Some observations w3-total-cache

  • electricsander

    (@electricsander)


    16 years, 9 months ago

    After reading the description of this plugin, i decided to install it a fresh regular wp 2.8.2 on a vps to try it.

    The first install failed, the wp-content folder was not writable. After making this folder writable and deactivate/ activate the plugin something started to happen: minified html was reaching my browser at stellar speed!

    Unfortunately not everyting was alright: the css didn’t cache, the page looked garbled. After reading the logs i saw the plugin expected the uploads folder to be in the wp-content folder. Because it was a fresh unused install of wp, i needed to create the uploads folder.

    After reactivating/ activating the plugin my page renders blazing fast, gzipped and minified. Beautifull!

    Although this looked beautifull, i have still some problems with the plugin.
    For example, when i a make a change in the “Page Cache Settings”, backslashes get added to the “Never cache the following pages:” pages.
    For example, the exception wp-.*\.php changes to wp-.*\\.php after saving the page.

    Another problem: In my fresh wordpress install i used the standard Kubrick template. Choosing a custom header is visible for me as logged in user, but not as logged out user. Restarting memcache didn’t solve the problem.

    Trying to install this plugin on another wpmu install didn’t succeed, the manual has to little information on how to do that.

    After all i am happy to meet this plugin in it’s 0.5 youth, if the developper can iron the bugs out it will be my caching plugin of first choice. Because its Fast and relative(after splashing the bugs) easy to install.

    Greetings, Sander.

    P.S. Perhaps the errors are related to the test environment i am using?
    apache 2.2.8(mod_rewrite etc)
    php 5.2.5,
    mysql 5.0.51a,
    memcached 1.2.6

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    16 years, 9 months ago

    @electricsander,

    The first install failed, the wp-content folder was not writable. After making this folder writable and deactivate/ activate the plugin something started to happen: minified html was reaching my browser at stellar speed!

    Unfortunately not everyting was alright: the css didn’t cache, the page looked garbled. After reading the logs i saw the plugin expected the uploads folder to be in the wp-content folder. Because it was a fresh unused install of wp, i needed to create the uploads folder.

    The upcoming release will have better handling of initial setup conditions and feedback.

    Trying to install this plugin on another wpmu install didn’t succeed, the manual has to little information on how to do that.

    WP MU support will also be finalized by v1.0, more testing is required.

    For example, when i a make a change in the “Page Cache Settings”, backslashes get added to the “Never cache the following pages:” pages.
    For example, the exception wp-.*\.php changes to wp-.*\\.php after saving the page.

    And the backslashes, this issue is due to magic_quotes_gpc is on in the PHP config’. Please confirm so I can deal with this case.

    Another problem: In my fresh wordpress install i used the standard Kubrick template. Choosing a custom header is visible for me as logged in user, but not as logged out user. Restarting memcache didn’t solve the problem.

    For the kubrick theme, can you provide specific steps to duplicate the issue?

    Perhaps the errors are related to the test environment i am using?
    apache 2.2.8(mod_rewrite etc)
    php 5.2.5,
    mysql 5.0.51a,
    memcached 1.2.6

    As for your test environment, you’re ok. Consider adding memcache to your VPS to get slightly improved memcached performance.

    Will

    (@wramos)

    16 years, 9 months ago

    First of all- thank you so much for this great plugin! I was using WP Super Cache up to yesterday until I found out about your plugin which seems to do a much better job at optimizing WP all around.

    I’m not sure if this is the right place to post my question, but could not find any specific support forum for W3 Super Cache. Anyway, here goes:

    Question/issue 1: Everything seems to be working great after installing and configuring the plugin, but turning on the “minify” option breaks the style/layout of my pages. So for now, I’m running W3 without that option checked- which is a shame, because I feel like I’m only getting half the potential out of the plugin now.

    Question 2: I have both APC and memcached install on my server. Do you have recommendations to which I should use? Right now, I’ve got W3 configured to use APC for everything…is this ok or would you recommend using a combination of APC and memcached? Is so- which one would you suggest for each option in W3?

    If you can help to point me in the right direction, I’d really appreciate it! If you need any additional information about my setup, please let me know:

    Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2

    WordPress 2.8.4

    memcached, memcache, APC

    Thanks again!! =)

    Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    16 years, 9 months ago

    Everything seems to be working great after installing and configuring the plugin, but turning on the “minify” option breaks the style/layout of my pages. So for now, I’m running W3 without that option checked- which is a shame, because I feel like I’m only getting half the potential out of the plugin now.

    1) Verify CSS file specified on Minify Settings tab (don’t use full URL used instead of local path i.e. http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/default/style.css instead of wp-content/themes/default/style.css)
    2) If using disk caching, /tmp may be full or for some reason WordPress can’t write to it
    3) Try to disable line feed removal (and empty cache)
    4) Make sure minify files are uploaded to CDN by clicking the appropriate button on CDN Settings tab

    I have both APC and memcached install on my server. Do you have recommendations to which I should use? Right now, I’ve got W3 configured to use APC for everything…is this ok or would you recommend using a combination of APC and memcached? Is so- which one would you suggest for each option in W3?

    A very good question; in general we find APC caching to perform better in particular for page caching. The configuration I typically recommend is the use of APC for all caches except the database cache. Feel free to test various combinations and see what performs best on your server.

    Make sure to use the CDN functionality, even if only with a subdomain on your own server to improve your progressive render performance via browser pipelining.

    Will

    (@wramos)

    16 years, 8 months ago

    Thank you so much for taking the time to help! I will give all your suggestions a try and report back as soon as I can. Thanks again!! =)

    Will

    (@wramos)

    16 years, 8 months ago

    Your advice above (along with the latest release of your plugin) worked out great. The performance increase on my site is well beyond anything I was getting from WP Super Cache. Thank you so much for this! =)

    I have one other question that I hope you can help with me with:

    Can you better explain the use/proper use of the “Header”, “Foooter”, “Header (Non-Blocking”, and “Footer (Non-Blocking)” options?

    Thanks again for all your time and help! =)

    Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    16 years, 8 months ago

    Can you better explain the use/proper use of the “Header”, “Foooter”, “Header (Non-Blocking”, and “Footer (Non-Blocking)” options?

    Sorry I missed your last post! In a page there is javascript normally essential for functionality of the page, e.g. drop down menus etc. There are also things like google analytics which are not essential from a user’s point of view. The point of these options is to position all of your items in locations that make sure the site works as intended for the user by putting required scripts in the header and non-essential scripts in the footer whenever possible.

    In some cases there are scripts that do not respond to being minified or that you may not want to host yourself, in such cases the non-blocking options allow you to embed scripts in the header or footer in a manner which allows the browser to download the scripts at the same time instead of 1 by 1 in a series.

    Non-blocking doesn’t work in all cases in all sites, that is why the option to combine scripts only, without minification has been added in a recent release. Again the goal of all of this is to reduce HTTP transactions, improve caching, and reduce the time it takes for the page to be responsive to the user.

    Will

    (@wramos)

    16 years, 8 months ago

    Thanks so much for your explaination. I’m still a bit confused. Is choosing the “right” setting for each javascript (header, footer, non-blocking, etc) kind of a trial and error process then? Or is there a specific setting that I should try first will all my javascripts? I guess I’m just kind of confused as to how I should know which javascript to assign as header or footer or whether or not they should non-blocking.

    Thanks again! =)

    ecartz

    (@ecartz)

    16 years, 8 months ago

    I am just another user of this plugin, so don’t take my advice as gospel. However, my understanding is that the preferred place for javascript is footer, non-blocking. The impact of this is for the javascript to start loading after the HTML is almost completely loaded and it allows the HTML to finish loading before it actually runs the javascript.

    In some cases, your javascript will need to be in the head as blocking so that it runs before the HTML loads (the HTML may include javascript that accesses the head javascript). In other cases, it will be sufficient for it to be in the footer as blocking.

    In principle, the kind of javascript that needs to be blocking is javascript that actually displays content. I.e. it makes HTML appear on your page. The kind of javascript that needs to be in the head is the javascript that is called by javascript snippets throughout the body. For example, a function that does a document.write of some content that might be called in the page while it is rendering. Because it can control element position, CSS should always be head, blocking for this reason (and I don’t think that the plugin offers you an option to do CSS differently).

    If you understand what all your javascript does well enough, you could figure out where it belongs. However, if you are just using the javascript (you didn’t write it yourself), you might try first setting everything as footer, non-blocking. Then, look around and see if the site works. If it doesn’t, move things to footer, blocking; head, non-blocking; head, blocking — (head, blocking should be last and footer, non-blocking should be first; I’m not as sure of the order of the middle two, but I think that footer, blocking will either work or not; head, non-blocking might seem to work in cases where you really want footer, blocking), and see if it fixes it. In general, you would prefer to have the javascript non-blocking and in the footer, but depending on how it is written, you might need to put it in the head and/or make it blocking to get it to work.

    When testing your site, remember to clear your cache first, so that you have to load fresh copies of the javascript. That will highlight the kind of issues that a first time visitor to the site would see.

    Will

    (@wramos)

    16 years, 7 months ago

    ecartz,

    Thank you so much! This really helps clear things up for me! =)

    Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    16 years, 7 months ago

    @ecartz thanks so much for contributing such thorough advice.

    ronakshah

    (@ronakshah)

    16 years ago

    When I activate w3 total cache on my site http://trafficvoodooreviews.com, I get a 500 Internal Server Error.

    My site stops loading.

    The loading time of my site is around 24 seconds on average which is too high according to me.

    Frederick, I wish to use this plugin but it sounds like I will need your help to get this working.

    Can you check what’s the problem?

    Thanks.

    Frederick Townes

    (@fredericktownes)

    16 years ago

    Can you check what’s the problem?

    Since the plugin is not active now, please contact me through my web site for support.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

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