Backend Performance

This is the technical support forum for WPML - the multilingual WordPress plugin.

Everyone can read, but only WPML clients can post here. WPML team is replying on the forum 6 days per week, 22 hours per day.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
-	8:00 – 12:00	8:00 – 12:00	8:00 – 12:00	8:00 – 12:00	8:00 – 12:00	-
-	13:00 – 17:00	13:00 – 17:00	13:00 – 17:00	13:00 – 17:00	13:00 – 17:00	-

Supporter timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)

Tagged: Performance

This topic contains 12 replies, has 0 voices.

Last updated by Long Nguyen 2 days, 10 hours ago.

Assisted by: Long Nguyen.

Author	Posts
January 9, 2026 at 1:22 am #17714598
andreasM-70 Site owner	Hello, I've previously created a support ticket which unfortunately was closed automatically due to lack of response (I was on holiday...). My customer can barely use the backend post listings due to a backend query that runs very, very long. Please see the old ticket for a full description (https://wpml.org/forums/topic/backend-performance/). We won't update to WordPress 6.9. right now, was it has a bunch of issues... Otherwise everything is up to date. I've shared a login in that ticket, that can still be used. I do not want to create a staging environment since our technical setup does make that a bit hard right now, and I don't want a sloppy copy in the same webroot as the site is very large. So please have a look at the production environment. Thanks!
January 9, 2026 at 4:06 am #17714657
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Hi Andreas, I’m Long from the WPML Development team, I’m happy to help you with this issue. The credentials that you shared in the previous ticket were removed when the ticket closed. Could you please share it again in your next reply? Your next reply is set to private to share the info. ❌ IMPORTANT: Please backup your database and website before proceeding ❌ You can use this plugin to create the backup: https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/ ✙ I would need your permission to de-activate and re-activate Plugins and the Theme to change configurations on the site if needed. This is also a reason the backup is critical. Looking forward to your reply. Thanks
January 12, 2026 at 2:14 am #17719838
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Hi Andreas, After investigating the performance issue with the SQL query to load the posts and their translation on the listing page in the admin area, I see that there is a workaround to fix the slow loading time by disabling the option Languages in the Screen Options area to remove the Languages column. Please check the attached screenshot. The SQL query in the main code should be reviewed carefully again and it might take time. I will update you here if I have more information. In the meantime, you can manage the translation posts in the WPML > Translation Dashboard. Thank you.
January 12, 2026 at 8:19 am #17720228
andreasM-70 Site owner	Thanks for the workaround! Looking forward to hearing an update.
January 12, 2026 at 8:50 am #17720402
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Sure, I will let you know when I have something to share. Thanks.
January 15, 2026 at 10:17 pm #17735380
andreasM-70 Site owner	Another thing I noticed is, that the table wp_icl_translate is super huge! May be related with the backend issues, may be not. I've attached some screenshots.
January 16, 2026 at 3:35 am #17735635
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Hi, I've checked the table wp_icl_translate before replying to this ticket and it was included in the slow SQL query. You can double-check it in the previous ticket https://wpml.org/forums/topic/backend-performance/ Thank you.
January 16, 2026 at 8:07 am #17735882
andreasM-70	That's good, that you already looked into it. Is there any way to reduce the size of those tables? Something must have triggered it to get so big? The screenshot I sent I found was actually already a year old, the database was comparatively small then. I just checked and the current table is 7GB big. I can't even export my database anymore with that amount of data. New threads created by Long Nguyen and linked to this one are listed below: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/reduce-table-icl_translate-size/
January 16, 2026 at 8:57 am #17736091
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Hi, As the table icl_translate isn't related to the slow SQL query in this ticket so I split your question into a new ticket for better handling. Here is the ticket URL https://wpml.org/forums/topic/reduce-table-icl_translate-size/ I will keep this ticket open until I have more information about the SQL query. Please create a new ticket if you have more questions. Thanks.
January 27, 2026 at 9:45 pm #17769025
andreasM-70 Site owner	Hello there, Yes, thanks for keeping it open. Is there any news? Unfortunately my customer can't use the workaround described, because he can't even access the backend page. Runs into a time out before it even loads! It's urgent to us. I tried to forcefully remove the columns via code, but that doesn't seem to have the same effect. Something still seems to fire that query in the background...
January 28, 2026 at 2:17 am #17769284
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Hi, Currently, I don't have more information about the improved SQL query. In the meantime, you can edit the file wp-content/plugins/sitepress-multilingual-cms/classes/menu-elements/class-wpml-custom-columns.php comment out the code // TranslationsRepository::preloadForPosts( $posts ); on line 209 to prevent the slow SQL query from execution. ❌ IMPORTANT: Please backup your database and website before proceeding ❌ Looking forward to your reply. Thanks
January 29, 2026 at 9:17 pm #17775248
andreasM-70 Site owner	Thank you very much! Commenting out the line really helped. Looking forward to a more permanent fix 🙂
January 30, 2026 at 1:32 am #17775448
Long Nguyen WPML Supporter since 02/2022 Languages: English (English ) Vietnamese (Vietnamese ) Timezone: Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh (GMT+07:00)	Thanks for your confirmation. I will let you know when I have something to share.