[Waiting for user feedback] WPML really slows down website
This is the technical support forum for WPML - the multilingual WordPress plugin.
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WordPress 6.7 has introduced a new issue that impact translations, please update WooCommerce and WPML to the latest versions before you report issues. More about this here - https://wpml.org/errata/php-error-wp-6-7-notice-function-_load_textdomain_just_in_time-was-called/
Background of the issue:
I am experiencing an issue with WPML severely slowing down my website, hidden link. I have tried many optimizations and possible changes, but WPML keeps slowing it down, according to Query Monitor.
Symptoms:
WPML is causing the website to slow down significantly.
Questions:
Can you please provide some customized suggestions on how to resolve the slowdown caused by WPML?
I will try to answer the question before assigning the ticket to one of my colleagues.
Would you please tell us how much the performance deep is happening when you check with or without WPML on a minimal installation?
- IMPORTANT STEP! Create a backup of your website. Or better approach will be to test this on a copy/staging version of the website to avoid any disruption of a live website.
- Switch to the default theme such as "TwentyTwenty" by going to "WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > themes".
- Go to "WordPress Dashboard > Plugins" and deactivate all plugins except WPML Multilingual CMS and WPML String Translation.
- Record the performance.
- Deactivate those two plugins and record the performance
- Tell us the difference between those two scenarios.
- If it is not that much, then please enable the plugins one by one and record the performance to see which combination of the plugins cause the problem and get back to us.
Thank you for your message. However, this isn't really helpful. I'd like to optimize the current setup, not a new website. My technical guy says that a lot of slow queries come from WPML. Can you provide some insights into how to optimize the current setup?
We’re not speaking about optimizing a new website here, but rather isolating the issue on your existing site (as clone to not destroy the live-site) to ensure that queries aren’t being slowed down by third-party code. This is a fundamental step in identifying the root cause of the problem.
If you’ve created a test copy of your site, the first step would be to run a profiling process as described here: How to Debug Performance Problems. This will provide us with baseline values without third-party code, which we can later compare against the full installation or a local server setup if necessary.
