Is This Still Supported?

Not sure of your configs but yea it works fine for me (currently using php 7.0.5). But though i have applied my own tweaks (including deprecation fixes) to them to suit my needs. Never seen a 500 error — even on fresh installs with default settings. The only real issue that brought it to its knees was the php 7 problem which was a simple fix. I figure though i am only using w3tc in a specific way and im sure if i were to explore every nook and cranny of this plugin i might finally see a problem and then be compelled to fix it — havent had the motivation to do so.

Until this plugin really collapses on me, and i can’t fix the problem by hand i will likely stick with it.

Out of curiosity what alternative do you use? I figure when w3tc inevitably does fail badly for me i should have a quick alternative to flip to.

Kimberly

The 500 error is the particularly evil twist.

Everything seems to be working fine with no problems – settings, minification, all playing nicely, and your website still looks exactly how you wanted it.

Then you run a Pagespeed Insights test, which gives you a 100 across the board – due to ‘this page returns a 500 error’ – and on refreshing all caches in W3TC and your own browser, you find that your site has disappeared, meaning that for the last few hours of setting up, no-one has been able to access your website.

The alternative that I use (or rather the main one that I’ve been using for the past two years since W3TC has bricked) is Comet Cache (ex-Zen Cache).

Ahhh i remember Comet Cache when it was called Quick Cache (before they changed it to Zen Cache). Awesome! Funny, the old Quick Cache version even still works today out of the box — solid plugin. You got me thinking about your 500 errors. Is it a “503 backend failed”. I know there are servers which utilize Varnish cache servers and there are cases where they push back 500 errors. But interestingly, these errors will suddenly disappear on their own and the page returns to 200 OK. When these 500s occur do they permanently stay that way?

Btw, check this thread….some have had 500 issues too. I’m curious if you fall into this camp and if the pseudo fix helped.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/w3-total-cache-causes-500-internal-server-error-on-godaddy-shared-hosting?replies=8

Learned earlier that GoDaddy have blacklisted W3TC, so I won’t be using it anymore anyway, as I don’t trust blacklisted plugins even if it IS Godaddy!

The pseudo fix thread goes some way to explaining this blacklisting.

I wouldn’t trust it either if it’s placing iffy code into files.

Godaddy only blacklists plugins if you are on their managed hosting which is to prevent other caching systems from conflicting with their own.