Disabling comments in WP has no effect due to caching

enza76a · June 21, 2020, 2:58pm

Hello everyone.

After on my wordpress dashboard, => settings => Discussions => I disabled comments and then saved the new settings, the comments still appear, after months.

I asked my host to investigate, which they did, and this is what they answered:

"The problem is that your domain name is connected to Cloudflare:

;; ANSWER SECTION:

italytravelideas.com. 3789 IN HINFO “RFC8482” “”
italytravelideas.com. 21600 IN NS chelsea.ns.cloudflare.com.
italytravelideas.com. 21600 IN NS chance.ns.cloudflare.com.

so it is not loading content directly from our server, but from the closest cached Cloudflare’s server. This is something typical for Cloudflare’s service, because basically they store a cached version of your website on their servers, so when a user requests to view the website, it loads content from the closest server rather than only from a static remote server (our server). This increases your website speed due to this caching reason and this is basically what Cloudflare offer as a solution.”"

Then I changed the Settings in the Browser Cache TTL option in the Cloudflare Caching app and selected the lowest Browser Cache TTL to accelerate the cleaning of the cache.

Again, it had no result.

Is there something that can be done to solve this problem?

Thank you.
Enza

sdayman · June 20, 2020, 2:15am

This is incorrect unless a user overrides Cloudflare’s default caching. In your case, you have not modified Cloudflare’s cache settings. Your blog pages are not cached.

Can you please post the URL for a page that has the comments in question?

enza76a · June 20, 2020, 2:18am

Thank you.

Here is one:

cscharff · June 20, 2020, 2:38am

Well for certain definitions of investigate sure.

If the ‘problem’ is what makes your site awesome?.. I totally concur.

They should totally read an RFC sometime… perhaps RFC8482 even…

We uh… sure.

Ok, let’s check.

curl -Iv https://italytravelideas.com/venice-1966-record-flood-seen-as-sign-of-imminent-glaciation/
*   Trying 172.67.199.27:443...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to italytravelideas.com (172.67.199.27) port 443 (#0)
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* TLS 1.2 connection using TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
* Server certificate: sni.cloudflaressl.com
* Server certificate: CloudFlare Inc ECC CA-2
* Server certificate: Baltimore CyberTrust Root
> HEAD /venice-1966-record-flood-seen-as-sign-of-imminent-glaciation/ HTTP/1.1
> Host: italytravelideas.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.67.0
> Accept: */*
>
* Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 02:34:27 GMT
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 02:34:27 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Connection: keep-alive
Connection: keep-alive
< Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d0c50de6c3ad9dc0d478f84325711fef11592620466; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-20 02:34:26 GMT; path=/; domain=.italytravelideas.com; HttpOnly; SameSite=Lax
Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d0c50de6c3ad9dc0d478f84325711fef11592620466; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-20 02:34:26 GMT; path=/; domain=.italytravelideas.com; HttpOnly; SameSite=Lax
< Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
< Last-Modified: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 23:31:36 GMT
Last-Modified: Fri, 19 Jun 2020 23:31:36 GMT
< Cache-Control: max-age=0
Cache-Control: max-age=0
< Expires: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 02:34:27 GMT
Expires: Sat, 20 Jun 2020 02:34:27 GMT
< CF-Cache-Status: DYNAMIC
CF-Cache-Status: DYNAMIC
< cf-request-id: 03712cdb0f0000ecaa59286200000001
cf-request-id: 03712cdb0f0000ecaa59286200000001
< Expect-CT: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct"
Expect-CT: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct"
< Server: cloudflare
Server: cloudflare
< CF-RAY: 5a62173e7c3eecaa-DFW
CF-RAY: 5a62173e7c3eecaa-DFW

Doesn’t seem like Cloudflare is caching your html request.

CF-Cache-Status: DYNAMIC

So like the assertion that in 1996 that Global Cooling was a prevailing opinion, it lacks a fundamental basis in reality. You might suggest they investigate further. While it could certainly be an issue at Cloudflare the evidence they have provided doesn’t show that to be the case.

enza76a · June 20, 2020, 2:50am

Let’s separate the two issues.

It was not in 1996 that global cooling was the prevailing opinion, it was in 1966, at the time when Venice had the worst flood on record, worse than the most recent one of a few months ago, which occurred at a time when “global warming” should certainly have considerably worsened if it were caused by CO2 emissions, now much worse than in 1966.

As for the issue at the origin of my topic, no I have no proof, that’s why I asked. I’ll go back to my host with your code and your comment and see.

Thank you for your advice on the main topic of my comment here.

enza76a · June 20, 2020, 3:16am

Thank you very much for your community support, it’s great and very quick.

sdayman · June 20, 2020, 2:01pm

Ah, OK. I think I (might) see the problem. When you go to Settings -> Discussion/blahblah, and then disable comments, this is only for new posts. Old posts, you’d have to go through them and disable comments. For example, in the post you linked to, there are still Comment fields at the bottom. This post still has comments enabled.

Do a Bulk Edit of all the posts you want to close comments on:

enza76a · June 20, 2020, 4:49am

Sdayman, you are brilliant!

I did exactly that, and the comment form has disappeared from my posts. Nobody can leave a comment.

The only problem left, albeit minor compared to constantly having to delete spam, is that, above where the comment form used to be, remains the writing “Comment (0)”.

You don’t by any chance know how to eliminate it?

Thank you. All the best

Enza Ferreri

sdayman · June 20, 2020, 2:01pm

That would be a theme setting or modification. You’d have to check with the theme creator.

enza76a · June 20, 2020, 2:32pm

Yes, thanks.

All the best

Enza Ferreri