Great caching plugin with loads of options

  • So I was looking for a decent caching plugin for several websites, and like so many others I stumbled upon “W3 Total Cache”. My impression is very good and, looking forward to work with the plugin. Maybe soon we will get the Pro version.

    One of the things I liked most, is the practical setup wizard, which told me in each step about the different caching options I had on the server in few and easy steps.

    The only downside I found: There are some important and confusing options, which might lead to the public exposition of sensitive data, if changed accidentally or by confusion, as happened in my personal case.

    I would recommend to join those settings in a special section and put a “danger sign” on top, to make visually very clear which consequences these settings may have. This is the only reason why I give 4 instead of 5 stars.

    • This topic was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by smswerbetechnik. Reason: Accidentally, I was wrong with my previous review
    • This topic was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by smswerbetechnik.
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @smswerbetechnik

    First of all, thank you for your review.
    After a LOT of testing in different environments, and trying to replicate the problem, at no point did the option ” Don’t cache pages for logged in users” be enabled by default!
    As you can see in the screenshot below, one of the settings enabled BY DEFAULT is ” Don’t cache pages for logged-in users” in Performance>Page Cache>General. And the reason for this is that we never recommend caching for logged-in users and the reason for this is precisely what you mentioned and of course other problems that may occur.
    So at some point, you must have disabled this option manually.
    The problem should be resolved once that option is enabled (again, it is enabled by default) all settings are saved and the cache is purged.
    Now, since I do not have access to your website, potentially you may have multiple layers of caching like proxy or server-side caching. If this is the case, clearing only the W3TC cache since the page may be cached on another lever.
    I am very sorry you have not taken the time and create a support topic for this as we would be more than happy to assist you with the problem.

    Once again, I must say that your statement is false, and the caching for logged-in users is not, and I must repeat, is not enabled by default!

    You can test this by completely removing the W3TC and making sure to delete the wp-content/w3tc-config/ (this contains master.php which is the configuration file of current settings) and re-install a fresh version of W3 Total Cache.
    You will see, in Performance>Page Cache>General, the exact same thing as the screenshot below suggests.

    Please let me know if I can do anything to assist you with the configuration and hopefully we can together work on the best performance of your website and change the review!

    Thanks!

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    @smswerbetechnik

    Just a quick follow-up, please share where you found this information online that the cache for logged-in users is enabled by default, so we can address this so that users do not get false information.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter smswerbetechnik

    (@smswerbetechnik)

    Hi Marko.

    Thank you for your answers. Let me have a look for this on one of the sites. I will be very happy to change my review, because as mentioned in the very beginning: I liked the functionality very much, but was shocked once I discovered the admin bar was exposed to an exterior.

    I am not at all aware to have changed this setting, but won’t exclude the posibility.

    Sure I am going to have a look for the link as asked.

    Thread Starter smswerbetechnik

    (@smswerbetechnik)

    @vmarko

    I checked on one of the sites, and you are right. I was wrong – and I am sorry for this inconvenience. I changed the review accordingly asap. I must have changed the setting in confusion, yet it makes no sense to touch those settings.

    If you allow, please let me recommend to join those sensitive options in a seperate section of the UI, which makes the great risk located in those settings also visually clear. It could be very helpful to have graphical elements for people who don’t know that much about caching to avoid such an inconvenient situation like the one I had.

    I was not able to find the page I looked up that day, because my browser data gets deleted after each session and I don’t remember the corresponding keywords I put into the search engines in my desperate situation, yet I wanted to avoid the website data gets spidered and indexed by search engines. So my only worry was to get rid of the cached admin bar as quick as possible.

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @smswerbetechnik

    Thank you for yoru feeback and for updating the review.
    Also, thank you very much for the suggestion, and I’ll make sure to bring this to the team and see if we can do something about this in the future.
    Please understand that depending on the website, some users choose to cache pages for logged-in users, and a lot of users simply disable the top admin bar.
    However, I do understand that some use cases may require more information.
    Thank you once again for your suggestion and for updating the review!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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