Hello,

I am creating a new social networking site and I was wondering what the best option is for caching using WordPress 3.0 + BuddyPress 1.2.4.1. I have read the “Improving Performance” article, but it seems to be a bit dated as the file-based caching solution is for WordPress 1.0. I am using a shared server for the time being, so I don’t think memory caching is the way to go for me. I have read through several forums looking for a viable solution, but there’s not much info yet for the new versions of these web applications. I need the site running at maximum performance as the server is in Europe (I live in the US) and I wish to have a world-wide subscriber base. If there is no solution at the moment that doesn’t “break things” (for lack of a better phrase), I am not interested in even wasting my time testing them out as I have lots of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. If you have a success story with implementing a file-based caching solution with WordPress 3.0 and BuddyPress 1.2.4.1, I would love to hear about it so I can try out your method on my own site.

On a un-related subject, I cannot seem to upload a custom avatar on this site. Am I doing something wrong or is there something wrong with this site at the moment? It seems to be working fine on my own site.

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

I hope this thread helps you.

https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/is-wp-supercache-okay-to-use-with-bp/

Best of luck on your site.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Thank you for the link. I saw that one too just moments ago but there is not much info in there yet. This seems to be a hot topic around these parts. Have you personally had any success using W3 Total Cache with the newest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress? I would like as much info as I can get about this before I dive into something head-first. Know what I mean?

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Yes, I use W3 Total Cache on two sites that are on RackSpace – and they have their own caching (known as MA) that I couldn’t get to work well with WP Super Cache and BP. Paul is correct that you must not enable page caching with W3 or it’ll be a mess. Now, I couldn’t get CDN to work with W3. Amazon is setup properly but the information was never pulled properly.

Hope that helps.

[@lincme Member 14 years, 6 months ago]

Oh good grief! @LPH2005; thank you. I’d installed W3 Total Cache, set it up and forgot about it. Then noticed terrible lagging on my BP site. Just switched off page caching and zippeee… This should go on a BP Wiki page entitled, “Things that will bite you in the ass without any warning”.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@LPH2005 – thanks for the info! I will test W3 Total Cache on my site as soon as I get some spare time and I will let you know how it goes.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

OK, I Installed W3 Total Cache and as soon as I activated it, I get the following error in my WP admin panel:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /wp-admin/includes/template.php on line 3292

I contacted my server support and they told me to add the following line to my .htaccess:
php_value memory-limit 50M

I did that, and nothing changed. They said it’s going to take up to 3 hours to propagate though so maybe I just need to wait a bit longer and see what happens. I hate it when stuff breaks :S

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@jmarino – OK. I keep my php_value numbers at 128M – and some of them are actually at 256M – but I have no idea why they are this high unless it was just some tinkering at one point. But give it a higher number in the .htaccess

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

OH – very nice – while replying to your note above I was installing the dev version of this plugin. It’s very powerful. The options increase, improve the browser caching options, etc.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@LPH2005 Hey could you do me a favor? Could you copy/paste the URL of the “deactivate” link for this plugin? Edit out your domain if you want… I would like to see if that at least gives me control of my admin panel back.

Edit: forgot to mention… I tried increasing the memory values in the .htaccess file and the error is still the same (same memory values too).

[@lincme Member 14 years, 6 months ago]

@jmarino; If all else fails, you can just pull the plugin folder. WP and BP are neat that way, as they just report that the plugin is gone and deactivated when you go to the plugins page again. (Other systems we’ve tried freeze and die totally, which is no fun).

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=w3-total-cache/w3-total-cache.php

In the meantime, ftp and rename the plugin folder as lincme suggested. See if you can login then …

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@lincme Tried that but it just threw up some different errors every time I deleted anything related to W3TC. I may have to resort to restoring this morning’s backup. This is probably a stupid question, but was I supposed to disable page caching BEFORE activating the plugin? I just installed it and immediately activated it so I’m guessing this is why I’m getting all these errors. Can page caching be disabled via the WordPress database?

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

By chance .. do you have permalinks set?

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

This thread for removing W3 may also help

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/360682

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@lph2005 Thanks for providing the URL… it didn’t work though. It was a shot in the dark really. I tried renaming the folder, and it gave me the following error:
W3 Total Cache Error: some files appear to be missing or out of place. Please re-install plugin or remove /wp-content/advanced-cache.php.

I tried removing the advanced-cache.php, and it gave another error. So on and so forth. Ah well… I’m just going to wait to see if my server support replies to my latest ticket with any further advice and if not, I’ll restore the backup and try again tomorrow.

[@lph2005 Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Frustrating – I know – but did you make sure to also remove:

advanced-cache.php,
db.php,
w3tc/,
w3-total-cache-config.php from wp-content/
wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@lph2005 yes, I set the permalinks to date/text format. Thanks for the link… I’ll check it out and let you know the result.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

@lph2005 Yes, I figured as much and I removed all those files/folders earlier hence my “so on and so forth” comment, lol.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

LOL there were some pretty pissed off people in that link. Didn’t learn much other than what I’ve already tried. It’s no biggie though… this is exactly why I make sure to do a backup every morning before I begin any work. And thankfully, I didn’t get much accomplished today as I spent most of my day researching caching options.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

My support rep was able to figure out a way to disable the plugin via the database.

Now to figure out exactly what went wrong…

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

Welp… this morning, I attempted to remove this plugin via the admin panel but I started getting the “some files appear to be missing or out of place” error again so I went into my FTP and deleted all the W3TC files that weren’t automatically removed and I got my admin panel back, but my site’s front-end was displaying a blank white screen. So I wound up restoring yesterday’s backup after all. If anyone has any idea as to what caused this issue, I sure would like to know your thoughts on the matter.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

I have just upgraded my BuddyPress installation to version 1.2.5. I will be giving the W3TC plugin another trial run shortly.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

I regret to inform that my second attempt to activate this plugin failed with the same exact problem as the first attempt (memory error). I have submitted a support thread on the WordPress forums specific to the W3TC plugin and I am awaiting a reply from the author of this plugin or anyone else who may be willing to offer further assistance.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

I just spoke to my server support again because I figured out that the PHP setting for memory_limit was set at 32M on their end and no amount of .htaccess hacking could bypass that. I politely asked if they could increase the limit for me to 128M and they wound up setting it at 256M! I’m so lucky to be working with a hosting company that’s willing to do that for a shared hosting cheapskate like me, lol. The company is Servage by the way in case any of you are interested. If you go to them because of me, be sure to use this referral link so I can get some free months and some extra space for referring ya! Hope I didn’t break any forum rules by posting that. Feel free to edit that out if it does. Anyways… I’m going to install W3TC again tomorrow and I’m betting that it’s going to work this time.

[@jmarino Participant 14 years, 6 months ago]

I attempted to install the W3TC plugin again today and I was suddenly getting the memory error again. I spent several hours discussing the issue with my server support rep and he was finally able to fix the issue! He never divulged exactly what he did to fix the problem, but I really didn’t care much anyways because the problem was obviously on their end and it was not the fault of the plugin. So I finally have W3TC up and running on my site!

WOO-HOO!!!

Now to figure out how to configure it properly…