[rogerwhitson]

Hi everyone,

I was trying to use WP-Minify to improve the speed of my site. However, it doesn’t quite work with the new versions of WordPress and Buddypress. Any other plugin solutions for this problem that might work with WP 3.0 and the new Buddypress?

[Joe Marino]

I use W3 Total Cache on my site after having it recommended to me by @lincme. It’s more of a complete caching system as opposed to just a “minify” plugin. You’ll need to have a decent PHP memory_limit for it to function though so be forewarned as it probably won’t work if you’re on a shared hosting plan (unless you’re lucky and have some awesome server support staff like me).

I was told there are problems with the page cache and CDN features so I’ve been afraid to enable them on my site. I don’t even have a CDN just yet so this is something I’m not too worried about right at the moment. However, I may get brave one of these days and enable the page cache (after a fresh backup of course) to see what it does. I also hear that there’s a development version that’s even better than the currently released one so you may want to check into that as well.

[lincme.co.uk]

@jmarino; We saw ‘unexpected results’ when using a page cache with BuddyPress. As BP is generating new content with each post and response, page caching appears to make a dog’s breakfast of things.

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

Yes, don’t use page caching with BuddyPress.

@jmarino I have no problem with W3TC’s CDN on BudddyPress.

[Pisanojm]

@paul_gibbs we are also seeing issues using object-cache with BuddyPress and w3 total cache, most notably this manifests itself when trying to send Private Messages… We are using Minify, Database Cache, CDN (Amazon s3), and Browswer Cache (Developmental Version of Plugin)…

[r-a-y]

I noticed with database caching on in W3 Total Cache that if someone registered on a BP site, two additional accounts would be created with the same username, but their user ID for each of these new accounts would be different. So unfortunately I had to disable database caching.

Haven’t tried W3 Total Cache 0.9 to see if this is fixed.

[hotforwords]

I have w3-total-cache running on my site with Minify, Database Cache, CDN (Amazon S3) and Browser cache. @Pisanojm, how did you get w3-total-cache to handle Avatar uploads? It breaks them for me as people try to upload their pic but then the CDN on w3 total cache breaks the ability to edit the image (it looks for the image on the CDN, not locally).

It looks like I might have to disable the whole avatar folder, which sucks! Unless you figured it out?

Also, @r-a-y how do I check to see if this problem is still happening with the version of w3 total cache that I am running?

Thanks!

Marina

[r-a-y]

@hotforwords

I believe Andy was working on a plugin for caching avatars to a CDN.
It’s being tested on testbp.org right now. Not sure if it’s going to be released any time soon.

Re: bug – check your activity for duplicate registration from the same user. Also you can login to your WP dashboard and see if any duplicate users were created. I should note that this bug occurred on a WPMU 2.9.2 install and could also have been the result of a plugin conflict.

Might work on WP 3.0. Also try the newest release of W3 Total Cache to see if this bug is fixed.

[Pisanojm]

@hotforwords this is one of the biggest hangups with cdn and bp… I am currently excluding the avatar folders…which, ironically, would be one of the best uses of a cdn…especially with bp… If there was a way to lock an avatar update for say 24 hours after a change was made (make the change delayed for x time)… You might be able to then use the auto-load feature of total cache to ensure that pictures were on the cdn prior to the chage….

[Pisanojm]

@r-a-y you mentioned a month ago about a plugin for caching avatars…. any ideas what/where this is?

[r-a-y]

@pisanojm – It’s exactly what I wrote two posts above.

Not publically released at the moment. Only available for testing at testbp.org.

[xyclops]

Here is a way I have found to make avatar uploads work while still using a CDN. I’m using S3/Cloudfront but it shouldn’t make a difference.

The avatars, once accepted have a filename that always ends in either ‘bpfull.jpg’ or ‘bpthumb.jpg’

When an avatar is being dealt with by the upload/cropping process, the images used are not given these names.

If uploaded at registration time they are stored in an avatars/signups/ folder

If uploaded once a user is a registered member, they will always have the file size at the end of the filename (e.g. 200×200.jpg)

Using this info, I did the following:

in my custom file list, I added the following:

`wp-content/uploads/avatars/*bpfull.*
wp-content/uploads/avatars/*bpthumb.*`

in my rejected files list, I added the following:

`/wp-content/uploads/avatars/signups/*
/wp-content/uploads/avatars/*/*x*.*`

I’m not too happy with the rules for rejection, it seems like there might be a danger of having a file named xxxbpfull.jpg being rejected and sourced locally, but given that any files that don’t contain an x will be sourced from my CDN I am pretty happy with this level of fudgery. In any case, this does mean that the files required to process the cropping will be sourced locally and therefore avatar uploads will work.

The last thing to do is to set the autoupload time to something reasonable – I have set it to 10 minutes at the moment mainly so I can check that this all works okay, and also to see how much the autoupload script hammers the server. If it were possible it would be nice to add a hook at the end of the avatar cropping function that calls an image upload to the CDN for the file that has been created, but waiting 10 minutes to an hour for an avatar is not so bad.

Hopefully this is helpful, and if anybody has better rules for the rejected file list I would be super happy to see them.

[xyclops]

Argh – it doesn’t work if the image files are small enough that they don’t need to be resized – this is what adds the widthxheight to the end of the filename as far as i can tell.

For now I have added a rejection for any files that end in ‘myavatar’ .ext, and added a message to users that if their files don’t upload properly they should rename the file in that format.

This is pretty poor, though. Is there any way I can set up a rejection of any files in the avatars folder that do not end in bpfull. or bpthumb.?

[Pisanojm]

@johnjamesjacoby @r-a-y @djpaul @boonbgorges

Just re-looking at this thread 5 months later… Having the ability to cache avatars would be a huge load savings for all of us using CDNs… Any more progress or thoughts on this?

[Pisanojm]

@johnjamesjacoby @r-a-y @djpaul @boonebgorges

Polite bump…

[r-a-y]

The code for CDN avatars is Andy’s; it was running on testbp.org awhile ago.
The core devs should have access to that code since it used to run on testbp.org. Maybe they can ask Andy to release it?

Also the code might need to be updated as well to account for a few minor changes to the avatar code since then.

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

Best to contact @apeatling directly and ask, yes.

[romson]

Hi All,

I am using w3TC on my blog. Is there any additional benefit from having wp-minify installed also, or will this conflict errors between the two plugins?

[Pisanojm]

I don’t have access to @apeatling directly… can one of you ask/e-mail? @djpaul @johnjamesjacoby

Caching avatars would be a HUGE improvement for us…

Thanks.

[ds123]

i know this is an old thread but its top of the list on google for the cdn buddypress avatar search …. @pisanojm did you ever find a solution to this using push origin cdn’s …for anyone else the maxcdn company seems to work with buddypress avatars but you can’t permanently store your files there you have to have them mirrored on your local web server … i have to offload the thousands of avatar files off the web app server …onto a cdn …need to use push cdn like cloud files ..or self hosted with w3 total cache plugin ..any advice would be greatly appreciated!?