Knowledge base & Feature handbook
We publish our public changes in this changelog so that you can stay updated about new features and important changes.
After considerable testing with a site with other 50k posts on it, we have proved that the problem with the Purge Queue is now fixed. It was previously giving errors from CRON.
In addition we also added a new filter to the system to allow for headers to be adapted programmatically.
Overview
Version bump after failed release to wordpress.org. This version bump will force the release to happen. No code change
Its for sites that are using both Cloudflare CDN of their own plus using the batch queue processing. This was fixed and human tested on a “Free Cloudflare” account.
The fix was to check for the $url that was processed and see if it was in an array or in a string, if it was in an array, convert to a string.
Very simple change to remove the get variable ?ip=1 from websites that were not running Instantpage.
The ?ip=1 is added to cart and checkout urls to prevent them from being prefetched via instantpage.
If a site owner still wants to prevent this string being added to cart and checkout urls they can use the following filter to remove them
// add to funcitons.php
add_filter('sb_optimizer_woocommerce_instantpage_urls', '__return_false');The main change in 3.5.11 is the inclusion of CacheTags for ACD
CacheTag headers to Accelerated Domains reducing purge commands to only 2 for each post/page update and their related archives, taxonomy terms and feeds.CacheTag purging for Accelerated Domains.CacheTag headers to Servebolt CDN for later use in purging.wp servebolt check-cdn-setup to the WP-CLI to check the CDN setup for Accelerated Domains or Servebolt CDN.wp servebolt cache purge queue trash to the WP-CLI to purge old items from the queueaction_scheduler filters to only be implemented if action_scheduler is installed.Two adaptions were made in 3.5.10
The latest version of Sevebolt Optimizer has two small but very useful additions
We’re released a new version of the servebolt optimizer plugin, this is only a bugfix version with no new features.
There was a problem with previous release where it was not deleting the transients that are saved when the system finds a 404 page when Menu Caching was enabled.
This means that there are possibly many thousands to references saved in the wp_options table, and each one saved for 1 year before being automatically removed.
The purge command to remove Servebolt Optimizer transients was adapted to include all type of caching that being saved.
The purge option is run when Menu Caching is disabled, or when the “Clear Menu Cache” button in the admin screen (Servebolt –> Performance Optimizer –> Menu Optimizer)
We’ve released a new version of our WordPress plugin Servebolt Optimizer. It contains some bug fixes. Read below for a more in depth description of what was fixed/improved.
Due to some difficulties with making the menu manifest file work in the Prefetch-feature it was decided to remove it until further notice. The script and style file manifest files will persist as before.
The plugin adds purge cache-link in the row actions for posts and terms. We previously targeted all registered post types and taxonomies, but this is now changed to only target public post types and terms. The targeted post types and terms can also be controlled through filters (sb_optimizer_cache_purge_row_action_post_types, sb_optimizer_cache_purge_row_action_post_types_query, sb_optimizer_cache_purge_row_action_taxonomies, sb_optimizer_cache_purge_row_action_taxonomies_query).
In some cases there was an error during the WooCommerce checkout. The feature in question purged cache for the product during checkout so that stock amount and status would be kept up to date. This error should now be resolved.
The feature that sets the WP Cron up with the UNIX cron failed when ran on a multisite. This should now be fixed. The cause of the error was that the lockfiles we’re not generated with a valid filename. These lockfiles (originating from “flock”) keeps the system from running concurrent cron tasks, so that we force the system to wait until the previous job is done. Note that this is a Servebolt hosted only feature.
There was an error during plugin uninstallation due to a missing PHP constant. This is now fixed.
There was some error related to the environment file not being found, either because there is a custom WordPress folder structure or because the file is removed (either by deletion on disk or by disabling the file in the control panel). The plugin now handles the absence of this file in a better way – the error handling was improved and there is an admin notice telling the user that the file is missing + instructions on how to fix this.
We’ve released Servebolt Optimizer version 3.5. It introduces new features as well as bugfixes.
In v3.5 a new feature was added – every time a user logs in then we return a header telling the browser to clear local storage and browser cache. This is useful to ensure that cached content gets cleared for logged in users.
The plugin now supports Servebolt CDN.
We have added a feature to purge all cache even when Accelerated Domains is disabled. This is useful when deactivating Accelerated Domains and doing a proper “cleaning up” by clearing all cache.
We have added a feature to automatically set up the WordPress Cron so that it runs using the UNIX cron. This offloads WordPress from having to trigger scheduled tasks as well as making the process of setting it up a lot easier. Note that this feature also sets up the Action Scheduler (used by WooCommerce and other plugins) to be run using the UNIX cron.
We’ve now added a feature to purge all cache for all sites in a multisite-network. You can find it in the dropdown in the top bar in WordPress Admin.
We’ve added a new feature for users of Accelerated Domains – Prefetching of assets and menu items. This feature allows for our infrastructure to preliminary fetch the assets of a webpage and cache them in our infrastructure which results in reduction of load time. Another feature is that menu items gets prefetched as well, meaning that when you navigate to a subpage it has already been cached and is ready to be served in no time!
Whenever a user checks out in WooCommerce then the cache for the products in the cart will be purged. For many users this means using the queue to purge the cache of these products, but in the case of WooCommerce checkouts we now purge cache immediately regardless of whether they have the queue based cache purge active or not.
Whenever a user checks out in WooCommerce then the cache for the products in the cart will be purged. Due to how we purge cache a whole range of URLs might be included in the cache purging. This is because a post/page/product might be visible on the front page, in archives etc. and thus we include the front page URL, archive URL in the cache purge actions. But in the context of WooCommerce checkout and WooCommerce product we decided that a simple cache purge will suffice – this meaning that we only purge cache for the product URL, not the front page URL or any other related URL.
The styling for the information panel used in for example the cache settings page was broken in WordPress v5.9, but this is now fixed.
We saw that the menu optimizer feature was incompatible with some WordPress-themes. The feature was therefore refactored and should now be better suited to work with most WordPress-themes.
We’ve improved the cleanup of the cache purge queue to prevent the queu from growing too big. This is done by removing all completed queue items as well as removing failed queue items that are older than 1 month.
Previously a Servebolt-client was able to enable Accelerated Domains Image Resizing even when the client did not have access to it (based on their subscription). We’ve now added a check so only eligible clients can enable the feature. Note that enabling the feature while not having access to it will result in the feature not being active. The subscription needs to be in place for the feature to work. This “bugfix” only fixes the GUI so that we communicate better to the client whether they have access or not.
We’ve released version 3.3 of the Servebolt Optimizer for WordPress plugin. It introduces a couple of feature improvements and a number of bugfixes.
Whenever an item is added to the cache purge queue, we now also add the origin of this event. For example a manual cache purge, or an automatic cache purge on content update etc.
During cache purge we previously purged related URLs for a WP object (posts, terms etc.). Related URLs could be the front-page, archives etc. In some cases this caused large amounts of URLs to be purged cache for even when not needed. We have simplified cache purge in some cases – like for example during checkout in WooCommerce.
Due to confusion between Cloudflare/Accelerated Domains-cache and the menu cache feature we changed the name said feature to “Menu Optimizer”.
Fixed minor markup error in the WP admin bar dropdown menu. An obsolete “target”-attribute was added to the parent div element which is invalid.
Whenever a 3rd party adds a menu using the filter wp_nav_menu_args, we could not cache the result due to how we interact using WordPress filters. This should now be fixed.
The menu cache feature produced too many transients due to the way the transient key (a.k.a. cache key) was generated. Solved by making the transient key less complicated and by adding a filter so that 3rd parties can modify the cache behaviour instead.
Whenever a menu is assigned to a menu location we now purge cache for the previously assigned menu. This process prevents orphaned transient rows and help prevent the options table from getting bloated.
Whenever the plugin was activated or deactivated there was, in some cases, an error due to the database migration not being ran correctly. This should now be solved.
Whenever Cloudflare was selected as cache provider in the cache purge configuration form the validation did not function. This is now fixed.
Due to missing namespace, some exceptions went unhandled which again caused fatal errors in some cases. This is now fixed.
Due to absence of server variables, the system could not determine whether the code was executing in a Servebolt server environment when it was ran in CLI-context trigged by Cron. This is now fixed.
Version 3.2 of our Servebolt Optimizer plugin introduces a couple of improvements. You can read more about the impact of this release in our 3.2 announcement post on our main site.
Loading menus is something that is done on almost any site. They are, however, almost always generated on the fly. Wouldn’t it be great if you could cache them? Using the latest version of our plugin, the Servebolt Optimizer, allows you to do just that! By caching the menu items you can decrease the Time To First Byte by several milliseconds, even if there are only a few items in your menu.
If you choose to use a translated version of WordPress that’s completely understandable. After all: you want your site in the native language of your intended audience. But this comes with a slight downside. Each time your site gets loaded, the translation files need to be loaded as well.
In our latest version of the Servebolt Optimizer WordPress plugin, we’ve added a feature known as the Translation Loader Performance. Using this, the plugin allows you to cache the content of the translation files, shaving off precious time when loading your site.
We’ve released version 32.2 of our Control Panel which introduces support for customers to change the PHP timezone to something other than UTC. You can find the new setting on the Site Settings page
We launched our new login experience, and strengthened our password requirements. Passwords now need to have a minimum length of 8 characters, and contain both lowercase and uppercase letters as well as at least one digit.
All customers who created their accounts before the introduction of these new rules must reset their password, whether or not their old password already met those requirements.
Learn more about the change in our launch post.
We updated our Servebolt Optimizer plugin to include our Image Resize add-on for Accelerated Domains and some additional features.
The feature to exclude posts from cache was broken due to wrong order in conditions in the cache header logic. This is now fixed.
Due to cases of incompatibility between themes and other plugins we removed the priority-attribute from the actions that enqueued the plugins static assets. This means that the priority-attribute falls back to the default value of 10 which should be less likely to cause issue.
Certain packages were not included in the Composer autoloader due to an issue in Mozart (which was needed to resolve conflicts between composer packages used in WordPress plugins). The packages originated as dependencies of the Servebolt PHP SDK, and was solved by specifically including them in the plugins composer-file. The affected packages contained polyfills for the PHP functions http_build_query and getallheaders which means that this was only an issue in environment where these functions were not available in PHP.
Servebolt Optimizer v3.0.0 includes a total rebuild of the plugin, support for Accelerated Domains, improved cache purging and more.
Version 3.0.0 is a major rewrite of Servebolt Optimizer and we highly recommend you testing this update on staging before you update in on production.
Continue reading “Servebolt Optimizer version 3.0.0”Today we rolled out a new version of Accelerated Domains, with full support for Vipps Checkout in WooCommerce.
This means that Accelerated Domains now supports all current Vipps Checkout methods, including express checkout.
Please get in touch with our support if you experience any issues with Accelerated Domains.
Accelerated Domains has been updated to better handle search spam. This type of spam is growing and growing in the amount of requests we see. Accelerated Domains has already blocked over 100 000 search requests identified as spam.
We do this by blocking some search string queries usually identifying search spam.
If you identify any issues, please get in touch with our support.
As of today, we’ve discontinued the Starter and Starter Pro plans as part of our offering. If you currently have a Starter or Starter Pro subscription you can continue to use those.
The Starter plan and the Starter Pro plan are now part of our archived legacy plans. This means the Starter and Starter Pro plan are no longer available to select when downgrading or creating a Bolt.
If you’d like to change the number of sites or add storage of either Starter plan, you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro plan. You can do this from your Control Panel or reach out to our Support Team.