Minified files broken / missing 404

Hello @driveadmin

I am sorry about the issue you are experiencing and I am happy to assist you with this. Can you please share the website URL so we can check this?
Are you using any other minify solution? If not what caching method are you using for minifying?
Do you have CDN enabled and if so are those files served from the CDN?
Thank you!

Hi Marko,

Thanks; the site is: https://www.davidselvadurai.com/

No other minify solution; just W3 Total Cache.

There is no CDN in place.

Cheers
Drive

Hello @driveadmin

Thank you for the info. Yes, I can see that the style is broken.
Can you please go to Performance>Minify and empty cache? There is a button on the top of the general section “To rebuild the minify cache use the empty cache operation. “. You can also purge all caches.
Thank you

Ok; have done that.

Hello @driveadmin

thank you for the information. It appears that you have multiple caching layers. As I can see your website is hosted on 20i. As you can see in this article, they have their own caching solution and caching plugins are not allowed.

Caching Plugins

Our WordPress platform comes with various layers of caching built-in. One of the most effective of these caching layers, especially at scale, is our edge cache system.

Unfortunately, most cache plugins will interfere with this and as a result, we don’t recommend running any caching plugins on your WordPress site.

This includes, but is not limited-to: W3TC(W3 Total Cache), Super Cache, WP Rocket and Hummingbird.

This means that you need to clear your server-side cache. Please reach out to your host for assistance. Also, if you want to continue using W3 Total Cache, you should check if you can disable Server-side caching to avoid conflict.
Thank you!

Hi Marko,

Thanks for the update. It’s strange as we have another load of sites on 20i using W3 Total Cache, with minify turned on, and they are all working fine.

The sites we’ve had issue with were all working fine up until the 15th Jan 2020.

20i have said that it’s an issue with the plugin. I personally don’t think it’s the plugin but have to explore all avenues.

Thanks again for your help ??

Drive

Hi Marko,

Have just re-read your post and realised/remembered that we’re not using 20i’s WordPress platform – we use their Linux hosting.

Like I said; it was all working fine until the 15th Jan.

Thanks
Drive

Hello,

thank you for the info. As I said the content is cached on a server level. When I visit your website and add a random query string to the URL i.e https://www.davidselvadurai.com/?asdfgsdfgh it should present a non-cached page. When I inspect your page it is showing the following:
<script src="https://www.davidselvadurai.com/wp-content/cache/minify/13d7d.js"></script>
Now as you stated there is no minify folder within a cache folder so this means that the website is cached on another level. It is not recommended to have multiple caching layers.
You can remove W3 Total Cache completely to confirm this:
1. Purge Cache
2. Deactivate and Delete Plugin
3. Check .htaccess File (make backup)
W3TC will create many directives in the .htaccess file to control caching behavior. Each section will start and end with comments like “#BEGIN W3TC Page Cache core” and “#END W3TC Page Cache core”.
Ensure that no residual entries are leftover in your .htaccess file after deleting the plugin.
4. Delete wp-content files and folders
– cache folder
– w3tc-config folder
– object-cache.php (if exists)
– advanced-cache.php (if exists)
– dbcache.php (if exists)
– upgrade folder
– delete the wp-content/w3-total-cache/ folder (if exists)
5. Delete Cached Files from CDN (if using CDN)
Besides deleting all the relevant files, if you use CDN then ensure to purge the cached content from your CDN. This is necessary when you enabled the minify option in W3TC settings. You should delete the minified and combined scripts and CSS files from your CDN server to avoid the site breaking on the browser.

When all of these steps are completed W3 Total Cache will no longer have any impact on your website.

Hi Marko,

To clarify; there is a ‘minify’ folder within ‘wp-content/cache’ but the minified files are not being written to it.

Is it worth completely removing the plugin, then re-installing it from fresh?

Thanks
Drive

Hello @driveadmin

thank you for the info. As you can see in the previous message, it’s showing that it is serving the file from /cache/minify/ folder 13d7d.js and at the same time it’s showing Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 for the same file.
If you completely remove W3 Total Cache with the steps provided in the previous message, and the issue persists, this will confirm that the issue is not related to W3 Total Cache and that you have another caching layer.
Thank you!

Hi Marko,

I have now completely removed W3 Total Cache from my site. What now?

Drive

Hello @driveadmin

Does the issue persist after you removed W3 Total Cache completely?

Hi Marko,

No; there are now no issues.

Hello @driveadmin

Thank you for the information. You can now re-install W3 Total Cache. Enable desired settings one by one, save the settings and check your website after each setting has been enabled.
If by any chance your website breaks after enabling minify, for example, that means that some parts need to be excluded from minifying.
Thank you!