Stuck on refresh

  • Resolved leighjones123

    (@leighjones123)


    5 years, 11 months ago

    Emailed this question to the team at NitroThemes, but thought I’d ask on here incase anyone has any suggestions

    Hi 🙂 I’m using your great plugin on a client’s site which is offering food packages during the COVID-19 outbreak. The site gets around 200-300 users hitting the site almost at once (when the weekly packs are released at midday on Sunday).

    I have your plugin active on ‘Coming Soon’ mode – with a countdown timer, to push them to the normal site at the specified time. At which point, it releases the holding page – and pushes the user to the main site. It seems to fix by itself in around 4 minutes, and all users can access the site normally again.

    I’ve noticed over the last two weeks – some customers are getting stuck – I’ve also tested and seen this myself. I can see the plugin lifting coming soon when the countdown expires… and the command for the browser to refresh the page at the end of the timer works, but it just constantly refreshes the expired countdown page every second or so, until about 4 minutes pass – and then when it refreshes again, they are taken to the main site.

    This doesn’t seem to affect all users – as we start taking some orders immediately.

    Gut feel is that this could be Caching. I have Redis Cache on my cPanel server. Could this be part of the problem… the cache not clearing for all users quickly enough? If so – would a different type of cache be better suited… WP Rocket maybe?

    Many thanks

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author Ales

    (@alesmal)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Leigh, I read your email and I decided to response here, since it might be useful info to other users as well.

    The plugin behaves exactly as you described, if it’s set to disable coming soon mode after timer expires, it does few things:

    1. expired timer force to reload user website
    2. updates WordPress option to disable Coming soon mode
    3. displays standard website

    Now two things might happen when hundreds of people are force to reload the website by the expired timer.

    1. database request might fail, to prevent disabling of Coming Soon mode. But since it works for some users and for some it does not I don’t think this is the issue.

    2. Redis Cache is still in place and is not cleared properly. I would again expect the same behaviour for all the users and not only for some of them but I believe this is the key issue.

    Now, I checked your website, and it looks simple enough (in a good matter of speaking!) to not require a caching. Which might resolve the issue.

    If you would like to keep cache, I suggest a https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/ plugin, we have a good experience with it and it works quite well with CMP and clearing cache. You might wanna give it a shot.

    Let me know, if that helps

    Ales

    Thread Starter leighjones123

    (@leighjones123)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Ales,

    Thanks so much for your reply. I’ve just been having a bit of a play with it.

    I can actually easily replicate the error myself now – just done some testing over the past few hours.

    So I disabled WP Rocket for starters, and your right – it works totally fine without any caching plugins enabled.

    Installed WP Super Cache, and still have the issue where when the countdown is zero it’s not flushing the cache. Additionally, when Super Cache is on – I don’t think it actually triggers the command to disable Coming Soon mode (can see it still on, on the top menu bar) and no email notifications are sent.

    If I go into Super Cache and delete the cache manually – it then seems to process the command – because I get the email notification from the plugin to say the countdown timer has expired – and after a few refresh attempts it loads the main site. So say the countdown timer was due to expire at 20:00… nothing happens until I click ‘Delete Cache’ – say I pressed that at 20:05, I get an email notification to then say that the countdown has expired and it shows as ‘OFF’ in the menu bar. But… it doesn’t automatically move users to the main site. UNTIL, I press Delete Cache again. And then they move automatically.

    Is this normal?

    Also… strangely… when ‘Enabling’ the coming soon page from the actual CMP basic settings menu… this doesn’t seem work when WP Super Cache is on. It slides to Enabled and turns green (and the same thing happens in the top menu bar) but if I refresh, it’s back to red. And no email notifications are sent.
    However… if I slide it on using the top menu bar – this works fine, immediately.

    So in this case… I’ve got two options I guess..

    1) At the time that I set the countdown to expire, manually go in and press Delete Cache twice in WP Super Cache

    2) Don’t use any caching at all. I was recommended to use caching by my host, to reduce pressure on the server load – with me having so many users accessing and purchasing via WooCommerce at the same time.

    Unless you can think of any other solutions?

    Your help is much appreciated. I love this plugin, and have used it on a number of different sites. Never had any issues… and it’s not the plugins fault – it’s just the way my site is set-up.

    Many thanks

    Thread Starter leighjones123

    (@leighjones123)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Sorry – ignore the bit about enabling via the basic settings page – I didn’t realise you had to press ‘Save all Changes’, thought it was automatic!

    Plugin Author Ales

    (@alesmal)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Leigh, thanks for your extensive research!

    I will try to simulate it on my environment using WP Super Cache or maybe other caching plugins and see where it leads me.

    Re caching your website, I did not realize you are running WC so caching it is a right call.

    Not sure if it’s possible with Redis Cache but it might be worth try to cache your website except the homepage for a time being? To make sure CMP is not cached.

    I will let you know how it goes with my testing.

    Ales

    Plugin Author Ales

    (@alesmal)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    I believe I found the issue and working on a solution, should be ready by tomorrow 🙂

    Ales

    Thread Starter leighjones123

    (@leighjones123)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Ales,

    Thank you! I’ll see if I can use WP Super Cache to cache all apart from the homepage, and test that.

    Your help is much appreciated. You’ve got my email address if you want me to send you any videos of the issue, or anything further.

    Great news re a solution too – fingers crossed!

    Best,
    Leigh

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by leighjones123.
    Plugin Author Ales

    (@alesmal)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    OK, update is live now, should be working as expected, please test.

    All major WordPress caching plugins are supported.

    Ales

    Thread Starter leighjones123

    (@leighjones123)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Ales,

    Thank you! I had a few issues with WP Super Cache (unrelated to this) – but sorted that… and tested.

    Works great – timer expires and moves visitor through as it should do.

    Many thanks!

    Leigh

    Plugin Author Ales

    (@alesmal)

    5 years, 11 months ago

    Great to hear it’s resolved!

    Cheers Ales

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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