Not quite fully functional for multisite

  • We are attempting to switch to this plugin. The main issue I’m finding is that it assumes a single blog install, not multisite. Therefore, it doesn’t work 100% correctly when a site-admin Network Activates this plugin. Options menus, under a Network Activation environment, should not appear on individual blogs and just the Network Dashboard settings menu. The available options are fairly harmless though except the bulk of our bloggers are not exactly tech-savvy, so I’m going to get to deal with lovely issues. Also, the .htaccess directives this plugin generates is wrong when multisite is enabled.

    The other issue is that this plugin is still too heavy. The point at which caching plugins get loaded in WP is WAY too late, so plugin authors might as well load the entirety of WordPress at that point. This isn’t your fault. The only real fix is to have users modify wp-config.php and call the cache directly (it’s about the third PHP file that is loaded by WP and PHP has only consumed a few KB RAM at that point with no DB connection). PHP offers more refined control over program flow than .htaccess and optimized PHP can do a better job than Apache/nginx can with complex rulesets. Running ‘uptime’ with this plugin, I still get CPU loads from 0.98 to 1.82 with this plugin running. This is the only WordPress install on the box and the box only runs WordPress. At least this plugin isn’t as bad as W3 Total Disaster Cache where I was seeing ‘uptime’ numbers in excess of 4.57! WP Super Cache + Apache delivers RSS feeds at random times (unresolved, weird bug, still exists!) but hangs around the same CPU loads as this plugin (so far). I’m crossing my fingers for having no weird issues with this plugin.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/lite-cache/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter bigsite

    (@bigsite)

    Unfortunately, after a mere 12 hours of testing in production, this plugin also appears to suffer from random RSS feeds being served up plus offers the brand new additional benefit of serving up totally random content from other blogs onto the homepage (something WP Super Cache doesn’t seem to do).

    So, Lite-Cache (v2.2.7) is no better than WP Super Cache (v1.3.2) and only mildly better than W3 Total Disaster Cache (v0.9.3).

    Caching plugins shouldn’t exist nor be necessary because WP should be doing caching natively (and doing it well).

    For reference, these random issues only occur when the system is under consistently heavy load and only in conjunction with multisite, an opcode cache, and a WP caching plugin. And this problem has been occurring for YEARS across multiple software and hardware configurations to rule out all possibilities. The hardware itself is fine (all memory and drive tests pass, drives are in a rational RAID configuration, and has a fairly recent quad-core Xeon). We even swapped all the hardware at one point! All the software is kept up-to-date (latest Apache, latest PHP, latest WP, etc). The plugins are minimal and vetted, a couple are custom-built, but I know what I’m doing there – and I’m a heck of a lot better at writing WP plugins than most people writing them because I HAVE to target multisite. So it boils down to caching plugins and bugs in WP. There is a bug in WP, I just have no idea where because the problem only shows up under specific circumstances which I’ve mostly narrowed down to a fairly specific combination of software. The fact that I now have proof that the same bug spans multiple caching plugins means that caching plugins can be ruled out and that the problem is in the core of WP itself! It isn’t hardware, it isn’t the server software, it isn’t the caching plugin(s) out there, it is WordPress.

    WP Super Cache attempts to counter the random page homepage issue – the author knows about it outside of our own specific encounters with the bug! The author of WP Super Cache is attempting to work around a nearly untraceable bug in WP. This is further proof that there is a bug in WP itself that causes caching plugins to malfunction. No other PHP-based software product I use has the problem of serving up completely incorrect content, which only adds more proof that the problem is in WordPress itself.

    Okay WordPress devs…the ball is finally in your court!

    Are you using the Opcode caching correctly and only for what it was intended? Using an opcode cache for other caching (than just opcode) can in my experience produce random weird results.

    Since you seem already with your hands ‘deep in the dirt’ so to speak (I mean changing server hardware, programming etc.) you might consider switching from Apache to Nginx with Fast_CGI caching. This will eliminate the need for any caching plugins at all and it will be faster too.

    Many good advice and tips on WordPress (multi – and single site) on Nginx and fastcgi-cache can be found on https://rtcamp.com/wordpress-nginx/tutorials/

    Plugin Author Stefano Lissa

    (@satollo)

    Lite Cache is NOT tested on multisite installations.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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