Some of our readers have high profile, large traffic blogs that rely on sophisticated caching. W3 Total Cache is an advanced plugin that handles just those types of sites quite well. However, in a recent update, there is a bug that has been causing some issues.
Version 0.9.2 of W3-Edge‘s popular plugin includes a ton of fun new features and added support. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug in the way the plugin handles minification of some Javascript and CSS files. It’s caused a bit of a flurry on Twitter, and Page.ly brought up the issue on their blog.
As Page.ly’s blog says, and also as Frederick Townes (creator of W3 Total Cache) mentions, you can temporarily fix the issue by changing the Minify setting to “manual”. Clear your cache after you do this, and your site should go back to normal.
You can follow the progress of the bug in the support forum, and I bet there will be an update out soon to fix it.
We thought this would be a worthy post just to raise awareness of the issue. I happen to think that W3 Total Cache is an incredible plugin, and I’m in no way saying not to use it. However, I would recommend John Saddington’s W3 Total Cache setup tutorial that includes advice to help determine whether you need W3 Total Cache, or if another option will suffice for your site.
Thanks for the info. Yes W3 T C is great plugin and worth wait to be fixed.
I want to mention that I upgraded it before 2 hours and there Minify setting are “manual” by defoult. So its mean that developer is working on it.
G Luck
I am not sure if it was the same bug, but after I updated, all of my CSS was disabled. I updated a few settings and everything went back to normal.
Thankfully I told you your site looked like crap
Pro
Hey Brian,
to be honest: W3TC isn’t just for big sites. It’s for everyone. Every single blog out there should use caching, and W3TC is by far the best solution.
Pro
Hey Joost,
That’s a good point. I don’t mean to say that W3TC is *only* for big sites. I meant more that it’s very sophisticated, and great for big sites. I agree w/ John’s post, which I linked, that says that often times a simpler solution can do just fine, but that W3TC is the “total” (heh, sorry) solution. But perhaps W3TC isn’t for those that just want to turn it on and be done.
Pro
Saw this on some fellow bloggers’ sites who “love upgrading everything right away”… Lesson learned from this & other similar events??? Wait a few days before updating & let everyone else discover the bugs.
Does w3 Total Cache affect adsense? A fellow blogger told me that once they deleted the W3 plugin that their adsense earnings came back. Is this true?
no, it should be fine for adsense. w3 total cache mentions this a few times in their FAQ i believe. it wouldn’t be worth it if it messed with monetization!
Thanks John,
I had disabled the w3 cache on my blog and the next day I had three adsense clicks but I haven’t had any since then.
Maybe I will re-install it.
it shouldn’t impact the click-through rate.
thanks for the link love. … i now have to update all those images since w3 total cache changed their back-end UI a bit…!
doh!
brian/ryan,
http://cl.ly/6ePu
replies challenge the styling…