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Minification refers to removing non-vital content from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so that it will be semantically correct, but smaller in size. Because these assets are smaller, this means that less information needs to be transferred for your site to function.

When minifying assets, this consumes resources such as CPU and Memory, and may increase the time required to respond to HTTP requests for the minified content. Because of this, Minification should always be used with properly configured caching. In environments with limited resources, minification may have an adverse impact on general performance.

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Choosing a Method for Minification

While multiple methods are available, you should almost always use disk-based caching unless you have a clear reason to do otherwise. In-memory caches are typically cleared more often, and because generating minified assets is costly this may have an adverse impact on performance.

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6 thoughts on “Choosing a Minification Method for W3 Total Cache

  1. Hi Marko does W3 total cache work with Varnish cache from the server side?
    I do not see the option to select Varnish, which option would work in place of Varnish?

    • Hello,

      You can use Varnish in the Reverse Proxy section of the plugin in Performance>General Settings>Reverse Proxy
      Enable the option and specify the IP address of varnish instances
      proxy
      I hope this helps!

  2. When I put this plugin to its testing it seemed to ignore the presence completely of cloudflare cache. Now i am not sure what to do

      • I tried opening a case on your website but it keeps just reporting “are you sure you want to do that” and not posting the content…

        Evening,

        I have installed W3TC and got everything working, however the moment I enable minify, be it CSS or JS individually, pages dont load properly.
        Browser console show errors such as
        GET https://shop.scanimals.net/wp-content/cache/minify/0e294.css net::ERR_ABORTED 400 (Bad Request)

        keyrings/:120
        GET https://shop.scanimals.net/wp-content/cache/minify/4ac8e.css net::ERR_ABORTED 400 (Bad Request)
        keyrings/:91
        GET https://shop.scanimals.net/wp-content/cache/minify/b8a83.css net::ERR_ABORTED 400 (Bad Request)
        jquery-migrate.min.js?ver=3.4.1:2 JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed, version 3.4.1
        keyrings/:709
        GET https://shop.scanimals.net/wp-content/cache/minify/c815a.css net::ERR_ABORTED 400 (Bad Request)

        The files are not accessible if I try view them.

        While the service was active, I saw no files written to the folder…

        root@shop:/var/www/html/wp-content# ls -al cache/minify/
        total 14
        drwxr-sr-x 2 www-data webdev 4 Jul 15 22:47 .
        drwxr-sr-x 12 www-data webdev 13 Jul 15 22:36 ..
        -rw-r–r– 1 www-data webdev 1113 Jul 15 22:35 .htaccess
        -rw-r–r– 1 www-data webdev 0 Jul 15 22:35 index.html

        I have tried both disk basic, disk advanced and memcache for the various options.

        I was previously running Seraphinite Accelerator without issue with minify, so dont believe there to be an issue with the css or js?

        Please help

        thanks
        Barry

        • Hello Barry,

          I’ve replied to your wp.org topic regarding this issue. Please make sure to follow that thread as the comment section is not a good place to provide detailed support.
          Thanks!

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