Conflict W3 Total Cache & Gravity Forms > Solution

I am experiencing the exact same problem, and your configuration does allow Gravity Forms to load, which is unbelievably refreshing considering how much time I’ve put into this. However, it seems like no JavaScript files are minified unless you list them all in the File list under Minify > JS – or at least this appears to be the case, in my testing. What I’d love to do is have W3TC automatically minify all files EXCEPT the ones we specified (gravityforms/js), but it doesn’t seem to work like that.

In your case, since you activated Manual, did you end up listing all your files manually within W3TC? If not, is it actually minifying your JS files? (Edit: To be clear, I’m in the same boat as you right now – Minify is enabled, Manual is on, and that directory is specified as an exception.)

Hey Matt,

Yeah, it’s a real hair puller. My answer was a trial by fire solution. I’m pretty clueless about the details. The things I wanted — a significantly faster site with W3TC, forms that worked, and theme features that worked — were achieved by this solution … but HOW is beyond my little brain’s comprehension. Minify is enabled, is manual, and I have exceptions for just GF and a couple of js files that affect Google Map display in my theme. Because the exceptions work, I assumed that the minimizing is working. That may be a pretty big leap, in hindsight.

Here’s my settings specifically, again with the main “manual” set first:

Rewrite: checked
Disabled: checked

HTML minify settings: Enabled
Inline CSS minification: checked
Inline JS minification: checked
Line break removal: checked

js minify: Enabled

CSS minify settings: Enable: checked
Preserved comment removal (not applied when combine only is active): checked
Line break removal (not applied when combine only is active): checked

ADVANCED:

Update external files every: 216000 seconds

Garbage collection interval: 216000 seconds

Never minify the following pages: <complete URL for GF folder inserted here>

Never minify the following JS files: <complete URL for two js files inserted here>

I hope this helps but, if not, post your own settings here so that some passing person with greater W3TC knowledge might be able to find the solution!

Thanks for your updated settings. I tried them, but unfortunately, it still doesn’t minify the JS files. (However it still keeps Gravity Forms functional while W3TC is running – a great step towards resolving our problem.)

To see if your JS files are being minified, you use Firefox with the Firebug plugin. Make Firebug appear while your site is visible in Firefox by pressing F12, then switch to the Firebug’s Net tab. If asked, enable it. Then, press F5 to refresh the page. Now you should see all files that are downloaded when you visit the page. Click “JavaScript” to see all JS files – if minify is working, you’ll see a few minify calls with cryptic strings, otherwise, you’ll just see a bunch of JS files listed. (The same steps will work in Google Chrome, natively. Hit F12, click Network, then press the Filter button (funnel icon). Then, press Scripts and reload the page.)

As for my settings, I had “Rewrite URL structure” unchecked, HTML/Line break removal unchecked, CSS/Rewrite URL structure unchecked, CSS/Line break removal unchecked, and I had “Update external files every” set to “86400”. And the only exception I had was the JS folder as you explained above in the “folowing JS files” textbox.

I will continue to investigate this mystery, and will get back to you if I figure something out. Something weird is going on when I list JS files manually for minification… if I could do that without error, that would probably be the solution (since we’re in Manual mode). Why W3TC couldn’t offer Automatic mode with file/folder exceptions, is beyond me.

I found this site for reviewing what is and isn’t being minimized. May be helpful to you too, since it handily lists all of the js files to be minified and what may be causing problems: https://seositecheckup.com/tool/minified

I learned from it, for example, that the WordPress multilingual plugin WPML has a bug that is not working with W3TC. Grrr.