[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] Amazon CloudFront, Dreamhost, W3TotalCache with CDN – almost there!

I’ve got my favicon back – turns out there were more files to upload to the CloudFront.

Issues 2,3,4 are still in play, however.
Thanks.

There are too many options in W3TC for me to get you on track without knowing your settings. One thing I know for sure is that you do not need memcached for your site. Please submit a bug submission report from the support tab of the plugin.

Ok will do if needed.

I got Memcached installed anyway.

Thanks.

You’re welcome.

Download Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) change your bucket permission and apply bucket sub-directory permission.

I mostly recommend to use APC. Memcached used for multi-server.

I use a DH VPS too. You can enable Xcache on the DH Panel, anc configure W3TC to use it for pages, object and db cache.

Synchronizing static files to the CDN is very simple if you do it via W3TC. If you move files othewise (I use s3cmd) be sure to set ACP public on all the files.

For example, in https://www.catswebweave.com/design-portfolio/ the image for “Dr. Miller blog” is not publicly accessible. Either it’s not on Cloudfront, or has been set as ACL private:

https://d3s2cq8a6u4i7f.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Picture-25.png

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Error><Code>AccessDenied</Code><Message>Access Denied</Message><RequestId>4FEBC9DA7C083081</RequestId><HostId>qo6IJ/5vxq1vN9e75V0axJsk5UN4R4rO02EdsxCeaI/LgOAKYpw3aguGA40Uoa4q</HostId></Error>

@catscholz74 any other concerns?

Is there a way that W3Cache automatically upload files to the CDN when new posts are created? Or are we needing to use the S3 plugin as well to handle that?

That seems to be our sticking point, but our wordpress theme creates thumbnails caches that never seem to get uploaded.

jelavich: it seems that yes, new medialibrary files are uploaded to the CDN;
but theme-created thumbnails seem not to be managed by the plugin, instead are linked from the original site. At least this is what happens with Thesis theme.

For instance, the teaser thumbnails in this page are from the original site, not from CDN:

https://www.alfabeta2.it/author/andrea-inglese/

using wp 2.9.2 W3TC 0.9.1.1 and Thesis 1.7

Thanks @blau and @fredericktownes (plugin dev)- I thought I had changed the ACP (file permissions) to read-only for all users. Guess not!

So by default when the files are uploaded to the CloudFront, the permissions are automatically set for all users to be “none” and that needs to be changed to “Read Only” in order for this to work properly.

I added this permissions information to my blog post here:
https://www.catswebweave.com/load-wordpress-fast-with-dreamhost-amazon-cloudfront-and-w3total-cache-plugin/

I am still having trouble using the Minify feature of W3 Total Cache – getting an error message saying files are unavailable. Support at BuddyDress.com suggested I turn off minification.

Is it redundant to use the CDN and the minify features in W3 Total Cache?

Thanks,
WebWeaver

The minify and CDN features are aimed at solving different problems

minify: reduce the number of files that need to be loaded (by combining multiple files of the same type), and reduce the total size of the files
(by removing comments and unnecessary spaces etc.)

CDN: deliver the files that are required more efficiently

so using both does make sense and should in the end result in greater gains than either alone.

@blau: Thanks for the note, but it seems like the antisnews theme will generate the thumbnails but w3tcache seems to automagically inserts the cdn name into the url. I am guessing because it attempts to do that for all png files. I was hoping the “sync files” option I see in the latest dev version of w3tcache would fix that, but the thumbnail directory is quite large (20K images) and syncing has to be painful (I know it is using the plugin’s upload link). I know with the stock WP theme(s) it all works flawlessly.

efkim is correct on the minify vs. cdn options. It’s a very odd bit of esoterica. Frederick has done an admirable job in his FAQs but could use some tweaking. Though good blogging examples are win to me.

jelavich: have you tried putting the theme-generated thumbnail directory in your CDN custom files, uploading custom files, and setting CDN auto-upload of modified files?

blau: Adding the directory was one of the first things I did. The new version has the auto-upload option, and I set that to 60 seconds. However, the problem seems to be the thumbnails directory contains close to 30K images, and clicking on “upload custom files to CDN” process takes close to 4 hours. We rarely have that big of a gap in posting time to process that directory.

I know when I attempted to flip the CDN options on, and created a quick post to see what happens to the thumbnails, I could not tell if the CDN auto-upload actually happened, and after 2 hours the thumbnail had not appeared. I need to dig more it seems.

jelavich: if you have 30000 images perhaps you could set up a cron job synching only the latest images via s3cmd or other tools.