EastDevonAlliance

Still working on optimizing the caching, but so far I have halved the page load time.

So yes – I am a happy camper. ??

It seems to be working fine!!!!

What a speedy response to a suggestion for an enhancement!!

You would have to know what time-zone they were in – which these days is reasonably reliable but not 100% certain – so that you could convert GMT deadline to local time. You would also have to convert the other way when you save the deadline.

I have connections with Joomla Fabrik folks – and their datetime plugin has to deal with the above and it is a nightmare.

So perhaps you are right and an ajax call would be better.

I do indeed understand the concept of page caching, and understand why the widget doesn’t start from the right values when the page is cached i.e. because the server passes down the time remaining (which is dependent on when the page is loaded not when it is cached) rather than the deadline (which stays the same).

However…

If you only pass the target date / time as GMT and let JS calculate how long to go, then the target date/time can be cached successfully.

Not sure I am explaining this well, so let me know if I haven’t explained it clearly enough.

Alternatively, we could use an ajax call once the page is loaded to get the current countdown value.

Finally sorted (I hope).

I had not excluded this from a widget caching plugin – D’oh!!

That would certainly cause incorrect starting values, but not sure why it should stop the js from running.

It could possibly be a timing issue – jQuery global variable gets cleared and then set again and the Countdown js runs at a different time when it is cached.

But it is working in Firefox and Chrome, logged in and logged out – so it looks sorted for the moment.

One point I would make is that it seems odd that the js inserts the HTML to load the CSS for the skin.

I would have thought that the php could enqueue the css with wordpress and that this would result in better loading performance for the widget.

(This is nothing to do with the cause of this jquery issue – which very much seems to be somewhere other than the countdown timer. Just an observation about performance.)

Ok – I have narrowed this down a little.

The js for this plugin needs the jquery global variable to be set – but it is not set when the code is called.

Instead jQuery111107941654497963643 is set.

So it looks to be some sort of jquery issue, but I have not tracked it down any further than this.

Interestingly, when I log out again, it still doesn’t work.

Clearing cookies and cache makes no difference. WEIRD!!!!

Upon further investigation, it works when logged out, but not when I am logged in as administrator.

Still no idea why.

Aarrrggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

I spoke too soon.

It works fine on e.g. Chrome, but does not work on Firefox. Looks like the JS is not firing but I have no idea why. No messages in the Firefox JS console.

Server 500 errors indicate a server configuration error.

If your server is Apache, it might well be a problem with your .htaccess file.

Resolving

Hmm – it is now working just fine.

So thanks to all who have contributed, but this is now closed.

I don’t know whether my hosting company uses Varnish, but I think not.

We are now live at https://www.eastdevonalliance.org.uk if someone could look at the generated HTML and try to work out why this is not working that would be helpful.

Definitely don’t use Varnish – we have no caching plugins at all at present since we are still in development.

When I get the time, I will try to do as you suggest, but I have higher priority items to work on at present.