Why does my website only display the preloader icon after a WP Rocket plugin update?
The WP Rocket caching plugin is great for speeding up WordPress websites. The ‘Delay Javascript Execution’ option in versions of the plugin prior to v3.9 allowed website owners to add javascript files to an inclusion list. Only those files on the inclusion list would then have their execution delayed.
This solution meant that if you had a lot of javascript files, it was quite cumbersome to manually add the ones whose execution you wanted to delay.
So, starting from WP Rocket v3.9, the logic is now reversed so that switching the option on automatically delays the execution of all of your javascript files. This makes it much easier to achieve a great performance boost for your page loads, but it can introduce problems.
An example of this is with themes or plugins that enable a preloader spinner or loader icon. When activated, these display a preloader icon which disappears when the page content has fully loaded. These don’t offer a great user experience, as many users prefer to interact with a page before it has finished loading. Javascript controls this, and so if the script execution is delayed, then this will result in the preloader icon continuing to spin until the user interacts with the page. Not good!
So, the solution is either to deactivate the ‘Delay Javascript Execution’ option in WP Rocket or, preferably, to change your theme or plugin options to deactivate the preloader.
Once you have done this, don’t forget to clear your cache again.
We use the WP Rocket plugin as part of our WordPress performance package. So we can help your site run faster. Please send us a contact form message below if you want a faster website.
