[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] Weird Issue. Blank Page / Only Header Is displayed

  • One of my sites using W3 Total cache (Have been using it for a while) But problem started happening randomly since the beginning of March. Never happened before then. (Had the plugin installed for months).

    Basically my homepage would only render my header. Not even my entire header. It’s missing the logo. This also becomes cached and every visitor only sees my header with everything else blank. This is the SECOND time it has happened in 3 days on a fairly low traffic site 800-1.2k visits a day.

    This also happened on my main site once (15-20k visits a day), but instead of the homepage, a category page. What would happen is only the header renders and the rest of the site is blank. Other parts of the site worked fine, so the plugin must have cached the page wrong, and saved it.

    Upon clearing my cache the problem fixes itself.

    Both sites use only Disk (Enhanced) Cashing and Minify as (Disk) with no DB Caching. HTML Compression is on for both sites.

    https://freetexthost.com/vg0dqoc1rj <– You can see the source for the recent issue on the first site I mentioned. It only loads up the the </head> on the homepage.

    I know this isn’t much to work with, but if you need any other info from me, I’ll provide it. I made no major changes to either site. Now maybe this is worth mentioning, the one site where I had the issue twice now has over 25k posts. Expiry times are huge, because the posts never get updated, something like 9600000 seconds for garbage collection / expire.

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

  • Do you have anything in your apache error log when this occurs?

    Thread Starter remotay

    (@remotay)

    The problem still happens now. Random parts of my website (High traffic) will be blank and only the header will load. It looks like W3 Total cache is caching these pages which only load up to the header, and serving those cached files.

    I need to clear the cache to fix the issue, and hope that the cache is rebuilt properly. There are no entries into my error log when this happens.

    The issue doesn’t happen THAT often, but I noticed it happening more often today randomly. I did notice since you updated your plugin the issue happened a lot less. Any idea what may be causing this? I’m on the latest release version of WP. Site is MMOHut.com

    Just to rule out my own browser screwing up, I have cleared my own cache, and hit CTRL+F5 on the affected page(s) to no avail. Page is still blank with only header loaded all the way up to </head>, usually only ONE page out of my 2000 or so pages get affected.

    I’m not clear, have you checked the apache or PHP error log?

    Thread Starter remotay

    (@remotay)

    On my Cpanel I checked the error log, I’m not even sure how to access the apache log, but I’ll find out and check.

    Ok, let me know.

    Thread Starter remotay

    (@remotay)

    I found a few entries in the apache error log regarding W3TC. I sent you them via your contact us page on W3Edge.

    There were several more “request failed: error reading the headers” on June 1 but I didn’t include all of them.

    Thread Starter remotay

    (@remotay)

    Argh, Just had the issue again, this time it happened on my homepage. It’s not a big deal if it happens on a random inner page, but when its homepage, it sort of screws up the entire site until I clear the cache. Dug through my PHP Error log and apache error log and couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

    Invalid method in request \x16\x03\x01 is it, but that error has to do with SSL or something, so its unrelated. I’m using PHP Version : 5.2.9 maybe upgrading will help?

    Maybe, but point is that the plugin continues to work if it’s working. Something else is unstable or interferes when it stops or when things randomly break. (The same is true for WordPress itself). Let me know how the upgrade goes and make sure your SSL configuration is ok.

    Thread Starter remotay

    (@remotay)

    I think I found the culprit..

    I have <?php flush(); ?> right after my </header>. I read that this is optimal for making a site load faster as per the Yahoo Best Practices guide. This has to be it, because when the pages “screw up”, they load everything in the header and that’s it.

    Any way <?php flush(); ?> could interfere with W3 Total cache? The problem doesn’t happen often enough for me to test my hypothesis..

    Use of flush() is indeed not compatible with W3TC; I believe a note about this is also in the FAQ somewhere.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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