Caching questions and plugins.

  • Resolved quanin

    (@quanin)


    2 years ago

    So I’ve been experimenting with a few different configurations in order to increase performance, but had a quick hopefully trivial question about the plugin. I get prompted every time I change a setting in a plugin, or activate a plugin, to empty various caches that W3TC uses. what I’m wondering is if I don’t empty the caches for whatever reason, will they eventually expire and thus be emptied anyway? For example, is the CSS Minifi cache purged automatically, or only when I explicitly empty it?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @quanin

    Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
    As you may have seen, this depends on the settings. For Page Caching, OC, and DB Caching there is an option when the cache will expire, or when the cache will be purged if something was changed on the website.
    So for example, in Peroformance>Page Cache Page policy, you can choose when the cache will be purged once if the content is changed.
    As for the minify, this needs to be manually purged/rebuilt. The reason for this is that if the files are not changed (themes/plugins) there is no need to rebuild the minify.
    I hope this helps!

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter quanin

    (@quanin)

    Thanks! It helps, but perhaps not as much as you were hoping. Does this mean that if a theme releases an update that fixes a CSS bug, the CSS files that originally contained that bug will still be minified and thus served to visitors? Is that not somewhat problematic?

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @quanin

    Well, This is why the W3TC notifies you that some plugins or themes were updated and urges you to empty and rebuild minified files.
    I am just wondering, you are expecting the W3TC to automatically purge all modules, every time any plugin or a theme is being updated or added?
    Thanks!

    Thread Starter quanin

    (@quanin)

    I’m expecting all module caches to become stale at some point and need a refresh, yes. If it happens with the page cache, even when a new post or page isn’t added, then it should happen with the other caches as well. Otherwise, in the case of something like Google fonts being updated (something we have no control over), it risks breaking the site – not functionally, but definitely visually.

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @quanin

    Thank you for your feedback.
    Well, W3TC works as expected for such use cases. It also depends on the caching method you are using. Caching to disk is more persistent, and in the use cases such as you are mentioning if this happens frequently or the user does not have the experience or habit to make sure the cache is purged, then memory-based caching methods are great.
    Thanks!

    Thread Starter quanin

    (@quanin)

    Perfect. I have enough information to determine that I should be using another plugin. Thank you.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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