WP Super Cache is a fast page caching plugin for WordPress that can significantly speed up websites.
The first release of this plugin was in September 2009 so this has been a bit too long in the making. Back then the main caching plugin was WP Cache, which this plugin is based on, but now there are quite a few including W3 Total Cache, Hypercache, Quick Cache and many more.
Version 1.0 is an incremental upgrade from the previous release but it has a number of bugfixes and new features:
- The all new scheduler and admin bar link should please many people, especially those who want to clear the cache on their site at particular times. The “Delete Cache” admin bar link is something people have been asking about for as long as WordPress has had that bar!
- You can preload categories and taxonomies although this hasn’t really been tested as well as I’d like. It works for me but YMMV.
- There’s better support for mobile and https users now. Mobile support should scale a lot more than previously.
- The cache tester is fixed now and the plugin traps as many errors as possible. It’ll also spit out some helpful text if there is a problem. 99% of the time it’s because the server can’t request a page from itself.
- At the risk of annoying users who comment on your site you can make them appear to be anonymous users which will drastically help your server if they like commenting a lot. Unfortunately it stops the comment form populating with their details so it might be worth using an external comment system like Intense Debate or Disqus!
- The Advanced Settings page now lists a “do not cache page” secret key. Use this key to view any page of your site uncached.
- The cache file listing and delete links should work again now.
- And many many more bug fixes.
Once you upgrade go visit the settings page and check out what’s new there. The upgrade worked fine for me, but there’s no harm looking. Pay close attention to the new garbage collector. The scheduler is rather powerful and flexible so it’s worth setting up right.
If you have any problems please leave a comment here or use the support forum.
It’s awesome. I like the new version very much!
Congratulations! Now, to update my WP installs… 🙂
Thank you dear, works smooth.
nice thx
super and thx!
Congrats on getting 1.0 out the door. I’ve been using WP SuperCache since it was first released and it’s always worked fine on my 6 year old blog up till a couple of versions ago. Unfortunately, without any significant changes to my hosting server (Bluehost), plugins that I use or theme, SuperCache simply stopped working one day (.9.x series) and has not worked since up to and including 1.0. As I said before, SuperCache has always worked flawlessly for me in the past and it’s not like I performed some massive change to the site. SuperCache was simply working one day and then stopped working the next–no entries in any error log. The one error I can see is when I hit the “Test” button, I get these results:
Fetching http://just-thinkin.net/ to prime cache: OK
Fetching first copy of http://just-thinkin.net/: OK (1.html)
Fetching second copy of http://just-thinkin.net/: OK (2.html)
The pages do not match! Timestamps differ or were not found!
(I always use mod_rewrite to serve cache files.)
The timestamps are definitely not there in fact all WP SuperCache entries have disappeared from the bottom of any page source. When checking the site via Filezilla all SuperCache directories and files are in place, all absolute paths are correct. Howevber, the single exception to all this is that there is no cached (page) files in ‘wp-content/cache’ whatsoever nor is there a ‘wp-content/cache/supercache/just-thinkin.net/’ directory and if I manually create one, it always remains empty.
Enabling debugging gave me a clue though. It states that for every page viewed it gives me this:
“(path to page…) DONOTCACHEPAGE defined. Caching disabled.”
These viewed pages are from visitors to my site and are not viewed by myself while logged in. The kicker here is that DONOTCACHEPAGE is not defined. Caching is enabled, the .htaccess entries are correct as is the “wp-config” (“define(‘WP_CACHE’, true); //Added by WP-Cache Manager”) and the line is placed properly is well. No where in any SuperCache setting is caching not defined.
And the real crusher is that W3TC works fine when I tried it.
I’ve deactivated all my plugins, changed to the default theme, checked all the troubleshooting points and nothing. And I really don’t wish to change to W3TC as I simply do not need all the myriads of options.
Any help you could give me will be well appreciated. If I have to post this over at the WordPress support forums instead, please let me know the proper tag(s) to use since although improved, is still pretty much a mess. many thanks.
Follow up to previous comment:
I posted the same problem at the WordPress support forums using the link on the WP Super Cache settings page in my WP admin. Here’s the link:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-super-cache-shows-donotcachepage-defined-for-every-page-viewed?replies=1#post-2484125
I know my way around WordPress pretty good since I started back in the “bad old days” (WP 1.5) but this has me completely flummoxed.
Kirk – I’ll reply there.
Thanks, Donncha.
I noticed there isn’t a subversion tag on the new release yet.
I am including the plugin as a svn:external on a test site and don’t want to switch to trunk, will you be tagging this release?
Also, is that why the zip is downloading without a version number in the file name? All the previous versions have.
Sorry Mike, there’s always something I forget, if it’s not the version number in both readme and php files it’s tagging the release. Fixed now!
Congratulations on hitting 1.0 – often copied, never bettered.
Ok, updated several blogs, everything works fine, thanks! Made a donation via paypal (amazon sux 🙂
Glad it went well, thank you!
Yoooohooooooo !!! I hope i can finaly change my cache plugin …
Nicely done. However, I noticed 1 bug. Chinese characters is not supported in URL anymore. Please fix it. Thanks. 😉
What happens to those characters? What circumstances? Are the files stored with an incorrect character?
Chinese words in URL turn into non readable. I do enable preload mode. Previous version is working fine.
Something like this http://prettygirl2u.com/category/china/
I’ve tried other caching plugins but still Super Cache does the work right. I tried so hard to get W3TotalCache to work because of the number of bells and whistles it has but it ended up just feeling too huge for the work it was supposed to do and in the end, I found WP Super Cache to run lighter and faster. I use it with WP Minify – which serves as a good match for optimization.
Hi Donncha,
I recently applied wp-super cache on a test wordpress site and it performed beyond my expectations 🙂 Then I applied perishablepress.com’s 5G firewall beta .htaccess rules and it somehow returns a 403 error because of “//”. The 5G firewall beta .htaccess rules redirects malicious exploits using double slashes (or more) to a 403 error.
(/wp-content/cache/supercache/wwwtest.mysite.com//index.html.gz on this server.)
Also, this error only shows on google chrome 15.0.874.121 m, not with IE 9.08112.16421 or firefox 3.6.10.
🙂
Can you help me? When I click Cache Tester,the WP super Cache show me that “The timestamps on both pages match!” How to deal it???
It’s good they match. That means caching is working!
Oh??????I got it. Thank your very much,I just love WP Super Cache very much. Support you forever.
Hello Donncha O,
I am the author of wordpress plugin – wp-gravatar-mini-cache. I received some feedbacks from my users about a problem will happen when active wp-super-cache and wp-gravatar-mini-cache in the same time and which will cause the dead of php process.
I added a filter at ‘get_avatar’ and I am wondering if your plugin also hooks something on it which causes this clash.
As I tested, my plugin – wp-gravatar-mini-cache works fine with w3-total-cache.
Please help me to solve this problem. And the code of my plugin is at below. Thank you.
http://pastebin.com/Zmy6atRt
the Garbage Collection schedule on the Content tab is always on a 10-minute interval even if I set it up on 15 minutes (900 seconds). The “next scheduled garbage collection” on the Advanced Tab does not match the info on the Content tab. this might just be a display error as i could see it follows the schedule on the Advanced tab.
I’m only able to preload around 70 pages, then the process stops and the files are deleted. I ran a debug but I have no idea what I’m looking at. Here is the debug info. (I cut out the repetitive code.)
20:25:35 /wp-content/cache/6db23d(I cut out some of this, didn’t know if it should be public or not)54e6c30616.txt wp_cache_shutdown_callback: collecting meta data.
20:26:43 / wp_cache_shutdown_callback: collecting meta data.
20:28:03 /category/alzheimers/ Anonymous user detected. Only creating Supercache file.
20:28:03 /category/alzheimers/ wp_cache_shutdown_callback: collecting meta data.
(All the pages that were preloaded have the same type of code so I don’t see any reason to list them.)
20:31:06 /wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1330028875 gc: deleted /home/tj4ester/public_html/wp-content/cache/supercache/tjforrester.com/book-clubs
(All the pages that were deleted have the same type of code so I don’t see any reason to list them.)
20:31:47 /wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1330029098 Cleaning expired cache files in /home/tj4ester/public_html/wp-content/cache/
20:31:47 /wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1330029098 Doing GC on supercache dir: /home/tj4ester/public_html/wp-content/cache/supercache
Try the dev version. There’s an obscure bug that affects a small number of users when they preload.