Wordpress LScache Plugin: Weird caching behaviour ??incomplete CSS on certain requests
Last Updated on: Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:02 Hi, Im having a weird issue! Litespeed is sometimes not correctly combining all CSS. It sometimes drops my pages main CSS file. CSS settings are as follows: https://ibb.co/KFPsC4k However, in my testing this only seems to be when the page is preloaded by preloaders. If a page is preloaded on hover, there is no problem. This applies to Litespeed Instant Click, instant.page, Flying Pages, and other preloaders that use on-hover. However, other preloading that isnt on-hover doesnt work okay. For example, preloading a page on a links viewport entry. I compared Request and Response Headers for hover-preloading and non-hover-preloading but I see no differences. However, for some reason Litespeed isnt properly combining CSS on the non-hover preloading requests. For example, for the sites About page. There are 23,498 lines of combined CSS (when unminified). What gets cached is only 16,228 lines of CSS (when unminified). One key CSS sheet is getting missed. I used LSCWP_CTRL=before_optm and isolated this missing 7k lines of CSS exactly to the page builders main CSS file each time, e.g. /about?xlink=css&ver=6.0.1 . Screenshot to illustrate missing code section: https://ibb.co/dPJ1Qxn I was able to recreate the issue reliably: ? Wipe the Litespeed cache in console using rm -rf /usr/local/lsws/cachedata/ & /usr/local/lsws/bin/lswsctrl restart ??Browse to my homepage ??Note how in Network log, preloading network requests are invoked by Flying Pages preloader to, e.g. About page (/about). ??Navigate to About page and see main CSS missing from what was put in cache. The page doesnt render correctly. Whereas: ? If I wipe the cache as above ??But navigate directly to the About page, the CSS isnt missing ? No problem (the CSS combining issue isnt present). What the page should render like, vs. what the page does render like: https://ibb.co/Gnh9Y7Y https://ibb.co/Yh9M2kp Whereas also: ? I add xlink=css to Litespeed CSS Excludes ? I wipe the Litespeed cache as above ??Browse to my homepage ??Note how in Network log, About page is invoked by preloader. ? When I navigate to About page, the main CSS file is included and the page renders correctly with no problem (the CSS combining issue isnt present). For some reason, the xlink=css css file isnt combined when non-hover preloading requests are put through. I think this is similar to this resolved thread/bug: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/css-combine-periodically-missing-content/ Id like to add that non-hover preloading is essential for mobile traffic, which constitutes most web traffic these days. A little update. I delved into what xlink=css is, in case any clues come up. I noticed reference to a known plugin conflict between the same page builder Im using and ShortPixel (a plugin Im not using). They say: You will have to enable CSS Caching inside Oxygens settings to get rid of the xlink=css files. (Source: https://shortpixel.com/knowledge-base/article/504-known-plugin-and-theme-conflicts-issues-and-workarounds) I followed this tip and re-tested using the same methodology as above. ??No CSS excludes in LiteSpeed settings ? Wipe the Litespeed cache in console using ? Browse to my homepage ? Note Network log: About page preloaded on viewport entry of its link ? Navigate to About page ? No problem: page-builder-generated CSS is not missing, the page renders correctly. (Hooray!) I imagine this might still indeed be a Litespeed bug, but the fringe cases seems isolated now more specifically to Litespeed + Oxygen (+ with Oxygen CSS caching disabled).
LiteCache Rush: Speed comes from using less, not from doing it faster
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