Plugins and caching

Well this is the whole point of cache plugins. Caching plugins let the page load normally, with all plugins, and then saves the result as a static HTML page. Future requests for a specified period of time, or until the cache is emptied, will be sent directly to that HTML file. This allows the page to load much much faster precisely because WordPress and plugins don’t need to run again. But there are drawbacks, as you’ve identified.

So let’s assume for whatever crazy reason, I wanted to block all IP’s
from TOR exit nodes. If the cache won’t even let your plugin fire, how
are you supposed to block the IP???

You probably couldn’t do this exclusively via a WordPress plugin if a cache plugin was installed. The best case scenario is that nothing is blocked, and the worst case scenario is that you cache a request from a blocked IP, therefore blocking everyone.

So how do plugins deal with caching? It depends on the functionality that is affected.

  1. Some plugins simply won’t work and will require any pages they’re on to be excluded from a cache, or require logged in users to be excluded from the cache. Some caching plugins have an API that plugins can use to tell the cache plugin not to cache a given page. For example, WP Rocket looks for a constant, DONOTCACHEPAGE. If the constant is true for a particular page, then it won’t cache that page. In your case you’d be excluding every page, so this would not be a good solution.
  2. Some plugins which perform redirects, like Redirection, have an option to export their redirects to an Apache/Nginx file that’s read by the server. That way the plugin doesn’t need to run, as the server will handle the redirects.
  3. Plugins with some kind of user-specific dynamic output, like WooCommerce’s shopping cart, will use AJAX to load the data asynchronously. AJAX requests typically aren’t cached by these plugins.

So if your plugin is for blocking requests from certain IPs, I’d suggest something like #2, where you would have the option to create/update a file on the server that takes care of the blocking.

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