I don’t know if this is a fuck up in Wordpress or wp-supercache or if it’s just me being an idiot, but I’ve noticed it happening on a few sites.
For example: Weird Asian News
Right now, that link is displaying the home page content. And so is every page on the site that had not been cached before the Cache Impotence Bug!
Fuck you, new readers!
Bug Symptoms:
After running smoothly and sexily for a random amount of time (like an hour), your brand new Wordpress install will do this shitty stuff:
/feed/ permanently displays the index page.
/comments/feed/ permanently displays the index page
ALL NEW PAGES that hadn’t yet been super cached permanently display the index page!
If you find that all your Wordpress pages are belong to us — “us” being the index.php request that gobbles up all your content, you can fix it by doing the following.
1. Don’t upgrade anything. It’s not fixed. (Maybe it is, but I would still do the following)
2. Go into your WP Super Cache Manager page
3. Add “index.php” to the list of “Accepted filenames, rejected URIs”:
wp-.*.php
index.php
4. Click Save.
5. Delete all items in your cache.
The reason I think this is getting fucked is because somewhere in the WP-SuperCache logic, “index.php” is getting cached. After that happens, all modrewrite htaccess requests that are usually fed through index.php to be parsed and printed as per the Wordpress core, are instead referred to the super cache of index.php.
That means all old supercache pages work fine, but every page that doesn’t have a cached version of itself lying around, gets the home page. This bug will not appear if you are logged in or have commented in the past because by definition, you bypass the static supercache.
By the way, if this is a bug and not me fucking something up, maybe it’s time for the Wordpress developers to get back to coding a good core instead of arguing with the MoveableType crew like fucking children. You guys fix the Object Cache in Wordpress Mu yet? Why didn’t this supercache stuff get integrated into the 2.5 release?
Cute backend though.
UPDATE
Apparently I’m not the only one: Michael Park
Donncha O Caoimh // Apr 11, 2008 at 4:33 pm
If you try the latest code from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-super-cache/trunk I think you’ll find that problem is gone.
BTW - you should redirect /index.php to / to avoid duplicate content and/or pagerank dilution problems.”
You rock, Donncha! That’s good news, but for all the people I was helping debug this problem, that is too many steps and too complicated. I still recommend going my way and adding index.php to the reject URL list. That way you can be SURE it’s fixed.
Everyone who runs a big site needs to make sure they take some safety measures. This bug is hard as hell to spot in the wild and when you have a digg-critical site or an article on the line, thousands of people could blow you off upon encountering a non-working /feed/. Not to mention how worthless it is to have archives that simply won’t load. People don’t remember the URL and they don’t come back.
WP Super Cache should be integrated into WP itself.
1. It’s an awesome addition that takes an already awesome product to an enterprise level.
2. Anyone — even the smallest blogger — can get nailed with traffic out of nowhere and a non-responsive WP looks bad.
3. Millions of small users debugging the cache would be worth it for the sake of the few flagship, power users who make the software look good.
Oh and shit, thanks for the quick response!
12 responses so far ↓
1 DazzlinDonna // Apr 11, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Sounds like a plugin issue rather than a wp issue.
2 Shelly // Apr 11, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I agree with Donna there - SuperCache is a plugin. Sounds like a plugin issue - not a WordPress issue. In fact, in 2.5, WordPress did something major with the caching issues. (Don’t ask me to explain it, though - I just saw a lot of talk about it on the wp-testers/hackers lists prior to the release, and how much better things were). Have you tried disabling the plugin? It may not be needed anymore.
There’s even a discussion about this going on over at the plugin area:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/166793
This one, the plugin author is contributing to, and apparently it was fixed:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164281?replies=8
3 hammer // Apr 11, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I agree. But because of the problems with the WP object cache in the past, its worth investigating.
Also, the wp-supercache plugin and the WP platform are siblings in more ways than one. Bugs like this will give major sites that legitimize using WP as an enterprise blogging platform an unnecessary headache.
4 hammer // Apr 11, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Shelly, you’re correct. It is technically a plug-in issue. But take the WeirdAsianNews site I referenced above. That site gets major Digg traffic spikes. Having an intermittent, site-disabling bug due to an unreliable caching plugin that was specifically designed to counter one of Wordpress’ biggest weaknesses: mysql overuse, is a bigger problem for Wordpress than the plugin.
Disabling the plugin is not an option for sites expecting to get raped by Digg.
5 Donncha O Caoimh // Apr 11, 2008 at 4:33 pm
If you try the latest code from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-super-cache/trunk I think you’ll find that problem is gone.
BTW - you should redirect /index.php to / to avoid duplicate content and/or pagerank dilution problems.
6 Donncha O Caoimh // Apr 11, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Shelly - in that second thread Viper had a mod rewrite rule before the super cache rules which is why his page never got cached. As he said, his own fault.
7 Robert // Apr 12, 2008 at 1:31 am
I vehemently disagree that this has to be dealt with by the WordPress developers.
It’s a plugin issue, no arguing about that, and anyone who integrates core and extensions should a) either be capable to deal with this himself or b) have someone technically knowledgable enough to check for version compatibilities.
8 steupz // Apr 14, 2008 at 3:47 am
I keep getting 503 errors since installing this plugin.
And when I tried to install one folder would not delete at all
9 Holdem Radar Strategy Calc // Apr 23, 2008 at 5:13 am
I suggest you chmod the cached directory to 777 and see if it still happens, solved it for me
10 konteyner // Apr 25, 2008 at 4:18 am
thankk you..That way you can be SURE it’s fixed.
11 Brett // May 1, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I added index.php t the list of rejected URI, but I still have the problem when someone clicks on my feedburner link, they’re redirected to the homepage. It’s driving me crazy!!
12 hammer // May 2, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Hey Brett, go to Feedburner and re-enter the url of your site.
Keep it the same, just reenter the URL on your feedburner feed and save it. It will make your FBfeed refresh.
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