wp-content showing as %E2%80%A6ent in test path with 404 error

Web Performance Discuss Test Results
1

I am getting 404 errors for 3 css files (its a wordpress site)
the path is showing as %E2%80%A6ent instead of wp-content.

However browsers are rendering the css correctly (but the site is very slow).
Is this something I need to fix? I’d probably have to go through all the top level files and some of the plugin files in a code editor to see what has mucked up the encoding from utf-8

Any suggestions?

2

Can you share the URL so we can take a look?

3

Url is https://simplisticsolutions.net

4

You have a css file which @imports the 3 broken CSS files. At the top of the file here:
https://simplisticsolutions.net/wp-content/cache/scripts/6c07d4fd4c6d88f3211fc73271f99f3b.css

Try to avoid using @import to load CSS files, as the browser will only load them after the original css file is fully downloaded. Which plugin did you use to create the /cache/scripts files?

5

THANKS!
I edited that file. It had an ellipsis there. Site speed improved! The plugin was wp-supercache. Will have to see whether the problem re-occurs when it generates another script/file
I have used wp-supercache on many sites without this issue, so I’m thinking it may be an issue with another plugin possibly the one that moves Javascript to the foot and mimizes css.

6

You’re welcome.

Super cache will just cache the html page output, so it will be the minify plugin causing the issue. There’s still one broken link inside of that file, the 2nd @import. I would ditch the plugin and fully clear super cache, as it’s very likely the files would get flushed by the plugin in the future.

If you really want to minify and combine the css/js I’d recommend Autoptimize. It may require some manual tweaking especially to get the javascript to work correctly. On this site it would probably only save 200-500ms off the first viewed page though.

7

I was thinking of omitting the css files from the wp-supercache files seeing as they seem to be the only ones that get their paths messed up. With most Javascript to footer plugins, I have to omit 3 or 4 of the files which I haven’t had to do with this plugin. My understanding is that a Javscript will block, but css will download in parallel with the content (I’lll be adding in the missing keep-alive header)

Edit I added:
Header set Connection keep-alive

as the 2nd line in htacess but it didn’t work. Is their another line needed to actvate an apache module to do this, or do I need to check with the hosting company?