W3 Total Cache is one of the best WordPress plugins ever made. But it’s been on the fritz lately (for me, anyway). I contacted Frederick Townes, of W3 Edge, the plugin’s creator, and got a prompt response. We exchanged a few more tweets and ultimately, I filed a bug report.
The problem
I’m not 100% sure what the problem is. The site won’t load and I get error messages about “unsupported form of compression” from Firefox and “cannot decode raw data” from Safari/iPhone. I recently updated the plugin to its latest version and now I have problems. Disabling the plugin does make the issue subside―a good sign for me, but bad for W3TC.
I asked others if they had similar problems, but no one had. I did get one unsolicited tweet about it, so at least I’m not alone.
Winning at support & customer service
Frederick provides support for the plugin and goes straight to the scene of the crime. He dives into your code on your server, trying to diagnose and solve your problems. The bug report process couldn’t have been easier. He was fast and helpful in his Twitter responses.
I can’t think of a better support system. Oh yea, and it’s free. Thank you, W3 Edge.
Cross your fingers
Here’s hoping that Frederick (and his team?) can solve this issue quickly. I’ve become totally dependent on their plugin and it pains to me leave my site up there without it.
Thanks for your willingness to help, Frederick. I look forward to updating this post with good news.
Update
As promised, I’m updating this post with good news. After letting the W3 Edge crew do their thing, the site and plugin seem to be running just fine. Thanks again, Frederick!
my site is having the same problem! whats the solution?
Jason: Frederick Townes never actually told me how to resolve the problem, he just fixed it. I recommend contacting him directly if you haven’t already.
Really late to this thread, but for anyone in the future – The problem is probably HTTP Compression under Browser cache. Turn that off and see if it works.