Marko Vasiljevic

Hello Adam,

First of all, thank you for the awesome review.
To answer your questions:

1. We do not have documentation on every CDN setting since all settings are self-explanatory and of course, it depends on which CDN provider you are using and if you are using Pull or Push CDN Type. However thank you for the idea, as this might be a good article. I will add explanations below:

Host attachments: when enabled, attachments (e.g. images from the media library) are served through the CDN.

Host wp-includes/files: when it is active the files of the wp-includes folder are served through the CDN.

Host theme files: when enabled the theme files are served through the CDN.

Host minified CSS and JS files: when enabled, minified CSS and JavaScript files are served through the CDN.

Host custom files: refers to the files specified in the Custom file list that you can see in the Advanced tab of this same page.

Add canonical header: This allows you to identify the original URL with the canonical tag. Generally, search engines are able to distinguish the URL without the need to specify it, so by default, the option is disabled.

Advanced

Only purge CDN manually: by default W3TC manages autonomously the purge of the cache. If you enable this option you will purge the cache only manually, normally you don’t need to enable the function, as this was specifically added for Cloudfront users because of the huge invalidation costs on the AWS side

Disable CDN on SSL pages: By activating this option you may run into the problem of mixed content. It happens when some contents are downloaded using HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS and the browser returns a not-secure site warning. In most cases, it is better to leave this option disabled.

Disable CDN for the following roles: This allows you to choose which user roles to disable CDN for.

2. Akamai CDN, as you can see is the origin pull, which means that the files are uploaded automatically to the CDN. Once uploaded, all images and files are served from the CDN. The CDN will not serve the image if it’s not uploaded to the CDN. In this case, the image will be served from the origin.

3. It’s recommended to use different filenames for each image. So if the situation you described occurs, you should try purging the cache manually for the CDN in the W3TC settings. The problem with this is not the CDN, but the Browser Caching. For images, it’s recommended to use 1 year caching for browsers (Expires header and cache-control header) so if the image has the same filename and a different image is uploaded instead, the browser will think it’s the same image and will not fetch for the new one. It’s recommended to use the option “Prevent caching of objects after settings change” in Performance>Browser Cache. This option adds the random query string to files (You can enable it only for images) for example: ?xNNNNN. This will ensure that the browser always fetches the new file from the source, in your case CDN, and all you have to do us to update the media query string in Performance>Browser Cache (Just above the general section), once new image is uploaded with the same filename.

I hope this answers your questions.

Thanks!

Hello George,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
If the W3 Total Cache license is not renewed after a year, only the Pro features will stop working like FSD CDN integration or Eliminating render-blocking CSS.
All other features that come with the free version will still work as expected.
I hope this helps!

Thanks!

Hello Adam,

1. In the “Replace site’s hostname with” field, the CDN’s edge address should be added. This is used to rewrite the URL of the static resources as I’ve mentioned in the previous post.

2. This should be added in the Performance>CND>Configuration: objects section.

3. The CDN configuration depends on the CDN provider. You can always use Generic mirror and only add the CDN”s Edge address, or use Akamai from a CDN dropdown menu and configure the CDN with Username and Password.
You can check this article for more details about Image Service.

4. W3TC does not handle image resizing upon uploading a new image, so you can use some plugin for this.

Thanks!

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
All images converted with the Image Service tool are sent to a third-party server maintained by the W3 Total Cache team which reduces resource consumption and allows for a large number of conversions in environments where resources can be limited such as shared hosting. Images sent to the W3TC server for conversion are only held temporarily and no permanent information is kept on the server regarding the images.
W3 Total Cache uses a rewrite to serve the webp images once converted.
Once converted, and the cache is purged, the images are served as webp and you can check this by inspecting the source and checking the image mime-type.
Please make sore to check our article and let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!

Hello Alexa,

I am sorry about the issue you are experiencing and I am happy to assist you with this.
The reason behind this is that caching is not active by default for logged-in users in W3 Total Cache, so what you are seeing when not logged in is a problem with some of the settings activated or possibly a conflict with some other plguin.
I can see that W3TC is not active at the moment, and I can also see that you are using Cloudflare – however, I am unable to see if you are using any other caching layer/method.
I would advise re-activating W3 Total Cache, and disabling the settings one by one in Performance>general settings, saving the settings and purging the cache after each setting is disabled, and seeing which one might be causing the issue?

Thanks!

Hello Adam,

Thank you for your questions and I am happy to assist you with this.
W3 Total Cache does have integration with Akamai CDN and you can see that if you check the CDN dropdown under Performance>General Settings>CDN>CDN Type:
To answer both of your questions, Yes W3 Total Cache will and can upload the images to the CDN, however, W3 Total Cache cannot upload the images directly to Akamai CDN without them being uploaded to the server first. What the W3 Total Cache CDN feature does is, uploads the images and use a URL rewrite to serve those images from the CDN instead of a server.
Since this use case is not recommended this is out of the W3 Total Cache scope and to be honest, I’ve never seen a plugin that does that.

I hope this answers your questions.

Thanks!

Hello Sue,

Thank you for yoru feedback.
If you are not seeing anything in the source, most likely the HTML minify is enabled which removes comments
Go to Performance>Minify>HTML&XML section, and add the Performance to Ignored comment stems: field, save all settings and purge the cache. Once this step is done, HTML Minify will ignore comments containing Performance, and you should see something similar as the following when inspecting the website in the bottom of the HTML source

<!--
Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: https://www.boldgrid.com/w3-total-cache/

Object Caching 121/331 objects using disk
Page Caching using disk: enhanced 

Page cache debug info:
Engine:             disk: enhanced
Cache key:          yourwebsite.com/_index_ssl.html
Creation Time:      1650990604.000s
Header info:
Content-Type:       text/html; charset=UTF-8
X-Powered-By:       W3 Total Cache/2.2.1
Link:               <https://yourwebsite.com/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"

Content Delivery Network Full Site Delivery via Cloudflare
Lazy Loading
Minified using disk

Served from: yourwebsite.com @ 2022-04-26 17:30:04 by W3 Total Cache
-->

I hope this helps!

Hello Sue,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
Can you please share/confirm the website URL?
Can you also please share more details about the W3 Total Cache configuration and why you think that Page Caching does not work as expected?
Thank you!

Hello Graham,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
When I’ve checked the website, I can see the Hamburger menu, which is of course mostly related to Mobile versions of the websites.
Can you please confirm that this is the problem you are seeing?
I bypassed the cache and the result was the same. Can you please take a screenshot of what you are seeing, and also, please disable W3 Total Cache and take another screenshot of what the website actually supposed to look like.
Thanks!

Hello Leo,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
I’ve checked the website and I can see that W3 Total Cache is enabled. I can also see the Console error:
Uncaught ReferenceError: asyncloader is not defined
I can also see that you are using Jetpack to optimize JS and CSS files which may be causing the jQuery not to load properly, as it should for dependent files, especially when using async.
Can you please disable the optimization for JS and CSS files in the Jetpack performance settings, and see if that helps, and also, try switching the embed method in the Performance>Minify>JS to default (blocking)
Let me know if this helps!

Thanks!

Hello Rebecca,

Naturally, the pages are faster when the CSS and JS are minified.
To answer your question, yes, you can leave that option disabled and enable it when editing the website.
Thanks!

Hello Hein,

I am sorry about the issue you are experiencing and I am happy to assist you with this.
Can you please share if you are using any other caching solution besides W3 Total Cache like Server-side caching or any other caching plugin?
I am asking this because I see two headers:
x-nitro-cache: HIT
x-turbo-charged-by: LiteSpeed
Also, please share which server you are using.
When W3TC is enabled, by default the Browser Cache is also enabled. The error you are getting /wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/Root_Loader.php:37 indicates that the plugin was not able to load the BC plugin/extension.

Thanks!

Hello Rebecca,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
You have not shared the website URL so I am not sure which settings are enabled in W3 Total Cache.
However, most likely the problem is with Minify and the fact that Minify is enabled for logged-in users.
This means that the files responsible for the builder are minified (and they should not be) and therefore the UXbuilder is loading in the loop.
Go to Performance>Minify, and in the General box, enable the checkbox “Disable minify for logged-in users”, save all settings and purge the cache and let me know if this helps!
Please check the screenshot below. Thanks!

Hello Theodor

Can you please confirm you are not using any other plugin to Cache or Minify?
Please drop us a note directly via the plugin in Performance>Support so I can check this for you.
Thanks!

Hello Theodor,

I’ve checked again and I am still not seeing the W3TC enabled.
Can you please share the screenshot of the Performance>General settings page?
The .htaccess file should be in the root of your website’s folder on your host, and this is if you are using Apache, if you are on Nginx, that file should be called nginx.conf
Cloudways have the article with recommended settings, and also an article with detailed W3TC settings explanation.
This means that there should be no problem enabling and configuring W3 Total Cache on Cloudways.
Thanks!

Hello Theodor,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
Indeed I do not see W3 Total Cache enabled on the website URL you shared. Can you please confirm if the W3 Total Cache is currently enabled and confirm the website?
Can you also please share the hosting provider? I can the x-cache: HIT header when inspecting the website which indicates that you have some other caching layer like Server-side caching or similar. Can you please confirm this?
Can you also please check if there are any W3TC rules in your .htaccess/nginx.conf?
Thanks!

Hello Laetitia,

I am sorry about the issue you are experiencing and I am happy to assist you with this.
I had to translate your question so I need to confirm that I got this right. The problem is with the form on the payment page when W3 Total Cache is enabled?
Depending on a configuration, you should try excluding the page from the Page Cache and Minify by adding the /commander/ to Performance>Page Cache>Advanced>”Never Cache following pages” and Performance>Minify>Advanced>”Never Minify following pages”
Make sure to save all settings and purge the cache and let me know if the problem persists.
Thanks!

Hello Brenda,

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
Just to confirm you are trying to manage access to other user roles to be able to make the changes in W3 Total Cache configuration?
Can you please confirm this?
Thanks!

Hello Larry

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
W3 Total Cache needs to write permissions to your folders and files.
The notification you are referring to is that the wp-content folder permissions are set to 775 and you should change them back to default 755
You can check more about the permissions on this link.
I hope this helps!

Hello Josep,

Thank you for your feedback.
We do not have a plan for unlimited websites or a plan for 100+ websites.
The difference is that the plugin you’re mentioning does not have a free version, but only paid version.
So depending on a website you may not need some pro features. and in the case of the other plugin if you only need Page Caching or Minify you have to pay for it one way or the other, which is not the case with W3 Total Cache.
IF you have any specific number of websites you wish to activate the Pro version on, please reach out to us directly via email.
Thanks!