HPOS: full rollout delayed

Hi, folks. We are here with an important update regarding the previously announced plan for “High-Performance Order Storage” (HPOS), which was scheduled to be fully rolled out by the WC 8.0 release, scheduled for August 8th.

Although HPOS has been available for public use since November 2022, in the WC 7.1 release, we have not made it mandatory for use in new stores. Our original plan was to have all new stores default to using HPOS as of the WC 8.0 release.

Why the delay?

As we prepared to get the feature rolled out, we took steps to perform additional testing for HPOS. Part of that included testing the feature in live, high volume stores. This is where we found some issues which we felt needed to be addressed before rolling this out to all stores. Since finding the issues, fixes have been implemented. You can track their progress here.

We want to ensure the fixes are properly tested and do not want to rush the process in order to get into the 8.0 release.

What happens next?

We understand the anticipation and excitement surrounding HPOS, and we apologize for the change of plan. Given our desire to continue testing the feature across a variety of scenarios, we have decided to delay the full rollout to all new WooCommerce stores until WC 8.2.

What should I do?

If you manage stores, and you have previously enabled HPOS, it will continue to work. If you spin up a new store before the WC 8.2 release, and would like to enable HPOS, you may still do so by following these steps.

If you are a plugin developer, please ensure your plugin has declared compatibility with HPOS in order to ensure your plugin works as expected in stores that have enabled the feature. We have published an upgrade guide and have active support in the WooCommerce Community Slack Channel #hpos-upgrade-party where you can interface with WooCommerce developers working on the HPOS project.

If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to us on the #hpos-upgrade-party channel.

Thank you

Our community played an important role in making the discovery of some of these important improvements and issues we are working on today. A big thank you to the community members who donated their time to make sure this feature is released in the best possible shape.

Keep yourself in the loop!

17 responses to “HPOS: full rollout delayed”

David Bennett

August 4, 2023

Could you explain HPOS like to a five year old? I am just a site owner who built his own site, and I have no idea how HPOS integrates, much less whether I should worry about it.

Reply
1. 99w
  
  August 4, 2023
  
  WooCommerce is built on WordPress, in WordPress there are “post types”, these post types are things like posts, pages and custom ones from plugins/themes, etc – WooCommerce uses them for products, orders, etc – however there is a limitation that all these post types and their associated data are mixed in together in the database, which depending on how much data you have in total (orders placed, products created, etc) it can make getting data from the database slower, which in turn makes functions of your website slower, e.g. when you view the order list that is looking up the orders in the database, same for searching orders, etc.
  
  HPOS moves out the orders and associated data to separate database tables (and a number of other performance related improvements relating to how that data is got), by doing that it helps increase the performance of your store, if you’ve only got a few orders you might not notice a difference, but if you have a store with hundreds of thousands of orders then it should be noticeable.
  
  Reply
  1. David Bennett
    
    August 4, 2023
    
    Thanks, I’ve got that – so when it is introduced will it just write the new tables and move the information without the site owner having to do anything, or are there some gotchas?
    
    Reply
    1. Josh Kohlbach (Rymera Web Co)
      
      August 5, 2023
      
      Hey David, the main gotchas are going to be a lot of extensions are still yet to roll out full HPOS compatibility. I would suggest come October, update on a staging environment and fully check all plugins and your theme to ensure 100% problem free roll out. Would be worthwhile contacting a local developer if you’re unsure. Hope this helps!
      
      Reply
      1. David Bennett
        
        August 5, 2023
        
        Thank you – that’s helpful.
Josh Kohlbach (Rymera Web Co)

August 5, 2023

Hey team, as an extension developer myself and my team have been preparing for this for some time but your average store owner still doesn’t really know much about how this is going to affect them.

I would propose considering delaying until January release (8.5?) before you make it completely compulsory. This would get many store owners past the critical Black Friday and December sales periods which are important times for these businesses.

It would also allow you to ramp up communications (with both store owners and plugin developers) to ensure a smooth transition.

Just friendly food for thought from someone that gets to see both sides😊

Reply
1. Stephanie Pi
  
  August 7, 2023
  
  Hi Josh, this is a valid concern. However, because we aren’t forcing existing stores to turn HPOS on, this shouldn’t be so much of an issue.
  
  We do however want to encourage all extension developers to support HPOS, or at the very least declare their incompatibility, so that stores who choose to use HPOS, or new stores created after the full rollout, will be able to enjoy a full catalog of extensions.
  
  We have only done minimal messaging to the merchant community, as this is largely a behind-the-scenes feature, but there are some comms such as this one and likely more coming in the near future in step with the rollout:
  
  https://woocommerce.com/posts/platform-update-high-performance-order-storage-for-woocommerce/
  
  Reply
David Bennett

August 5, 2023

To the original post author: On re-reading the original post it is not clear to me whether after HPOS will be the default on all stores or only on new stores? In other words whether existing stores will be ‘converted’ to HPOS – or whether for existing stores HPOS will continue to be optional at least for some time into the future? Which is it?

Reply
1. Josh Kohlbach (Rymera Web Co)
  
  August 5, 2023
  
  AFAIK it’s going to be default for new stores only, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t highly encouraged for existing stores to swap. Just given all the work that’s been done by everyone.
  
  Either way, for plugin devs it means we have to be ready well before and many are not.
  
  Reply
2. Stephanie Pi
  
  August 7, 2023
  
  Hi David, I understand there is some ambiguity there. To start, the change will only affect new stores and stores who explicitly choose to turn on HPOS and benefit from the performance improvements. For the time being, as you stated, existing stores HPOS will continue to be optional at least for some time into the future.
  
  Reply
  1. David Bennett
    
    August 7, 2023
    
    Thank you for the clarification.
    
    Reply
Edith

August 8, 2023

Is there a roadmap when 8.2 is due for release?

Reply
1. Peter Fabian
  
  September 1, 2023
  
  Great question!
  
  Each dot version is planned for the second Tuesday of the month, so
  – 8.0 was on August 8th,
  – 8.1 is planned for September 12th, and
  – 8.2 is planned for October 10th.
  
  Reply
Srikanth Meenakshi

August 9, 2023

The largest payment gateway service provider in India (Razorpay) has only partial support for HPOS as of now (does not support Subscriptions plugin). So, a delay is welcome. Obviously, we would not be able to adopt the upgrade to HPOS without PG support.

Reply
Felipe Molina

August 11, 2023

Hello, thank you so much for keeping us updated.

I manage many stores with a high volume of orders and products, very excited about all of this, I hope to finally say goodbye to 8 to 20 second load times on the order page.

I know it’s early to ask, but where can I get more information about the status of custom tables for products? Is there a roadmap for that?

Reply
Felipe Molina

August 14, 2023

Hello, thank you so much for keeping us updated.
I manage many stores with a high volume of orders and products, very excited about all of this, I hope to finally say goodbye to 8 to 20 second load times on the order page.

I know it’s early to ask, but where can I get more information about the status of custom tables for products? Is there a roadmap for that?

P.S: It seems my previous comment was deleted, was it a mistake?

Reply
Felipe

August 14, 2023

Hello, thank you so much for keeping us updated.
I manage many stores with a high volume of orders and products, very excited about all of this, I hope to finally say goodbye to 8 to 20 second load times on the order page.

I know it’s early to ask, but where can I get more information about the status of custom tables for products? Is there a roadmap for that?

P.S: It seems my previous comment was deleted, was it a mistake?

Reply