Created Loading Problems

  • David

    (@timelesscinemashow)


    2 years, 6 months ago

    I used W3 Total Cache for months, as it was recommended by several sites. I followed all the right settings and setup as instructed and thought everything was good. After a while, I began to notice slowdown across the board.

    First editing pages began to take a while to load. Then the website would need 10-15 seconds to load (even on gigabit internet connection). This week the website failed to load completely, and I spoke with my webhost. Confirmed it wasn’t a webhost issue and began to look into it. Did all the steps (disable plugins/theme), but nothing changed.

    Slowly enabled all plugins and noticed a post stating issues with W3 Total Cache. Decided to just go ahead and disable W3, then delete it. Immediately noticed a slight performance boost over the failure to load prompts in my browsers. Installed WP Super Cache and immediately noticed a performance boost that was better than when I first installed W3 Total Cache.

    Having spent hours fixing this issue, I can’t fully recommend W3 Total Cache. As I am focused on organic growth, and can’t afford downtime or loading issues whatsoever. I handle all of our WP backend work and noticed substantial improvement with WP Super Cache. Would love to try WP Rocket if it was more affordable.

    I can’t upload screenshots, but please see below for the web traffic I had followed an article posted on 05/31/2022. I noticed a huge spike in activity and all performance metrics had a massive boost following removal of W3 Total and installation of WP Super.

    ________________________________________

    Web Traffic Since Last Post (05/31/2022)
    _______________________________________

    – 05/31: 66 (Post Made Public)
    – 06/01: 11 (loading issues begin)
    – 06/02: 19
    – 06/03: 25
    – 06/04: 39
    – 06/05: 21 (Often refresh page to get one to load)
    – 06/06: 10 (Load failures) (W3 Total Removed) (WP Super installed)
    – 06/07: 61

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

    (@timelesscinemashow)

    2 years, 6 months ago

    Almost forgot, the Site Health was posting issues for REST API as well. Double checked settings and that was configured correctly. So I have no clue why it was still an issue. CSS files were taking a long time to load as well. Clearing caches in W3 didn’t improve anything. Removal of W3 Total took care of the problem. No such problem by installing WP Super Cache.

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    2 years, 6 months ago

    Hello @timelesscinemashow

    First of all, thank you for your review.
    Second, I am very sorry you never opened a support thread or contacted us directly for assistance with the configuration.
    You are comparing two plugins that cannot be compared, and mostly because of the vast amount of settings, W3 Total Cache has in comparison to the other plugin you are mentioning.
    W3 Total Cache has Page Cache, Minify, Object Caching, Database Caching, CDN, Image optimization, lazy loading, etc.
    The other plugin you are mentioning has Page caching, and CDN integration and that is basically it. So you would get the same result, if not better by only enabling Page Cache using the Disk: Enhanced method in W3 Total Cache.
    The best configuration for your site might not involve enabling minify, database caching, and other things that you might expect. As a matter of fact, it can actually hurt performance by implementing features for the wrong situation. For example, using Object Caching and Database Caching and caching both to disk, which is actually something that could cause the problem you described, especially in the long run when the cache is pilled up when on shared hosting. This is why W3TC also has support for Redis and Memcached.
    So most likely only a minor tweak in the settings and question for the support would solve your problem.
    I would suggest to consider and re-install the plugin if it’s removed and let us know via the plugin contact form or the support thread the details of the issue you are experiencing so we can assist you with configuring the settings.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter David

    (@timelesscinemashow)

    2 years, 5 months ago

    Thank you Marko for the clarification on the details. I’ll consider using W3 Total Cache again later on when I’m ready to bring in a developer. Just having it installed was bringing things to a crawl and loading 6 pages was literally taking an hour, along with constant refreshes from failed loads. My time spent diagnosing was becoming more expensive than the cost of bringing in a dev, and I just need to focus on content at the moment.

    If it helps, I previously had my settings matching what was recommended with W3 Total Cache. When my site was smaller it did produce a performance boost. Main URL was loading well, but slowly pages started to chug. Ran tests and noticed CSS files were taking minutes to fully load in. Checked my settings with my Webhost and everything there looked rock solid. Server has never given me issues too. Not sure if there’s was a version issue between PHP, WordPress, webhost servers, and W3 Total. I never got that far into my testing, but I figured more than 16 hours of testing was more than enough.

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    2 years, 5 months ago

    Hello @timelesscinemashow

    Thank you for your feedback.
    It would be great if you could share those “recommended settings” as there are no recommended settings since every website is different. Themes, plugins, server resources… etc.
    Once again I am sorry about the problem you experienced, and the one thing I can promise is that the problem would be solved much faster if you reached out the support.
    Hopefully, in the future, you will change your opinion and review our plugin, once properly configured of course.
    If you have any questions please let me know.
    Thanks!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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