Failed to generate Critical CSS

Hey @hermitband,

I took a closer look at your site and noticed that the Critical CSS was successfully generated on 8th April. This observation suggests that the issue you encountered might have been a temporary glitch. However, regarding the “Failed to generate Critical CSS” error and the rather unusual “I’m a teapot” message you’ve received, here’s a bit of context.

The “418 I’m a teapot” error is actually an Easter egg from an April Fools’ joke known as the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. While it’s a humorous nod to internet culture, some websites or servers use it for requests they prefer not to handle, like automated queries they deem non-essential.

This unique error popping up when you try to refresh the Critical CSS could imply that there’s a misconfiguration or a temporary issue on the server side that’s interpreting your request in an unexpected way.

Would you mind giving the Critical CSS optimization another try to see if the error persists? It’s possible that the error was a one-off anomaly. If you’re still seeing the “I’m a teapot” message or any other errors, it could be worth checking with your hosting provider or reaching out to us directly for a deeper dive into this quirky issue.

Thanks a lot for your patience and for bringing this to our attention. Looking forward to hearing how it goes!

Take care!

Hi Alin,

All good now, it was possibly just due to the WordPress/Jetpack Boost update temporarily not working.

Thanks for your help!

In fact, the problem is now back…. It worked once or twice, but is getting the same error with same error message.

Hi @hermitband,

Thanks for updating us on the situation. Since the problem has resurfaced after initially being resolved, this suggests there could be a more persistent issue at play. It would be helpful to involve your hosting provider at this stage to get to the bottom of this. Here are a few specific points you could ask them to check:

1. Server Configuration: Ensure that there are no rules or configurations that might mistakenly classify the Critical CSS generation requests as non-essential or automated, which could trigger the “418” error.
2. Resource Limits: Verify if there are any resource limits (like CPU usage, memory limits, or script execution time) that might be affecting the execution of the Jetpack Boost processes.
3. Logs and Error Messages: Ask them to review server logs around the times you attempted to generate Critical CSS. This can provide clues on what might be causing the issue.

It appears that your hosting provider is Dreamhost and they can be reached out to https://www.dreamhost.com/support/

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks a lot Alin,

I contacted Dreamhost, they asked me to temporarily turn my firewall off for that domain and re-check, and it all worked fine. Apparently they did something on their end so I don’t have to turn on the firewall each time I refresh Jetpack Boost, so firewall’s back on and for now it seems to have been sorted.

Thanks again!

Hi @hermitband!

Great to hear that Dreamhost resolved the issue with Jetpack Boost and your firewall!

Given this update, I’ll go ahead and mark this thread as resolved. If you have any more questions or run into any issues in the future, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

Stay awesome!