Woocommerce database update affects site functionality?

  • Resolved ivydev

    (@pinkivy)


    2 months, 4 weeks ago

    Hello, We have an ecommerce site with a very large database. (Data goes back to the 90s since before the site was re-made in WordPress and Woocommerce. Historical data was then imported into the new site.) I recently updated Woocommerce on dev site from 8.8.3 to 9.2.1. The database update took so long (several hours) that I thought it had frozen. But, knowing that the database was enormous, I let it run a little longer and it finished without problems. Now I need to do the same update on the live site. My question is: Is there a degraded experience to front end users while the Woocommerce database is being updated for several hours? Of course, I will make a full backup before I update Woocommerce so that I can roll back if there are any problems, but I am worried about users not being able to make transactions during the database update, or, if I need to roll back the update, I might lose transactions made during the database update. Is this a valid worry, or does the database update not affect these issues? Do I need to update Woocommerce during downtime to avoid these issues? Note that the Woocommerce update itself takes place reasonably quick, so I am only worried about if the time-consuming Woocommerce database update will cause issues. Thanks.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter ivydev

    (@pinkivy)

    Please note that this thread is only about possible downtime or other degraded user experience during a lengthy Woocommerce database update. I would like to know if anyone has knowledge of whether the Woocommerce database update in particular causes downtime or other degraded user experience.

    Please do not post about what to do during any site maintenance work in general. I’m looking for someone who knows what happens during the Woocommerce database update (beyond what one can google) to provide insight hopefully. Could such a person tell me that the process runs in the background and doesn’t affect the front end at all? It would be great to be reassured of that if someone knows!

    Plugin Support omarfpg a11n

    (@omarfpg)

    Hi @pinkivy,

    Thank you for sharing your concerns with us; this case is very interesting. Our database update process runs in the background, so performance shouldn’t be degraded. However, regarding orders, it is possible some orders may be lost if placed during this time.

    Please refer to our documentation for more information and tips about updating WooCommerce (and its database!) in a production environment: https://woocommerce.com/document/how-to-update-woocommerce/#production.

    In short, the best way to do it, is as you’ve done already, doing it first on a staging site to test, and for a live site, it’s recommended to do it during down times, and preferrably having a maintenance mode or coming soon mode if the database is too large, such as it is your case.

    Luckily, since WooCommerce 9.1, we have included a coming soon option built in now! This will only lock your store while keeping the rest of the site open for visitors.

    I hope this helps so far!
    -OP

    Thread Starter ivydev

    (@pinkivy)

    Thank you @omarfpg. This is helpful. I was able to update Woocommerce (and its database!) on the live site this morning.

    Plugin Support Rajesh K. (woo-hc)

    (@rajeshml)

    Hello @pinkivy,

    Glad to know that we were able to help. I will mark this thread as resolved. Should you have further inquiries, kindly create a new topic here.

    Meanwhile, if it isn’t too much to ask for – would you mind leaving us a review here? It only takes a couple of minutes but helps us tremendously. It would mean so much to us and would go a long way.

    Thanks!

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