How to ensure w3 Total Cache is working?

on the plugin general settings page just check the debug info and look at the bottom of your page to see if any caching information appear.

You should see someting like :

<!-- W3 Total Cache: Page cache debug info:
Engine:             apc
Cache key:          4273e49eb35a30b98f3a5bbf9963c6c6
Caching:            disabled
Reject reason:      Requested URI is rejected
Status:             not cached
Creation Time:      1.017s
Header info:
Set-Cookie:          woocommerce_cart_hash=f0012eb7c70fdd672aa9577bd4eca145; path=/
X-Pingback:          https://wordpress-bench.site/xmlrpc.php
Content-Type:        text/html; charset=UTF-8
X-Powered-By:        W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.8
X-W3TC-Minify:       On
-->

Thanks for the help.

When I turn on Page Cache debugging I don’t see any of that code in the page source.

However I do for Database and Object debugging.

So this would mean Page caching is not working? Any ideas on where to start troubleshooting?

(My debugging is still enabled on outdoorvancouver.ca if you want to have a look) – Thanks again, I really appreciate the help

From what I see, yes page cache is not activated.
You should check that page cache is activated on the main general configuration and make sure that you’ve added :

define('WP_CACHE', true);

in your wp-config.php

++

Hi gabrielstuff,

Page cache is definitely enabled on Disk:Enhanced

In my wp-config I see:

<?php
/** Enable W3 Total Cache */
define('WP_CACHE', true); // Added by W3 Total Cache

// Enable the WordPress Object Cache:
define(ENABLE_CACHE, true);

/** WordPress's config file **/
/** https://www.ads-software.com/   **/
define('TANTAN_FLICKR_DISPLAYGROUPS', true);
// ** MySQL settings **  //Added by WP-Cache Manager
define('DB_NAME', 'xxxxx');     // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'xxxxx');     // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'xxxxxxx'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'xxxxxxxxx');     // ...and the server MySQL is running on

This website is old and I have used other cache plugins in the past. Wondering if the ”added by wp-cache manager’ is from a different plugin?

There are no other caching plugins currently installed or active, but I do use Cloudflare though my host if that makes a difference.

Thank you

hum real weird. On some site, emptying the cache folder in wp-content could help.
what you could do if you tried several cache plugin is removing W3TotalCache. Cleaning up you wp-content folder to only keep folder you already know (uploads,language,whatever you know revelant)
then reinstall it and enable.

You recommend I delete everything within wp-content/cache? There are several folders in there. (config, db, object, page enhanced, tmp).

Will they be regenerated by w3 total cache when it runs again?

Before I installed w3 total cache I went through and did a thorough uninstall and clean up of folders and php files related to wp super cache so I believe the wp-content to be clean of unnecessary files. I am no expert at this stuff though, so I appreciate all the suggestions, I’ll have another look there too.

actually wp-content/cache folder is created by wp-super-cacheand W3total cache. Both use same type/name.
Generally it is not a good idea to use WP-Super-Cache + W3total Cache or not fully install one of them before installing its brother.

You can read a bit here:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Optimization/Caching

No fear about cleaning up this folder.

Success! I deleted the ‘Page enhanced’ folder via the ftp, and rebuilt the cache from the plugin settings page. After clearing that folder it regenerated and now when I view the page source I see:

<!-- W3 Total Cache: Page cache debug info:
Engine:             disk: enhanced

… etc

Thanks so much for helping me out gabrielstuff!

Marking as resolved