WPML 5.0 Beta – A Redesigned Experience and Smarter Automatic Translation
WPML 5.0 is the biggest update we’ve shipped in years.
This release brings the first batch of performance improvements for WooCommerce stores that have many products and product variations.
We’re already working on a second batch of improvements and will release them soon.
WooCommerce Performance Explained
WooCommerce products contain a lot of internal data that standard posts and pages don’t have.
For your store to work correctly, WPML needs to synchronize all this data across every language and product variation:
- For example, the price needs to be consistent in all languages.
- Or, when you sell an item, stock levels go down in all languages, no matter which one the clients use.
And there is much more data like this within products.
The challenge: It’s not possible to exclude certain product data from synchronization because it’s essential for store functionality.
What happens: When you activate WPML and WPML Multilingual & Multicurrency for WooCommerce, your site starts managing multiple languages and synchronizing extensive product data, requiring additional processing.
The result: Because a multilingual store simply needs to process more information, it will always require more server resources compared to a single-language store.
What we’re doing: Our goal in this and future releases is to handle product data as efficiently as possible. While a multilingual site can never exactly match the performance of a single-language site, we’re working hard to minimize the added processing.
Faster Editing and Translating for WooCommerce Products
In this release, WPML becomes faster in four aspects of working with product data.
The following table summarizes the performance improvements we’ve observed in our tests:
| Performed action | Measured speed improvement | What we did |
|---|---|---|
| Saving and updating products | 16 – 30% | Optimized mechanisms for saving product taxonomy and meta information |
| Sending a product to translation | 10 – 30% | Improved product data validation and implemented better caching for product attachments |
| Receiving translated products | 27 – 35% | Implemented a more efficient mechanism for synchronizing all types of product information |
| Duplicating products | 40 – 53% | Optimized the process for generating translation job data |
We present these improvements as ranges because the results depend on your specific site setup.
How to Speed Up Your WooCommerce Site Now
As usual, we’re rolling out this release gradually. However, you can update your site manually right away:
- In your site’s admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin and click the Commercial tab
- Click to check for updates
- WPML 4.7.2 and WPML Multilingual & Multicurrency for WooCommerce 5.4.2 will appear on the list and you can update your site to them
Still Having Performance Issues? Let Us Know!
If you’re still experiencing performance issues after updating your WooCommerce store to the latest WPML and WPML Multilingual & Multicurrency for WooCommerce, we’d love to take a closer look.
We’ve created a dedicated contact page for reporting WooCommerce performance issues.
To help us effectively debug your site, you need to provide the following details:
- Theme and plugins used on your site
- Number of products and product variations
- Specific pages that are slow (provide direct links)
- Actions that trigger slowness (e.g., page load, saving products)
- Tools used for measuring performance and their output
Compatibility With Upcoming WordPress 6.8 Version
Finally, a reminder that WordPress 6.8 is scheduled for release on April 15th. We’re actively monitoring and testing all beta versions and release candidates.
Our plan is to publish a WPML compatibility update a few days before WordPress 6.8 goes live. We’ll notify you as soon as it’s available.
