What is WooCommerce HPOS?
In WooCommerce, HPOS stands for High-Performance Order Storage which offers a new way for WooCommerce to structure and process order data in database tables. Previously, the sheer volume of order and product data may have been a performance bottleneck for many online stores running on WooCommerce. The new storage method however significantly improves fetching the order data from the database. HPOS became available in WooCommerce version 8.2 and is now active by default on new installations.
HPOS Brings New Tables to the Database
HPOS introduces four new database tables to WooCommerce, structuring and handling order information more efficiently than before:
_wc_orders_wc_order_addresses_wc_order_operational_data_wc_orders_meta
The Advantages of HPOS
What are the advantages of using HPOS in WooCommerce? This can be summarised in three key factors: scalability, reliability and simplicity. Using HPOS makes the data stored in WooCommerce more reliable to work with, such as editing and migrating it. With the introduction of new tables, developing in WooCommerce will also become more flexible.
Information about each and every order in WooCommerce gets added into the site’s database, adding to the load of the site and thus eventually affecting its performance. HPOS was developed to handle this data more efficiently. Not only will it benefit large e-commerce sites, but web stores of all sizes running WooCommerce can start using HPOS to improve their performance.
How to Enable HPOS in WooCommerce
If your WooCommerce install is a fresh one, it is enabled by default from WooCommerce version 8.2 and onwards. HPOS is not automatically enabled on sites already running WooCommerce – it has to be enabled manually. If a site is still relying on _post and _postmeta tables, there are a couple of steps that need to be taken before enabling HPOS.
Before you can enable HPOS, the WooCommerce database tables needs to be updated. This is done directly in WooCommerce settings at WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features and no separate tools or plugins need to be installed to make this update.
Choose Enable compatibility mode in WooCommerce settings (WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features > Order Data Storage), which will initiate synchronizing the order data from old database tables into new ones
The synchronization runs as a background process in WooCommerce, 25 orders at a time (wc_schedule_pending_batch_process)
Once the data has been synchronized, you can enable HPOS in the same menu by selecting High-performance order storage (recommended).
How to Back Up Your WooCommerce Database
It’s a good idea to always back up your site prior to making any changes, especially if you’re making changes to your site’s database, and even more so if you’re handling your precious WooCommerce data. So, before you head to your WordPress admin dashboard, it is recommended to take an extra backup just in case! See instructions in the Seravo Knowledge Bank to see how to do this. You can also activate a maintenance mode on your site while enabling HPOS.