Technical Explanation of Cache Folder

Here is something interesting:

View post on imgur.com

This is a screenshot of the folder for a particular article that is constantly 404ing. What is all that junk in there? I can’t find that stuff in most of the other folders.

Assume this could be an indicator of a problem no?

One last question : Looks like I don’t have the permissions to delete the /cache/ folder. This doesn’t seem to make much sense because I only use one user to set up the site. Logged in as the same user I ought to be able to have permissions to change it no?

Right, so seems this is going to keep falling on deaf ears, but here’s one other bizarre thing that perhaps someone would be able to shed some light on:

I finally managed to give new permissions to the cache folder – change the user from “nobody” to “myusername”.

Then I deleted the whole sucker. INSTANTLY it was recreated and started filling up again. 404s continued and everything got re-done under user “nobody”.

Then I actually disabled the plugin and repeated the process. Very strangely the cache folder STILL got instantly recreated and started filling up. How could that happen with the plugin disabled?

The last item here really is the most bizarre. How can things be written to that cache folder when the plugin is disabled?

One way to determine if deactivation of the plugin as actually working or not is to look at the HTML source of the pages being served. With the plugin deactivated, the very bottom of the HTML source should NOT contan the “Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache” HTML comment.

I would start there. Then, I would delete the entire cache directory and then look at another page or post that successfully loads and look at the HTML source and see if the above mentioned comment appears or not. If you ARE seeing that HTML comment, that means the plugin is still running. If you’re not, then it shouldn’t be running.

Are you saying when you try to view some blog posts, you get a “Not Found” error? Are you sure your blog posts are there? I mean you can see then in the dashboard but just not when viewing the blog normally?

Peace…

Also, have you seen this thread:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/plugin-w3-total-cache-page-not-found-404-after-few-hours?replies=2

Peace…

Thanks for a solid reply!

Here’s the oddity: Yes, I’ve looked at the source code and, in fact, there is no mention of w3 in the source code.

I have then attempted to delete the cache folder, but it is instantly recreated and starts to fill up!

That’s what’s so goofy… I literally can not delete the cache folder no matter how fast I am. To me this means something is still running somewhere.

… the original purpose of my concern is that, yes, some posts are getting 404 errors on them. Once I clear cache the 404s go away, but come back after a period of time. Right now I haven’t seen any in a while because I have been tinkering with the site and greatly reduced server usage… I still don’t know exactly what was causing it but I believe it has to do with the server use.

Anyway, don’t worry about that second part… what I’m trying to figure out is how can the cache folder fill up with stuff when the plugin is supposedly disabled!