Hi, @btgreen.
I’m glad you reached out. I can certainly help you.
This is happening because you are using the Siteground Optimizer plugin either to cache or optimize scipts.
When it comes to GiveWP, we really want to make sure your experience is as smooth as possible, so we advise against minifying, optimizing, or merging GiveWP’s scripts. These scripts play a crucial role in processing donations, and they need to load in a specific order to ensure all the necessary information gets sent to the payment gateway without any hiccups.
Unfortunately, if you go ahead and optimize, minify, or merge these scripts, it could potentially lead to some issues with GiveWP and even cause disruptions in the donation process or form malfunctions.
In this particular situation, we genuinely discourage any attempts to minify, optimize, or merge the code.
Please double-check and make sure that this optimization tool isn’t causing any conflicts with GiveWP. It’s all about ensuring your donation system runs smoothly! 😊
Also, you need to make sure nothing related to GiveWP is cached.
The fix here is a bit technical, so I’ll include as much detail as possible, but you may need to reach out to your web developer or web support person to implement these recommendations.
If you’re unfamiliar with caching, it saves server resources by storing copies of a page, resource, query, or site so that the next visitor’s visit doesn’t trigger a call to the server at all; they get the saved copy. Instead of the site needing to recreate the page from scratch, it sends a copy, allowing it to load faster.
We put together this deep dive into what caching is and how it can cause problems: https://givewp.com/documentation/resources/caching/
Caching works well for speeding up sites, but when a saved copy of the site has sensitive information (like donor info), it’s essential that GiveWP not share that with the next visitor. If GiveWP is not convinced that the browser requesting the data is correct, it defaults to not showing the data.
Caching is handled differently on various sites and web hosts. This could mean a caching plugin, or caching could be in a security solution. Hosting providers also have settings for server-level caching settings, and they can help make adjustments for you there. Most caching solutions have a setting or section for excluding specific URLs or parts of URLs (called “slugs”) from caching. At the very least, you should exclude the following slugs from caching:
/donations/
/donation-confirmation/
/donor-dashboard/*
any page with a donation form on it
Also, the following query strings (if your caching solution has a setting for them):
give-embed=donor-dashboard
giveDonationFormInIframe=1
give-listener=paypal-commerce
give-listener=ipn
give-listener=stripe
Your host or the caching plugin/solution can help with that. Some may require a “wildcard” like /donations/* to capture all subdirectories under the /donations/ folder.
Some folks prefer to customize the URLs to their site pages, so you may find that your URLs don’t have the slugs mentioned above, even though they contain the same content. In such cases, we recommend whitelisting the page, not just the slug; that way, the pages with those essential pieces of information are still excluded from caching. This is especially important for URLs of pages with donation forms on them.
One helpful tip: Check in with your hosting provider. Most hosts have caching at the server level, and they will be able to adjust this for you. You can also temporarily disable caching on the site to confirm that the uncached site isn’t showing the problem.
Many security solutions also include caching options, so be sure to give those settings a look.
While fine-tuning the cache falls outside the scope of the support we can provide, your success with online donations is our number one priority, and we’re happy to provide any tips.
This was quite a bit of information to share. If you have any questions about this, let me know. I’m happy to help.
