Plugin Author
Paul
(@paultgoodchild)
This cookie forms a core part of Shield, so it would make more sense to set your plugin system to ignore this cookie, rather than effectively disable Shield’s core functionality.
Hi @paultgoodchild
Hmmm you mean caching plugin system (It’s on the server – I have no control over it) or WordPress plugin system?
Plugin Author
Paul
(@paultgoodchild)
There’s a million-and-one types of caching out there, and I would have no idea how to address your particular cache. I’d suggest reaching out to your webhost and see what your options are about configuring your site caching. Or if it’s a WP caching plugin, reach out to the dev and ask them whether this ignoring certain cookies is an option.
Are you absolutely sure that this cookie is disrupting your site cache – how did you determine this?
@paultgoodchild that’s what I have been told by the service provider (and it’s been better when plugin was turned off)…
I will ask them if it’s possible to ignore that cookie from the server side
Plugin Author
Paul
(@paultgoodchild)
Experience has taught us not to always take at face value, what service providers state as “fact”. They may be right, but I would definitely encourage some benchmarking from your side to see how it works for you, so you can be sure.
Will be checking that:) thank you, will try to get back with the results:)
hi @paultgoodchild,
It is impossible to exclude/ignore cookies from the server side. So they can’t help with that. I have another page on the same server where i turned plugin off for testing. And there everything works perfectly fine. I have asked them to compare both sites (with/without plugin) and according to the provider it is impossible to cache properly because of “icwp-wpsf-notbot”.
Maybe it is not exactly that cookie – but somehow Shield plugin prevents proper caching in my scenario.
What could be done about it? Is any functionality i could turn off in Shield to get rid of it?
Plugin Author
Paul
(@paultgoodchild)
We don’t currently have a solution outside of use of that cookie at this time. You can prevent the cookie from being set by setting this option to 0 (zero). When you do that, however, you disable Shield’s core functionality in blocking bot logins, SPAM etc.
We have a potential alternative to work around cookies, but this isn’t fully investigated and work hasn’t started on it, yet.
Regarding your hosting provider, this is what I’ve understood from our conversation so far:
- they implement server side caching
- you have no control over the parameters of how this caching works, so you’re subject their configuration
- if there is a conflict or a reconfiguration required, they won’t adjust the configuration for you – i.e. again, you’re stuck with defaults.
- if the cache is invalidated (e.g. with the presence of a cookie), performance on the site noticeably degrades. It is so badly affected that you feel you must seek solutions to it.
The final point means that the web hosting platform doesn’t use server-side caching as a means to optimise performance (i.e. squeeze out every bit of speed possible), but instead to mask the default, poor performance of the platform.
Depending on the nature of your website and how critical performance is to the success of your project/business, I would consider seeking out and testing some alternatives at least so you don’t feel trapped by their services. Black Friday sales are a great time to seek alternatives.
As I mentioned about our cookie within the plugin, we may rework how the plugin works and negate the use of cookies, but we have no firm commitment to this, nor a timeframe when that would be implemented.
@paultgoodchild, thank you very much for fast and detailed answer! it means a lot (i wish more devs or providers are so responsive!)
I will dig more into that. Let’s consider the case closed for now 🙂
Thank you!
