Glad to help.
“..what WordPress site doesn’t use some sort of caching?”
Many do. There are millions of WP sites and 20K+ users of this plugin. Personally I never have used caching on any site, WP or otherwise, in over 20 years as a developer.
Also if it helps, this plugin never has been compatible with caching. The new message is displayed on sites that have caching enabled via WP_CACHE constant. It is intended to bring awareness to site owners who may have missed the “no-cache” information displayed on the plugin homepage, documentation, readme.txt, settings page, Help tab, support forum sticky, and numerous other locations.
Bottom line: if you are seeing that message, it is recommended to deactivate the plugin.
I hope this helps, let me know if I can provide any further information.
Appreciate the quick reply
If I could trade caching for this plugin, I would choose this plugin, caching makes the simplest things beyond frustrating, especially the design / development process
Unfortunately, I have yet to find a host that doesn’t force you to use caching, nor can I get my head around performance without the use of caching
This plugin (this warning) has encouraged me to rethink a lot of things I have begrudgingly accepted over the years
A long shot, but have you ever written about hosting / building / running a WordPress site without caching, I would be grateful for any direction that would help me eliminate caching from my world, forever
It’s a great question. Honestly there are no tricks or gimmicks to not using caching. But it does tend to cost more $. Many web hosts use caching because their service is lacking and so they throw caching into the mix as a magic “cure all” for performance issues. But as you say caching can cause more problems than it solves. For me, it’s always been worth it to spend a bit more for web hosting that provides solid performance without relying on caching, etc. Then you can build on a baseline that is fast intrinsically, and can forge ahead from there, keeping everything as light and fast as possible as you go. I know not everyone can afford to pay more for hosting (sometimes I barely can), but you asked so wanted to answer honestly.
Everything has become expensive, even subpar hosting (that shoves caching down your throat), not to mention email marking service providers (rant)
That said, for the reasons you point out, and for the amount of time spent fighting cached content, there comes a point when higher hosting fees make sense
Are you able share who one of these hosts may be? If you don’t feel this is the right forum to make recommendations, I understand
I do have a list of recommendations, but you are correct this is not the place for it. Feel free to reach me anytime and I’ll share the information directly. Thank you, @mohobook.
I received your email and replied, but the message was bounced back with error:
Unrouteable address, Action: failed, Final-Recipient: rfc822, Status: 5.0.0
Just FYI
Hi Jeff I have the same issue as this user after update of my blackhole pro this week. On your own info page https://plugin-planet.com/blackhole-pro/ it says “Compatible with a growing list of cache plugins” which directly contradicts when you say “this plugin never has been compatible with caching”?
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8ou1juqww0odlvv17wqhc/Screenshot-2026-09-04-105514.png?rlkey=xzcniuigm1ekpvdyij8dfob5d&st=m6pwf6eo&dl=0
Thanks for the catch @michaelmartin73, I have updated the home page to show the current/correct information.
