Broke my site

Hi there,

You should hire a developer if you are trying to optimize a site and are not sure how the plugin works. You have to manually configure it, it’s not just install and call it a day.

Because optimization needs to minify your css and js files, it creates minified copies of the originals in the cache directory, which you are seeing with the long names.

However, if you purge the FVM cache… You just deleted those very cache files, so now you need to clear your page caching too, else your content is still pointing to the old deleted css and js temporary files, until the page cache expires.

The plugin doesn’t break anything. A plugin can be enabled or disabled.

If you are seeing the layout broken with 404 errors to FVM related css or js files… That simply means you are seeing a page cache version that points to delete files. It would be the same if you delete an image.

The page caching can be either from some other plugin, but more often from your hosting configuration or even cloudflare (if you use APO) for example.

When page cache is enabled on your hosting, page caching saves a snapshot of your page and your further requests never reach WordPress. If meanwhile you delete the cache on FVM without clearing page cache after, those files would return 404 not found.

You need to ensure page caching is cleared properly after purging FVM and that has nothing to do with FVM itself.

Contact your hosting and ask them how to purge the cache. Some hosting providers for example, require you to log to their control panel to clear it. Others put a plugin on your site to allow you to do it.

If you modify your content, including using minification plugins, you won’t see any changes until you clear the page cache.

If you clear too many times… sometimes hosting services rate limit your request and ignore your cache purge request.

If FVM cannot purge your page caching and if you need to manually clear page caching from somewhere, you first need to try FVM in a staging version of your site that doesn’t use page caching.

If the plugin is properly configured (without page caching), and if you disable the option to purge cache immediately on FVM for example… It will work even with your type of hosting or after reenabling page cache.

You cannot do development with page cache enabled… Speed optimization is development work.

Else find better hosting. Bluehost, GoDaddy, wpengine, kinsta, are all good options.

Hi Raul. I assume you are the developer on this plugin. can you please help tell me how to fix this. https://www.screencast.com/t/FRJ7fkYPxKcm The reason why this broke is because of your plugin. I uninstall your plugin and delete this path on my file manager and clear cached/ purges the files. But still this is i see on my source page. and the site is broke!.

As I said… it doesn’t matter if you deleted the files generated by FVM manually. If you deleted them, they are definitely gone.

If you can login properly to your site, you most probably don’t see any references to those files anywhere, because you are bypassing page cache. Can you check? And if not, can you see the top black wp-admin bar on the frontend (confirmation that you are indeed logged in).

FVM does not do page caching. Page caching is either some other plugin or your hosting or cloudflare. You need to purge the cache, else your anonymous users are not even reaching wordpress. They are seeing a cache, a copy of your page right after you enabled FVM.

The same would happen if, you edit text on one page.
If you do not purge the page cache, you will not see the new text you changed.

If you deleted the stuff on the wordpress cache directory, you only done one step.
The server cache if any, is a separate cache, you cannot delete it via explorer.
There is usually some button on your hosting control panel to do it.
It also usually expires automatically after a while.

Either way, you need to contact your hosting if you don’t know how to purge the server cache.

It’s physically impossible to see those references on the HTML source, if you purged page cache correctly.

What hosting do you use?

Is it a standard plan for wordpress, or is it some server that someone installed for you from scratch?
If someone installed the server for you, probably they have enabled some sort of server side page caching. It either needs to be removed manually somehow, or you wait until it expires.

If it’s not clearing, then you must contact the person in charge of the server to check what is going on.

If you have persistent page caching on the server, you are making your site static.
Once it saves a cache somewhere, it shows that file to everyone until you clear it.
That is why, as an anonymous user you still see references to the files you manually deleted.

You deleted the files, but you did not delete the copy of the page that was pointing to those files, so you are seeing a cached copy of your page with references to those files.