Bloat!

Hello @keithrowley

First of all, thank you for your review.
I am very sorry about the issue you experienced and I am also sorry you did not open a ticket for this here, or contact us directly so we can help you fix this.
As you mentioned, you have been using the W3 Total Cache for years now, so you must be aware that, unlike other caching solutions, W3 Total Cache has the most options that you can use.

Since you have not opened an issue, I can only guess what the problem was, and reading your review, you have been using the Disk Caching method for every module.

Depending on the configuration, you can store cache pages, objects, database, minified files all to disk. This is quite more than 4000 products as not only the pages are being cached.
Now this is not the place to explain this, however for each page, two files are created. in wp-content/cache/disk_enhanced/your website/some-page/_index_slash_ssl.html_gzip and _index_slash_ssl.html

If the cache is purged or updated those files are changed to _index_slash_ssl.html_gzip_old and remain on the server until the GC kinks in (this depends on the configuration by default is 1 hour)
So only for products you can have up to 16000 files, and where do I start with objects that are a bottleneck for every Woocommerce-based website?

Again this is all guessing, and unlike the other plugins, we also add an option that you can choose the caching method. So for websites like this, it’s recommended that you use memory-based caching like Redis or Memcached, especially for DB caching and Object Caching.

I hope that despite your review, we can work together to maximize the potential of the W3 Total Cache on your website. As I’ve mentioned before, no other plugin is offering this much freedom and options for the user.

Thanks!

Thankm you for your response. I apologize if I have directed my observations to the wrong page – as I said i have developed respect for your product over deveral years and it was not my intention to downplay that – I hope I made that clear.

Like everyon else I am in haste to get things done, so I put another cache solution on that site and a day later it has settled to 83,000 files – around 140,000 less than before. I accept that I may have applied wrong settings but as I said, I have used for several years and seen no indicator of this type. I will read your recommendations more closely next time although I do always select appropriately on your wizard (or so I thought).

I wish you well.

Hello @keithrowley

You are most welcome!
I hope we can work together to improve this review. As I’ve mentioned before, it all depends on the features used and the caching method.
Most other plugins do not utilize Object Caching for example, and the ones that do, do not offer Disk caching as W3TC does.

If you have any questions please let me know so I can help you in any way, and the review can match the overall experience and not just a single hiccup in performance.

Thanks!