize the Neve theme to work better with WPML?

March 17, 2025 at 2:46 pm
March 20, 2025 at 3:29 am #16837824

Bigul
WPML Supporter since 01/2013

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Europe/Vienna (GMT+02:00)

Hello,

We have installed the Duplicator packages in our test servers and working on it now, will get back to you as soon as possible. Please wait.

--
Thanks!

Bigul

March 24, 2025 at 10:39 am #16851147

Bigul
WPML Supporter since 01/2013

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Europe/Vienna (GMT+02:00)

Hello,

Sorry for the late response becuase of the holidays. We had a few rounds of testing in our local copies (like the following one in Cloudwasys) after upgrading to the latest version of the plugins including WPML (to the 4.7.2 version).

hidden link (user name and password are the same as you have shared).

But not able to find any specific performance issue caused by WPML. When WPML plugins are inactive site loading time is increased by a maximum of 2 seconds in our tests. The Query Monitor is not showing any slow query related to WPML in most of the pages (backend and frontend).

So can you please share the URL of the page in which WPML is taking more time to load?

--
Thanks!

Bigul

March 24, 2025 at 1:28 pm #16852233

hildeM-2

Hi. Our production system is at hidden link .

That server is running on a Microsoft ISS php-installation. We ran our cloned version on WAMPP, which reproduced the same delays. The issue might be caused from running on an Windows environment.

In combination with the WPML plugins.

March 24, 2025 at 5:20 pm #16853561

Bigul
WPML Supporter since 01/2013

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Europe/Vienna (GMT+02:00)

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback. It would be great if you could access our CW copy and verify the performance.

hidden link

We can also test in a WAMPP server locally. However just to make sure, are you facing the performance issue in all the backend and frontend pages in Windows Server & WAMPP?

If possible, please share a screencast. It will help us a lot in our internal discussion. You can share it via Google Drive or Dropbox.

--
Thanks!

Bigul

March 25, 2025 at 2:09 pm #16858226

hildeM-2

Hi. If anything, unfortunately, the performance of the CW copy was considerably worse than on our servers. With timeouts and well over a minute (nearly two) for index.php to load in admin. The front pages was considerably slower too, at about half a minute.

I did notice that both my XAMPP install and your CW copy reported the following: "WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org"

This might have caused some delays on the CW setup, though on my XAMPP setup things seemed to go faster.

We are seeing issues on both frontend and backend pages, though the backend pages is about 4-5 times as slow as the frontend pages.

A screencast is available at hidden link

In the screencast I first press F5 to refresh the backend's control panel.

Then I show the time that developer tools network tab reported the index file being loaded at.

Then I do the same for the frontend index page.

I ran this screencast test on the production server, as that did not report the same error as for the XAMPP installation or your CW copy.

March 26, 2025 at 7:31 am #16860736

Bigul
WPML Supporter since 01/2013

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Europe/Vienna (GMT+02:00)

Hello,

Thank you for the details. The following warning is showing because of the localhost, and it is still using the WPML site key of the live site.

WPML plugin cannot connect to wpml.org 

We will test it further and get back to you as soon as possible. But it would be great if you could consider access to your staging/dev site on the same server.

--
Thanks!

Bigul

The topic ‘[Closed] WPML plugin impacting the website's speed’ is closed to new replies.