Working with Caching Plugins

Caching plugins can offer significant speed improvements for your end users when they are browsing your web pages.

They can also provide bandwidth use reductions and improved search engine optimisation.

Despite these improvements caching plugins may also create problems when your website is serving up dynamic content like KB Support does. We therefore recommend that you disable caching of these pages within your caching plugins settings.

Dynamic Content within KB Support

The core KB Support plugin serves dynamic content within the following pages and shortcodes…

Ticket Submissions page
This is the page where you have the Submission form not found shortcode and is defined within Tickets -> Settings by way of the Submission Page option
Ticket Management page
This is the page where you have the You must log in to view your tickets.Log into Your Account Username or Email Password Lost Password? shortcode and is defined within Tickets -> Settings by way of the Tickets Page option
Profile Management
This is a page you may have chosen to create and included the You must log in to manage your profile.Log into Your Account Username or Email Password Lost Password? shortcode
Article listing
This is a page you may have chosen to create and included the Shortcodes KB Support includes a number of shortcodes that can be used to display various information from the plugin, such as a ticket submission form, a support ticket management page, a customised list of articles, registration and login forms, and more. KB Article Front End Widgets KB Support includes two widgets which enable you to easily display information for KB Articles on the front end of your website within a page sidebar. KB Articles Categories / Tags Widget This widget enables you to display a list of categories or tags for your KB Articles. The widget displays the title of each category… Template Tags Template tags are placeholder text that get replaced during processing of content with information that is relevant to the ticket that is being referred to. KB Support has a number of built-in template tags that can be used within ticket notifications that are sent during ticket creation, reply and closure as well as within the… [kbs_login] Shortcode You may wish to display a login form for users that elect to create an account during registration, whilst logging a support ticket or at any other time. KB Support enables you to display a simple login form with the [kbs_login] shortcode. A user can then login by entering their username (or email address) and password combination. The [kbs_login] shortcode should… [kbs_articles] Shortcode The [kbs_articles] shortcode enables you to display a customised list of articles anywhere on your web page. You can customise the list of articles to be displayed with a variety of shortcode options The Plugin Pages During activation, KB Support creates pages that are necessary for your customers to submit new tickets, and manage existing tickets. Submission Page The submission page is the page that displays your ticket submission form and enables your customers to submit new support tickets. This page contains the shortcode [kbs_submit]. Tickets Page The tickets page is where… Enabling Sequential Ticket Numbers Enabling the sequential ticket numbers option ensures that all KBS tickets are in sequential order. By default, the WordPress post ID will be used as ticket ID's but this results in gaps within the number sequence due to the way in which WordPress works. For example, your first ticket may be assigned an ID of… Ticket Status Overview By default, KB Support has the following possible statuses which can be assigned to a ticket... New - Ticket has yet to be reviewed by an agent. This status is assigned to tickets received via a submission form.This status cannot be manually assigned to an existing ticket Open - The ticket has been reviewed and is actively being worked… [kbs_submit] Shortcode An overview of the [kbs_submit] shortcode which can be utilised to display a submission form an any page within your website. [kbs_tickets] Shortcode The [kbs_tickets] shortcode provides an interface for your customers to view a list of all tickets that they have previously submitted. Clicking onto a ticket will open the ticket overview where the customer will be able to view all details regarding the ticket, as well as submit a new reply to the ticket. Whilst an… [kbs_profile_editor] Shortcode You can enable your customers to update their profile information such as their first, last and display name, their email address and more by placing the [kbs_profile_editor] shortcode on your page. The [kbs_profile_editor] shortcode is designed for use within a page such as a Your Account page which the customer can access via your website menu. [heading element="h2" style="bordered" remove_margins=""]Usage[/heading] [kbs_profile_editor] The… [kbs_register] Shortcode You can display a user registration form for to allow users to register an account on your site. KB Support will determine if the user is an existing customer, and if they are, it will automatically link their customer account to this account. The [kbs_register] shortcode should be added on a page that you want to act as the… Global KB Article Settings These settings define the default behaviour for KB Articles published on your website. Access KB Article settings via Tickets -> Settings and clicking on the KB Articles tab. General KB Article Settings Restrict KB Articles Enabling this option will enable the Restrict Access option for all new KB Articles. You can adjust this option per KB Article Show Register / Login Form?… Plugin Terms and Conditions [kbs-custom-terms] How to add Ticket Form Fields Perhaps the default fields created during install are not enough and you need to capture more information when a customer submits their ticket. Adding (and editing) fields for a submission form is very easy. From the Tickets -> Submission Forms menu page, select to either edit an existing form, or create a new one. Adding a new Form… Installing Extensions Installing extensions for KB Support that have been purchased from the plugin store, is quick and easy although the process differs slightly to those that you can download and install directly from the WordPress.org plugin repository. Download your Files Once you have completed your purchase, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to download your… Restricting access to KB Articles KB Support includes an option for you to restrict access to each KB Article you publish. If an article is restricted, any user attempting to view the article must be logged in to your website. If they are not, they will only see the article excerpt followed by a notice. The remainder of the content,… [kbs_search] Shortcode The [kbs_search] shortcode allows you to insert a search form into pages on your website so users can search through the articles available Creating Custom User Fields Using the user profile hooks WordPress already has, KB Support provides additional hooks that ensure all custom user fields created by any KB Support extension are grouped together under a user profile page header section called KB Support. There are two hooks of interest here; The kbs_user_profile_fields filter is used to determine which custom user profile fields… Service Level Settings Service Level Settings allow you to define your target response and resolution time for tickets that are received within KB Support. Visual aids then allow you to determine those tickets that are approaching, or have exceeded, their SLA targets. SLA Settings If you do not wish to track service levels, you can leave the Enable SLA Tracking option… shortcode

The core KB Support plugin attempts to notify caching plugins to not cache both the Ticket Submissions page and the Ticket Management page by defining the DONOTCACHEPAGE constant*, however not all caching plugins will adhere to this. For this reason, we recommend configuring all caching plugins to not cache the pages listed above.

Please review your selected caching plugin’s documentation to determine how to bypass caching for specific pages.

* Defining the DONOTCACHEPAGE constant was introduced in version 1.0.4 of KB Support

Was this article helpful?

Select your rating: