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AA Pro for J4: Issue with Caching?

Gerd's Avatar Gerd
We've run into a snag using AA Pro to show multiple related articles on many pages of our site.

The code for displaying related articles in a content module is rather simple - like this:
<ul>{articles categories="53" tags="current" ordering="title"}
<li>[link][title][/link]</li>
{/articles}</ul>

This is what happens:

- After clearing cache and loading the page for the first time, the selection of articles is fine and limited according to above rule.
- On second load, the module display a 'super-set', meaning more articles than it should. It appears the filtering is not working, and it pulls a cached (generic) version. Could it be it's ignoring the tags?

- Trying different types of caching levels (file, memcached, conservative, progressive) but the issue remains.

- Contrary, when caching is disabled, everything works fine.

Is this a known issue or is there something else we could try.
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
No, this is new to me.

Caching would cause the results in the module to not change. So if this is loaded first on Article A, then on Article B. It could mean that caching would show the results belonging to Article A.

If that is the case, I recommend you switch off caching in the module settings. As you want the output to be dynamic.
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
Hi Peter,

I tried your suggestion and turned caching off at the content module level. Then turned server caching on (File - conservative). The issue remains: It would show the 'super-set' on second load.

Also, it's not like it showing the results from A when on B. It's showing all results from category '53' and ignores the tags in the filtering hence the result list is longer on second load.

P.S. I should add that I'm using AA Pro in combination with Advanced Module Manager, but I assume that shouldn't have a bearing on this issue.
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
Please try the latest development version from:
regularlabs.com/development-releases
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
Thanks Peter. Still doesn't work. I tried with different caching scenarios. I will try a few other scenarios also with AMM disabled etc. See if that makes a difference.
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
That shouldn't make a difference.

Can you give me (super) admin and (s)ftp access so I can take a look?
And tell me on what url I can see/reproduce the issue.
You can use the 'Confidential information' button in the forum editor to hide sensitive information.
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
Here is a link to a page that's rarely used.
Look at the right hand side (on desktop) you should see 'Referenced articles' with one entry.

After reloading the page it will show >10.

As for super admin let me get back to you on that as I was playing around on our staging right now.


Confidential information:
(hidden)
Gerd's Avatar Gerd
This is what I found after further investigation:

- The caching issue appears only when the AA code is included in a Joomla content module (mod_custom). When the AA code gets included directly in an article, there is no problem with caching.
- The caching issue also appears, when I tried using the standard Joomla Cassiopeia template (as I was suspicious whether it could be the Gantry framework I am using). So the framework is not causing it.
- Trying different caching scenarios (Conservative, Progressive and with File versus Memcached) all results in the same issue.

- I also checked the cache and found that
-- On initial load of the page, the correct AA content got placed into the cache
-- On re-loading the same page in the browser, another version of the AA content got placed into the cache and shown, this time with the 'tags' filter and the 'limit' filter ignored.

It's like on re-loading the page, the cached regularlabs AA snippet cannot be found, hence creating another version but in doing so the article's tags get ignored within {articles categories="53" tags="current" ordering="title" limit="10"} as well as the limit.

I realize that this is probably a very rare scenario, could be server related, could be AA related, heck - could be even mod_custom related.

Appreciate any thoughts/ideas where else to look & test.
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
Sorry for the late reply.

Nope, I would need to investigate why this is happening on your setup.
Can you give me (super) admin and (s)ftp access so I can take a look?
And tell me on what url I can see/reproduce the issue.
You can use the 'Confidential information' button in the forum editor to hide sensitive information.
Please post a rating at the Joomla! Extensions Directory
Gerd's Avatar Gerd
Hi Peter, I had to prepare this a little bit for you to make this hopefully as simple as possible to trace down.

I created a clone of the site and it behaves in the same way with the same issue.

Find more details in the Confidential section. Really curious what you will find.

Confidential information:
(hidden)
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
Thanks. But can you also provide the (s)FTP access?
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
Confidential information:
(hidden)
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
Some weird caching going on.
I added some debugging code to see the queries in the frontend...
Removed it, and it is still showing that debug output. Even after clearing the Joomla cache 10 times.

What host are you on... don't tell me it's Siteground 😬
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
SiteGround it is. I had set caching to file to circumvent memcache. I also deactivated memcache overall on the account just to make sure nothing is interfering (although Joomla should handle that itself anyhow). Also, static files are running through NGinX - but again never had issues with that in J3+AA so I would be ruling out that as a source for this issue.
Gerd's Avatar Gerd
On another note: I tried the infamous 'Content Prepare' Option yesterday for the content modules. No surprise there: After the content module was called for the first time, subsequently it always showed the same content (when caching was turned on).

That - of course - isn't helpful as the content modules are dynamic and page-specific. Thought I should mention it here.
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
There are serious issues with how Siteground now caches things in combination with Joomla 4.
As far as I could follow discussions on Twitter and such about this, Siteground has pretty much abandoned support for Joomla 4 with this.

I cannot help you with the issues their caching is causing. You will need to ask (bug) them about it.
Or probably a better option: find another host.

I moved away from Siteground years ago. Never looked back.
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
I had a bad feeling about this when I contacted them and learned that the cache cleaning plugin they had offered was no longer available on J4. Thanks for looking into this Peter, really appreciate it - your plugins and components are awesome!

Confidential information:
(hidden)
Peter van Westen's Avatar Peter van Westen ADMIN
I can't really recommend a host. I am using Vimexx, which is located in The Netherlands. Very happy with them. But I guess you want/need a US-based one.
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Gerd's Avatar Gerd
Yeah - we need a host with servers in North America.

If anyone on this forum has had a good experience with a J4 hosting provider in North America, please post here.
Andrea Malalana's Avatar Andrea Malalana ADMIN
You can try A2Hosting. It's not perfect, but it's better than many.
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