Data not gathering

Hi @prcapitalgroup,

Just checked one of your articles and WPP was able to track my visit just fine.

I also checked the browser console for JavaScript errors and nothing really stood out. Or at least none of the issues I saw seem to have an impact on WPP.

If you’re using a caching plugin on your site it might be a good idea to review this FAQ to make sure WPP can operate normally: Is WordPress Popular Posts compatible with caching plugins?

Define “not seeing the plugin gather the information” because clearly it is tracking visits 😛 What exactly do you mean with that?

It sounds like you’re talking about Data Caching? If so then (extracted from the documentation):

Are there any disadvantages to having this option enabled?

Just one: when someone checks any of your posts and pages, your popular posts list won’t be updated right away (eg. if you set the plugin to cache the data for one week then your popular posts list won’t be updated for a week.)

The plugin will use the cached data to build and display your popular posts list. Once the cached data expires, WPP will query the database again to retrieve the updated popular posts data, refresh the data cache and build the new popular posts list.

Think of this as a trade-off: the plugin will use less resources at the expense of not displaying a live popular posts list.

I guess at this point it’s best if I just have a look at your setup to avoid having to guess what’s going on. Please:

1. Go to Settings > WordPress Popular Posts > Debug.
2. Take a screenshot of your Debug screen and upload it somewhere (eg. prnt.sc, postimages.org, etc.)
3. Share the URL here so I can have a look.

Well, according to your screenshot Data Caching is disabled so I don’t know what you meant with “cache refresh” and “refresh once a month versus hourly.” It sounds as if you are talking about settings you’re using with a different plugin (caching plugin? something else?) but unfortunately your screenshot doesn’t show the entire list of plugins you have installed on your site.

If you’re talking about caching then you need to review the FAQ I shared earlier, specifically this part:

Your caching plugin must regenerate/purge its cache at least once per day so WPP can keep track of your post/page views. The reason for this is that WPP uses a security token (or nonces as the WordPress team calls them) to prevent the misuse of the plugin by external actors. Said token expires roughly every 24 hours so in order for WPP to be able to do its job your site’s cache should also be recreated every 24 hours (or less) so WPP can obtain a new security token. Alternatively, although not really recommended for security reasons, you could also have WordPress Nonces last as long as your site’s cache lifetime. That way it won’t be necessary to have your caching plugin regenerate its cache every day.

Thanks, that was helpful.

Alright, please follow these instructions:

1. Go to Settings > WordPress Popular Posts > Tools and set Refresh cache every to 5 minutes, then click on the Apply button below to save changes.
2. While you’re here, set Ajaxify Widget to Enabled and click on the Apply button below to save changes.
3. Go to Settings > WP Super Cache > Advanced, set Expiry Time and Garbage Collection to 86400 seconds (24 hours) or less (eg. 43200 seconds or 12 hours), then save changes.
4. Finally, go to Settings > WP Super Cache and click on the Delete Cache button under the Delete Cached Pages section so changes are applied to your website right away.

Alright, explanation time: since your site is a low-traffic one we don’t need WPP caching the popular posts data for a long time (eg. for 1 day as you have it set it up now.) Having WPP query your database every 5 minutes for new data won’t have a significant impact on your site’s performance (if any) so keep these settings as suggested until your site grows so much in traffic (eg. over 500,000 visitors per day) that you’ll start noticing performance issues (and at this point you’ll want to enable the Pageviews Cache as well.)

The settings I suggest for WP Super Cache will have it rebuild its cache once every 24 hours (86,400 seconds). This will make sure that WPP can obtain a valid security token (which expires every 24 hours as explained in the FAQ I shared earlier) and so it’ll be able to track post/page views normally even with WP Super Cache enabled.

If you have any questions feel free to ask, alright?

Happy New Year!

You’ll need to be a bit more specific since there are a couple of cache related settings on your website and I’m not sure which one you’re talking about 😛

Not really sure to be honest. Generally speaking when I install caching plugins on my clients’ websites (such as WP Super Cache) I keep preloading disabled: users browsing your website’s pages will generate the cache for you anyways so using the Preload function isn’t really necessary IMO.