Preload isn’t working reliably

  • Resolved donlee101

    (@donlee101)


    1 year, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    i did notice slower performance of the site in the past few weeks. Not sure when exactly.

    So i’ve been troubleshooting the issue. It seems preload is running constantly i can see it’s hitting sitemap pages, problem is, the cached files aren’t being regenerated. Instead it’s appending .old to some of them and not writing new cache and only a handful of cached pages is generated while preload is hitting many more seen in the log. Only if i clear the cache folder completely, it will regenerate all pages, but then issue comes back the next day etc not exactly when. .old pages are stuck and new ones not being generated.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    1 year, 1 month ago

    Hello @donlee101

    Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to help!
    The .old files are created when the cache is invalidated. The files remain there to keep the content cached for the users. Once the Garbage collection interval kicks in, it deletes the .old files.
    If you are only seeing the .old files it means that something is calling the cache purge regulary, either manualy in the W3 Total Cache or when the something is updated.
    There is also a chance that some other plugin or a theme is calling the cache purge. The Cache Preload runs constantly however, if the cache is purged reglary, depending on the website it may not be able to preload the entire website.

    Can you please check the Page cache purge log in Performance>General Settings>Debug section and see what may be calling the cache purge?
    If not check the files manually and search for w3tc_flush_all

    I hope this helps!

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter donlee101

    (@donlee101)

    1 year, 1 month ago

    Thanks for your reply.

    We don’t have premium so unable to check purge logs :/

    the .old pages are definitely not being served to users when they turn .old
    just now i identified flush all in the log – is that a garbage collection?
    [Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:00:21 +0000] [] [-] flush all

    when that happens it deletes the old files, but also renames valid cached pages to old for some reason, they haven’t even reached expiration yet, which is set to 2 days for html, i don’t understand what’s happening. THe preload has worked really reliably for us

    when i search w3tc_flush_all i can only see my triggers from wp admin

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    1 year, 1 month ago

    Hello @donlee101

    Thank you for your feedback.
    Can you please let me know when have you started experiencing this since you mentioned that the Preload worked fine for you in the past?
    Have you made any configuration changes or added any new plugins?

    The flush all means that all cache is purged, so something has called this. The .old files are removed by the garbage collection interval that is fired by wp-cron

    Can you also please let me know what is the interval set for the GC ?

    Thanks!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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