WP Super Cache compatibility

Well, I have gone back to using a responsive theme, which is really not ideal. But if my mobile pages aren’t getting cached, then my hosting bill goes up considerably because most of my traffic is mobile.

Sapphire, what are you hosting needs maybe I can accommodate with no overage charges.

Rick

Thanks, Rick – I got it working with the new version of Supercache, not quite sure how. My host “forgives” temporary spikes as long as I get it under control, so I’m okay. I’m just not happy that this has gone months without a fix. It’s not as if Supercache is an obscure plugin used only by a handful of people.

It’s unfortunate that you’ve been experiencing difficulties with WP Super Cache and WPtouch / WPtouch Pro, as you can imagine we do our best to be compatible with as many hosting/caching solutions as possible but are unable to replicate the issues some users are reporting.

If you could please share as many details as you feel comfortable sharing on a public forum with regards to your site, it would help us diagnose and continue working towards solutions in these extreme cases. Thanks, c.

My problem is that if I use the latest versions of each plugin, following the instructions on https://support.wptouch.com/support/solutions/articles/5000537668-configuring-cache-plugins-for-wptouch?utm_campaign=cache_smash&utm_medium=web&utm_source=wptouch-free, the mobile pages just don’t get cached. I.E., I go into the Contents tab of Supercache, ask it to list files, and look for the 5 pages I just viewed on my phone… they’re not in there at all.

But if I roll WP-Touch back to 3.7.9.1 and remove the list from Rejected User Agents in SuperCache, then the pages get cached. Furthermore – and I just discovered this and won’t be sure how it affects the server until I’ve tested both methods – with the Wp-Touch support plugin disabled, the pages cache with an “index-mobile.html” appendage. With the plugin ENabled, they cache without it. And I know this because I’m visiting less popular pages on my site on my phone, and instantly looking at the latest cache files to see if the pages I visited are in there.

I hope that helps.

Update: a few days ago I started getting the mobile theme showing on desktop. So I tested a bunch of other mobile themes, and had bugs and issues with all of them. My host keeps advocating for responsive design as the only workable solution. Unfortunately, responsive design is pretty terrible if you run an ad-supported but non-Adsense site to avoid having to charge people subscription fees for the content.

But I’m figuring out how to work it, using plugins that hide certain widgets on desktop or mobile, and using AdInserter to display certain ads throughout the content on mobile but not desktop.

Hi Sapphire, thanks for the update regarding your compatibility issues between WPtouch and WP Super Cache being related to your host. With almost eight million downloads, we’re always sure to run into some corner cases such as this, and our best advice is to work with partners who understand the business you’re trying to build, and work to support you rather than limit you. Best of luck, c.

That’s a bit snide. Your plugin’s inability to detect devices reliably has nothing to do with my host’s limitations.

Just for your edification, I am with a very affordable shared host who is so good, they can handle a site with millions of visitors per month with no issue. Data spikes from posts going viral? No problem. Because they discourage the use of resource-hogging plugins by charging more to users who insist on using them.

And I would pay more if there was a discernible benefit. Unfortunately, when your plugin started showing the mobile view on desktop, an issue that’s been ongoing and recurring for years, that was the final straw. I realized no matter what I was willing to pay my post, your plugin is buggy and your support is non-existent.

Sapphire, perhaps I misunderstood your reply earlier, could you please clarify? WPtouch detects devices during the page load, but if the page is previously cached by a plugin, or a web server, WPtouch won’t run during the page load unless your server/plugin has been setup to allow WPtouch to run, following these directions: https://support.wptouch.com/support/solutions/articles/5000537668-configuring-cache-plugins-for-wptouch

As for caching etc, if you’re concerned about server loads, we’ve created an extension called Infinity Cache, designed to speed up mobile page loads, and comes with a year of priority support directly from plugin authors. Thanks, c.

As I stated earlier in this thread:

–I configured it according to those directions. It cached NOTHING, which is what was so hard on my servers, because I get around 300k pageviews per month, and something around 75% of that is on phones.
–I rolled back to an old version of WP-Touch and was able to get it caching. Thought the problem was solved.

But then two things happened:

–You posted in here that you couldn’t replicate the problems, which meant there was no ETA whatsoever on problems that have been going on for months, and
–I started seeing the mobile view on my desktop.

Because not updating plugins can be a security issue and you had no ETA on a fix, I lose confidence in WP-Touch. I tested many alternatives and found they all have trouble with serving the right view to the right device.

I did consider whether buying your pro package might solve the problem, but I don’t think it should work that way. I’ve been testing software since the early 90s, and I’m used to a free version working perfectly, but with limitations, and the premium version simply removing the limitations. In my view, if the free version is buggy, I have to assume the premium will be buggy too. And yeah, you’ll provide support… but I don’t have all day to be sitting around futzing with buggy software. I am the only human behind several websites, and I need solutions I can set and forget so I can get on with the real business of producing content.

Sapphire, I appreciate your frustration but please take a look at it from our point of view. The issue doesn’t occur for 99.9% of our clients, we can’t replicate it, and it exists for you regardless of which mobile solution you use.

WPtouch and WPtouch Pro are identical code base, the difference is that WPtouch Pro comes with additional theme, extensions, and tools, as well as priority service and support to our free, community supported WPtouch plugin. c.

Hi Sapphire,

I thought I would chime in here and hopefully add some clarity.

Due to the way caching plugins work, no mobile plugin based on theme switching will ever work with them out of the box unless the caching plugins themselves add true and proper support for mobile theme caching in addition to desktop caching.

The way caching plugins work is by bypassing WordPress loading at all. They produce cached html pages from previously visited pages, and serve those on subsequent visits instead of WordPress being loaded and running its dynamic routine for each and every visit.

This of course has many speed benefits, and reduces load on servers considerably, especially on value hosting providers who allocate resources for websites sparingly.

However, since WordPress isn’t loaded, your .htaccess file is the only place where some rules can be added to this file to override this behaviour— if not, the cached files will be sent to all requesting devices all the time.

When you configure WPtouch with Super Cache and add its rejected user agents, you are disabling cached files from being served to the specific mobile devices that WPtouch works for.

If you have WPtouch active and you haven’t added our user agents to the rejected user agents in Super Cache’s settings, in current versions WPtouch— it will suspend itself from running to prevent mobile pages from being cached.

The reason we do this is to prevent WPtouch’s pages from being cached on a 1st visit, then being served to a desktop device and vice versa.

Again, because cached files are served before WordPress loads, Super Cache is serving cached pages to whomever requests them, and doesn’t know the difference between a desktop cached page and mobile cached page— only that its the same url that’s being requested.

All major caching plugins, despite being around for the entire time that WPtouch has, have effectively refused to add native caching for mobile devices when a mobile theme is used. We can’t make them add it.

Instead, with WPtouch Pro, we wrote our own caching solution to offer people such as yourself the ability to cache mobile pages and serve them to mobile devices. Our solution can work alongside a site configured to use Super Cache and setup to reject mobile user agents.

I hope you would see the value in purchasing a license for this functionality. We’re a small company of 5 people, who aren’t millionaires and who rely on making our customers happy to put food on the table. We’re proud of the products we create and the problems we try to solve with them. As with any line of work there are many, many hours of dedication that we put into development for these products. We of course try to earn a living working in software.

It sounds like you have a pretty big site, and that you earn revenue from advertising on this website. I would think if its critical to you to have a good mobile theme for advertising purposes, that you’d see it as a good investment to pay for good products like WPtouch Pro to help you accomplish your business goals.

Thanks for using WPtouch, and for taking the time to post about your issues and help us understand them.

Best,
Dale Mugford
Co-Founder

After reading through this thread–which I launched 9 months ago–my conclusion is that, if WP Touch 3.7.9.1 is working for me despite having WP Super Cache activated, I should leave well enough alone and install no WP Touch updates. Said differently, the latest versions of WP Touch and WP Super Cache remain incompatible. Correct?