Caching of RSS Headlines Improvement request

It’s been a while since I’ve looked in the RSS display code, so I’ll have to dig back in and check if I’ve broken anything in this feature over time. I must say I did not think that anyone was actually using the RSS feature. It’ll probably be a couple of weeks before I have time to dig into this one.

Hello Yannik, I have a good workaround for now. So no rush. If I can help in any way please tell me. I also have a staging environment for testing.

For me that’s the main point of a blog roll – showing the latest posts – but I think nearly no one does nowadays. ??

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by torstensbuechereckede.

I have taken a look at the RSS display code and this code uses the WordPress function called fetch_feed, provided by WordPress. This function has a built-in caching mechanism to cache the content of feeds. I have provided a configuration field on the Link Library Global Options page to be able to specify “Time before clearing RSS display cache (in seconds)”. The default value here is 43200 seconds, which is 12 hours. Can you check what you have this option set to?

One thing I’m wondering is if another plugin might be modifying the value of this cache expiry as well, since plugins can change that value with a simple filter function. You could find out by doing a text search for “wp_feed_cache_transient_lifetime” across all of your plugin files. And theme files as well while you’re at it, in case the theme is changing this.

Once we figure out why the cache is not working correctly, you could look at scheduling a load of the page overnight with a cron job and setting the cache expiry time to 24 hours.

Hi,

thanks for checking.

seems to be only used in link library:
wp-content/plugins/link-library/link-library.php
wp-includes/class-wp-feed-cache-transient.php
wp-includes/feed.php

I’m using the standard setting of 43200. But maybe this is even simpler. I mentioned that I have placed the links in the sidebar. That means they are on every page of wordpress. If the whole page is cachend and not the linklibrary part as a subelement than this means a full refresh for every page loaded. Could this be possible?

I don’t really know a lot about how caching plugins work. But even if Link Library was being asked to render its content every refresh, then the caching would come into play and it would load much faster. I just ran some tests on my local installation, without any caching plugin, and the RSS content took much longer to display on the first page refresh than on subsequent refreshes… so I’m really not sure of what is causing your site to always take a long time to render the RSS feeds…

Maybe asking the cashing plugin that you’re using if they do anything that could affect the RSS caching mechanism in WP.

On the first page refresh of the same page or is it also much faster on the refresh of other pages with link library? So in my case link library was on the sidebar and the long time was taken on the refresh of every page but only on first load of every page. After that caching kicks in.

If this is only happening on the first page refresh even though link library is links are shown on several pages than it’s something which could be celated to the caching plugin which is WP Speed of Light in my case. This could be related on the minimize / combine functions.

I had not tested putting the library on multiple pages, but I did now. It takes some time to refresh only on the first page that I pull up with my library with RSS feeds. It is then snappy on other pages, whether it’s the first load or subsequent loads.

Hi, thank you for testing. I did the same on my staging environment. I completely deactivated the caching plungin – speed of light.

define( ‘WP_CACHE’,true);
Initial refresh around 10 seconds per page
Following refresh 2 seconds

So basically caching is working but only on every page basis.

Page refresh without Link Library sidebar and using the rss feeds for headlines of latest posts
Initial around <2 seconds per page
Folowing refresh same time again <2 seconds

WP Speed of Light Plugin on + Link libary sidebar
Initial refresh around 10 seconds per page (for every page where Link Library is included)
Following refresh same page 2 Seconds

So I only recognized full page caching up to now no matter if special caching plugin is enabled or not based on the results. That’s not the same result that you had. But the paging plugins sometimes do not really remove their code when deactivated or removed. I think to be absolutely shure I have to create a new wordpress installation with just Link Library and without caching plugin. Maybe my caching plugin is messing this up.

Which caching plugin have you used for your tests?

I have created a new WordPress installation with DB copy. The only active plugih is link library and a theme – nothing else.

With this setup it takes very long for every refresh with link libary and refreshing RSS feeds (around 8 seconds per refresh) and it does not matter if it’s always the same page or not. There seems to be no caching at all without specialized caching plugin although define( ‘WP_CACHE’,true); and define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true); is set and cache folder is created in wp-content.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by torstensbuechereckede.

Hi there, I don’t know if this will still be relevant to you, but the latest version of Link Library has improved caching for RSS feed items. Instead of relying on the built-in WordPress caching, I have just implemented caching with WordPress transients and the results are really good. You might already have moved on to another plugin and I am sorry if that is the case. If you’re still using Link Library, update to the latest version and you will see improvements!

Hello Yannick, Thanks for the update. I just moved the Blogrol to a subpage but according to last tests I could move it back to main page. I will check that some days more.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by torstensbuechereckede.