As your WooCommerce store continues to grow, the need for storing more of customer information and data within the platform’s database also increases. Earlier, this was a great problem with WooCommerce as it wasn’t designed to handle or store such high data amounts.
Over time, it became a bit complex for the WooCommerce stores to handle large order volumes, for which the store performance started experiencing degradations. Therefore, to find a solution, WooCommerce HPOS was introduced, which was earlier referred to as Custom Order Tables in 2022, before it was rebranded.
The purpose of WooCommerce HPOS is to optimize the way the orders are managed and stored within the platform’s database. Upon rightful execution, store operations will eventually speed up and be more efficient.
In this article, you will get a clear insight into what WooCommerce HPOS is and how you can make your store compatible by integrating the same. So, if you want to scale the performance quotient of your WooCommerce store, do read this article till the end!
What is the Significance of WooCommerce HPOS?
Till High-Performance Order Storage WooCommerce was introduced, the order data was stored in the same place, just like any other WordPress objects, such as image metadata, pages, and posts. But with the introduction to HPOS, the order data are now stored in dedicated tables, which include order addresses and other details.
All of these tables, alongside the specific indexes, led to a reduction in the count of read or write operations. Due to this, database congestion was eliminated. The scalability potential of your WooCommerce store will excel when you successfully integrate HPOS into your platform, allowing you to reach your maximum performance targets.
Upon this update, the order data will now be synchronized from tables such as _postmeta and _posts tables to that of the four different custom order tables, which include:
- _wc_orders
- _wc_order_operational_data
- _wc_order_addresses
- _wc_orders_meta
With this, the approach towards data management becomes more streamlined and optimizes the overall performance of your WooCommerce platform. This shall enhance the overall efficiency of order processing, fulfillment, and management.
You can take the help of professionals offering WooCommerce development services to guide you with the integration of HPOS and let you avail its performance perks.
What are the New Enhancements that WooCommerce HPOS Has Introduced?
There are three properties that scale the maximum benefits upon bringing in HPOS to WooCommerce, which is highly crucial for eCommerce businesses. They are:
1. Immense Scalability
The increase in the count of customers and their respective orders imposes a lot of load on the database of your store. Thus, it becomes quite difficult for the system to handle the rising order requests and provide them with a reliable experience. Upon integrating HPOS, you will be provided with dedicated tables for storing data such as order details, addresses, and specific indexes.
As a result, the tables will be less busy! Thus, you can expect this feature to enable WooCommerce stores of all sizes or shapes to scale their business to meet their high-end performance requirements without any expert intervention.
2. Heightened Reliability
With HPOS embedded in your WooCommerce store, you can ensure that restoring or implementing the targeted data backup will be simpler. It means you won’t have to worry about losing out on your orders, client details, or inventory numbers, as reliable backups are present within the custom tables.
Moreover, WooCommerce HPOS will also facilitate the implementation of read or write locks to prevent possible race conditions. Such an improvement in the scope of reliability will guarantee a more secure and smoother process of data management for your WooCommerce store.
3. Unmatched Simplicity
With HPOS in place, you won’t have to explore a single large database for locating your WooCommerce entries and the underlying data. You will now be able to browse through the diverse tables and handle the entries in a convenient manner. You are independent of the _posts table for finding data or understanding the structure of the table.
Moreover, HPOS also enables you to develop fresh extensions and implement new designs for your products or shops, enhancing your core flexibility with the WooCommerce store. The entire process will be streamlined to add more efficiency and a better user experience.
What Must be Done Before Checking WooCommerce Store Compatibility for HPOS?
Before you can leverage the benefits of custom order tables, you must ensure WooCommerce HPOS compatibility for this integration. And prior to checking the compatibility, make sure you have these implementations in place:
1. Optimize the Database
WooCommerce depends heavily on the WordPress database for storing the order data. To ensure the best performance out of your store, you must ensure your database is in optimal structure or shape. Therefore, you must be consistent in performing certain tasks, such as cleaning unwanted data, optimizing database queries, and removing unused tables.
There are the best WooCommerce plugins available to assist you with database optimization for your store. If needed, you can also take the help of professional WooCommerce experts to streamline the database optimization process for you. Upon maintaining a well-organized database, you will be able to scale the order storage system efficiently.
2. Make Use of Caching
Caching is a very common technique that has the capability to improve the speed and performance of the WooCommerce store. This approach saves the common information, enabling the server to be free from putting up excessive stress upon storing the order data quickly. Take the help of WooCommerce developers to integrate plugins to assist you with server-level caching.
With ideal caching techniques, you will be enabling your store to show orders quite faster over the site. The use of specific plugins for WooCommerce caching will help you enable lazy loading, browser caching, database caching, and Redis object storage.
3. Implement Effective Indexing
The next big thing you must do is efficiently index your database tables correlated to those orders, which can improve the overall speed of processing the queries. Indexing is the approach that creates your roadmap for the database to be able to locate the required information quickly.
Consider indexing the columns that you know are frequently being used within the queries, such as customer ID, product ID, or order ID. In case you are finding database management quite complex, it is better to seek help from experts.
4. Limit the Custom Fields
Custom fields in the WooCommerce orders are considered useful for capturing distinct data. But, they will also slow down the order storage or retrieval aspects. Therefore, to maintain high performance, you must prefer using custom fields only when there is an absolute necessity.
This will ensure optimal performance of the store functions, enabling you to take one step further towards making your store compatible with integrating High-Performance Order Storage WooCommerce.
How to Make Your WooCommerce Store Compatible with HPOS?
Now that you are done with the prerequisites, here are the steps for you to make your WooCommerce store compatible with HPOS:
1. Declate the WooCommerce Store Compatibility with HPOS
To declare your WooCommerce plugin’s compatibility with that of the HPOS, you must add the specific code to the main file, which is:
add_action('before_woocommerce_init', function(){
if ( class_exists( \Automattic\WooCommerce\Utilities\FeaturesUtil::class ) ) {
\Automattic\WooCommerce\Utilities\FeaturesUtil::declare_compatibility( 'custom_order_tables', __FILE__, true );
}
});
2. Get or Set an Order and Order Meta
You can then use the WooCommerce API for getting or setting the order alongside the order meta. Make use of the wc_get_order( ) function in place of get_post( ), for retrieving your order data. To give you a better representation, here’s the command alteration that you must do:
// Instead of
$order = get_post( $order_id ); // returns WP_Post object.
// use
$order = wc_get_order( $order_id ); // returns WC_Order object.
For establishing interaction with the metadata, make use of the update_meta_data, delete_meta_data, and add_meta_data methods over the order object. And then follow it up with a save call.
Following that, WooCommerce will identify the active tables and save the required data in various appropriate locations. Here’s a brief elaboration on the command you must implement using the above-stated methods:
// Instead of following update/add/delete methods, use:
update_post_meta( $post_id, $meta_key_1, $meta_value_1 );
add_post_meta( $post_id, $meta_key_2, $meta_value_2 );
delete_post_meta( $post_id, $meta_key_3, $meta_value_3 );
get_post_meta( $post_id, $meta_key_4, true);
// use
$order = wc_get_order( $post_id );
$order->update_meta_data( $meta_key_1, $meta_value_1 );
$order->add_meta_data( $meta_key_2, $meta_value_2 );
$order->delete_meta_data( $meta_key_3, $meta_value_3 );
$order->get_meta( $meta_key_4, true );
$order->save();
Remember, calling the save ( ) method is considered an expensive command, for which you must care to avoid using it more than it is necessary.
3. Validate if the Post is Part of ‘WooCommerce Order’
Use the following code for deciding if the post is part of ‘WooCommerce Order’:
if ( ! function_exists( 'wkwc_is_wc_order' ) ) {
/**
* Check is post WooCommerce order.
*
* @param int $post_id Post id.
*
* @return bool $bool True|false.
*/
function wkwc_is_wc_order( $post_id = 0 ) {
$bool = false;
if ( 'shop_order' === OrderUtil::get_order_type( $post_id ) ) {
$bool = true;
}
return $bool;
}
}
Bottom Line
As the eCommerce world is becoming more competitive every passing year, it is important for you to scale the performance of your WooCommerce store to the maximum potential for surpassing the crowd. The scalability, reliability and simplicity factor of WooCommerce is already recognizable among the budding entrepreneurs, for which it is one of the most preferred eCommerce platforms.
But with respect to today’s competitiveness and performance demands, ensuring WooCommerce HPOS integration for your store is of utmost necessity. It is because this integration would direct the performance of your operations.
Ensure you are done with the prerequisites and follow the steps to ensure WooCommerce HPOS compatibility and proceed with the integration steps. In case you need professional help from the dedicated WooCommerce developers, connect with them and let them know your needs associated with HPOS integration.
