Thank you for your message and questions. The APO Plugin has recently been taken over by a new team, who are currently analyzing it and exploring ways to improve it. The team has been focusing on the new Speed tab over the last couple of quarters so the APO work has not been started.
We are currently considering a number of options including migrating a significant portion of the plugin to a managed rules implementation within the dashboard. This would involve the new Rules products (Cache Rules, Configuration Rules, etc.) and would make updates and maintenance much easier.
By doing this, we can reduce the amount of PHP needed to build the auto-purge feature, which is critical for caching HTML elements that speed up WordPress pages.
There is still a lot of planning and ideation to be done, but I wanted to comment on this post and tell you we are looking at improving the plugin and providing better support. If you have any comments, feedback, or feature requests, please feel free to DM me.
Until you guys decide what to do (it could take months or years), as a PM, can you kindly encourage your team to:
Test the plugin against the latest version of WordPress (currently, 6.2.1).
Test the plugin against PHP 8.2+ (Note: Query Monitor can help identify all associated Warnings and Deprecation Notices)
Pin a notice in the plugin’s Support section providing a summary of what you shared above.
Update the plugin’s portal accordingly.
Answer all major support requests submitted by your customers.
The above will help inject new life into the plugin and eliminate the impression that the plugin is a dud. If nothing is done, the plugin could soon be suspended by Team WordPress. The ability to download it could be blocked as well.
It should take only 5-10 business days to complete the above tasks.
This may help: We’re currently using the plugin with WP 6.2.1 and PHP 8.2.6 and works well. A few bugs pop up now and then.
Lastly, do we really need the plugin in order to use APO? Our testing suggests it’s not required.
tldr; Cloudflare plugin provides the logic for cache invalidation. Without it, cache invalidation may take up to 30 minutes, as opposed to up to 30 seconds.
If you don’t want to use the plugin, make sure you use some other form of purging Cloudflare cache after content update.
