[Plugin: WP Super Cache] Beware – This Plugin Burned My Website

Err, bit of scare mongering surely? This plugin hasn’t been incompatible with new versions of WordPress in a long time, if ever.

Sorry you had problems, but the plugin shouldn’t do anything to your database. Thousands of blogs use this plugin and work just fine.

It may work fine for thousands, but this plugin has also destroyed many sites. I am only one of the many people who have reported that this plugin torched their blogs.

You don’t know why this is happening, but it is happening. You don’t appear to be making ANY effort to figure out why. Your only response to these reports appears to be merely to try to walk people through the “if all else fails” procedure. And if they can’t bring their sites back to life, you just reply that it can’t be the plugin because lots of other people don’t have this problem.

It could be an incompatibility with another plugin. It could be an incompatibility with other mod_rewrite rules. I tried to go through your code. Unfortunately commenting is almost non-existent so I cannot offer any further suggestions.

People need to realize that just because this plugin works for them NOW, it might fry their sites down the road. If some other plugin makes any changes to the rewrite rules, or if a user modifies them manually, it might fry their site. Or maybe they will use a redirect plugin that does something that is incompatible.

Or something else completely unexpected could be responsible. Since you aren’t trying to solve the problem we may never know.

codelaw – believe me I do try to help people but there’s only so much I can do. Go back and download version 0.1 and see how easy that was. The plugin does so much hand holding now it should be paid a carer’s allowance!

I’m very sorry the plugin doesn’t work for you. It is very low level, more so than most other plugins and due to the variety of hosting platforms and combinations of plugins and themes it’s next to impossible to get it to work everywhere all the time.

The readme file has a long list of troubleshooting points that cover as many of the questions and problems people have had before with this software. Unfortunately not everyone understands them, or even reads them. My “if all else fails” replies make that clear enough.

I’ll be honest. Your plugin is great if it works. The problem isn’t your lack of skill. The problem is that this plugin messes with mission critical systems but doesn’t go through any beta testing before release.

New versions of WP are thoroughly tested before release. Serious problems do arise and they are fixed before large numbers of people start updating their blogs.

That is not the case with this plugin. There is simply too much that can – and does – go wrong.

You are clearly an accomplished programmer and your effort shows. But you are not perfect and you are unable to give this plugin the really through testing it needs.

What we REALLY need is for this to become a built-in standard feature of WP.

I think it’s time to make this plugin commercial and I am willing to pay .

Make this into commercial will make the developer to be able to focus better on this project plus he will be able to recruit people for support.

WEll folks. I AM NOT an experienced programmer of any sort, however I DO KNOW that after I installed this plug in my blog blew UP!! Thank God it’s a new blog and I will have to start over. Didn’t know what caused the explosion, but now I do.

“When all else fails, keep going.”

Daniel

P.S. Here.. I do know for a fact that it is the WP Super Cache because it was the LAST plug in on the list I was given. Before that all plug ins and everything else was working fine. ??

Daniel

fulltimefun – if you had followed the “if all else fails” instructions in the readme you could have recovered your blog. The plugin won’t delete any posts or comments or hardly touch your database at all so there’s no chance of data loss.

codelaw – even if it was commercial, or I presume you mean proprietary which I can’t do due to the GPL, that wouldn’t help. It would be impossible to test all the different types of hosting and plugin configurations out there. On my blog I made a call for testers of the new Memcached functionality. So far the response has been disappointing.

Unfortunately if you want to run a self hosted WordPress blog it requires an extra bit of effort to learn about PHP and web admin basics. If you don’t want to learn about them, then there’s always WordPress.com and other MU sites.

There is a chance it will reduce your website to a smoking husk beyond any hope of repair.

I am a pretty experienced PHP programmer. To me a plugin is more than just a black box.

however I DO KNOW that after I installed this plug in my blog blew UP!

Holy PHP Batman! Did your server catch fire? Will our blogs be safe from the villainous clutches of WP Super Cache? Stay tuned Bat fans.

Sorry, one cup of coffee and I just couldn’t stop myself.

This is all very dramatic, but just out of curiosity, what does all this mean? All of your files were deleted? Your database got munged? As indicated, this plugin does not do any of that.

This really is fear mongering and pointless because there is nothing in here that helps understand what happened to both of your blogs.

I get that your blogs stopped working but what does that mean? Did you get the white PHP page of death? Was anything actually damaged and you had to restore from backup?

Since you are both back up and working (I hope), how did you recover?

If you’re willing to provide some more technical info then you can probably get help here. Some log data (not the whole file, just a couple of error lines from when the bad thing happens) before and after from your blogs error_log might shed some light on what’s going on.

Self hosting is not for the faint of heart. It is pretty satisfying though when you get past these kind of problems.

It’s common knowledge to create backups before installing new plugins, because SHIT HAPPENS. And even if everything is fine, you still should do backups.

Maybe you should try my backup plugin “Bei Fen”, which works great for many blogs, but still blew up 2-3 blogs … so beware!!!

Great work donncha, please go on.