Title: Page Cache method suddenly changed, causing error 503
Last modified: September 3, 2024

---

# Page Cache method suddenly changed, causing error 503

 *  Resolved [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * (@silente08)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/)
 * Yesterday I suddenly noticed that my website had become completely unavailable(
   to logged-out users) due to error 503 on all pages. I then discovered that the
   Page Cache method in W3 Total Cache had somehow been changed to Redis instead
   of my usual Disk: Enhanced. No idea how that happened, but okay, I reset it to
   Disk: Enhanced and error 503 was gone. About 12 hours later, however, the same
   problem happened; and when I checked in the settings, my Page Cache was set to
   Redis again!
 * Does anyone have an idea how this can happen? I am the only admin of the website,
   nobody else could have changed the setting.
 * The page I need help with: _[[log in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Fpage-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US)
   to see the link]_

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

 *  Plugin Contributor [Marko Vasiljevic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmarko/)
 * (@vmarko)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17992369)
 * Hello [@silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to help!
   I am sorry about the issue
   you are having and this is a very interesting problem, which honestly, was never
   reported before.
 * W3 Total Cache does not have the ability to swtich to differnt caching methods
   by itself. So the only way to do this is manually via the plugin, or changing
   the /wp-content/w3tc-config/master.php file which is a config file.
   This being
   said, Have you ever used Redis for Page Caching in the W3 Total cache? Also, 
   please chec your logs and see what happens in that time period when the caching
   method is somehow changed
 * Thanks!
 *  Thread Starter [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * (@silente08)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17992502)
 * Hi! It might be connected to the CDN that I have recently activated through my
   web hosting, as this has caused issues for me with another caching plugin on 
   another website. But I activated it about a month ago and this website was not
   down in between. I probably experimented with Redis a long time ago, but not 
   recently.
 * I should point out: ever since using the plugin, the “Test Page Cache” from the
   Setup Guide has never worked for me, always leading to the error message “Could
   not update configuration. Please reload the page to try again or click skip button
   to abort the setup guide”. So there might have been a problem with the plugin
   on my website since the beginning that has only now become apparent for some 
   reason.
 * The logs I see in my Dashboard (my hosting provider is OVH) are not very helpful,
   I only see three error logs from last night (around the time I tried to fix it
   for the first time):
 *     ```wp-block-code
       [Tue Sep 03 02:27:04 2024] [error] [client 54.37.63.15] [host sanremn.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net] AH00687: Negotiation: discovered file(s) matching request: /homez.1033/sanremn/www/index.html (None could be negotiated). [Tue Sep 03 02:29:44 2024] [error] [client 54.37.63.15] [host sanremn.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net] AH10141: FastCGI: comm with server "/homez.1033/sanremn/www/index.php" aborted: idle timeout (160 sec) [Tue Sep 03 02:29:44 2024] [error] [client 54.37.63.15] [host sanremn.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net] AH10149: FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server "/homez.1033/sanremn/www/index.php"
       ```
   
 *  Plugin Contributor [Marko Vasiljevic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmarko/)
 * (@vmarko)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17992528)
 * Hello [@silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * Thank you for your feedback.
 * Do you have any custom security rules or security plugins that may be blocking
   the requests to the server, and possibly blocking or reverting the mentioned 
   configuration file?
 * Thanks!
 *  Thread Starter [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * (@silente08)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17992587)
 * I don’t have any security plug-in installed currently, but if I remember correctly,
   I used to have Really Simple SSL for some time. Might be that some files have
   not been cleaned up. I would have to scan through the files, anything to look
   for specifically?
 *  Plugin Contributor [Marko Vasiljevic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmarko/)
 * (@vmarko)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17994289)
 * Hello [@silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * Thank you for your feedback.
   This should not impact this at all, or I do not 
   have any experience that this would be the cause of this.Have you experienced
   the problem since the last time you saw it?
 * Thanks!
 *  Thread Starter [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * (@silente08)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17997340)
 * No, since that day it was stable on Disk: Enhanced, without visible errors. The
   Setup Guide Test is still stuck though, so something is not working properly.
 *  Plugin Contributor [Marko Vasiljevic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vmarko/)
 * (@vmarko)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-17999264)
 * Hello [@silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * Glad to know the issue is gone now.
 * As for the Setup Guide, please check the permalinks and change the permalink 
   structure to anything other than default in your Dashboard – Settings>Permalinks.
   If this does not work, check if php-curl is missing.
   Let me klnow if this helps!
 * Thanks!
 *  Thread Starter [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * (@silente08)
 * [1 year, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-18004243)
 * I was testing a bit more and managed to make my site (including the backend) 
   completely unavailable, presumably because of activating minify. Fixed it via
   FTP, now I am back to only PageCache. My permalinks have always been different
   than default and php-curl seems to be available. So no solution there, the Setup
   Guide still fails. I have also analysed my website with PageSpeed Insights before
   and after activating the PageCache: apparently, there is no improvement (performance
   16–20 on mobile and 56–64 on computer). I think I will have to upgrade my webhosting
   before working any further on these improvements …
 *  Thread Starter [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * (@silente08)
 * [1 year, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-18007825)
 * Okay, after upgrading my hosting and doing further testing, I have been able 
   to reproduce the initial problem! Apparently, if I have page cache disabled and
   then try the Setup Guide, the page cache will automatically be enabled and set
   to the last option that the test tried before failing. Most of the times, the
   Page Cache Test for me fails after Redis, which is why that is where I ended 
   up in the beginning. Not great of a behaviour, but the underlying problem is 
   the Setup Guide failing, so I think I will open a new topic for that question!
   Thanks so far.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

The topic ‘Page Cache method suddenly changed, causing error 503’ is closed to new
replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/w3-total-cache/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=1041806)
 * [W3 Total Cache](https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache/reviews/)

 * 9 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [silente08](https://wordpress.org/support/users/silente08/)
 * Last activity: [1 year, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-cache-method-suddenly-changed-causing-error-503/#post-18007825)
 * Status: resolved