What are the repercussions of disabling URL rewrites?

1

Hi guys,

I’m trying to use W3TC minification, but haven’t been able to achieve this without disabling URL rewrites.

Firstly, is there another way around this?

and,

Secondly - am I screwing anything up by doing this? I mean, W3TC is minifying every plugin JS and CSS file anyway, so bundles it in to it’s own URL structure, but obviously with a single minified file (minifile? lol) - but would there be an issue with doing this now or later down the line?

Thanks in advance.

2

Two questions:

Why aren’t you using the minification that Roots is already capable of?
What’s the specific problem that comes up when trying to use this third party minification?

To answer your question: nothing, really. You’ll need to adjust anywhere you refer to your assets. See: http://roots.io/plugins/roots-rewrites/ to see exactly what gets rewritten.

3

  1. Minifying roots based JS and CSS files is fine, but plugins are the consideration here. I’m trying to reduce HTTP requests, not just cut out space from a select few files.

  2. When using W3TC, only 1 or 2 JS files seem to get minified. Out of say 10-12. That is until I disable URL rewrites in config.php of Roots, at which point all files are minifed with no change in config on the W3TC side.

Thanks for the reply Matthew.

4

Sounds like you’re using a lot of plugins. Which is fine.

As long as you did not link anything manually with the rewrites in mind, like say, an img tag with
<img src="/assets/img/img.jpg">, then disabling rewrites shouldn’t be an issue.

The only reason the URL rewrites is an option is to make those links more pretty, instead of /wp-content/themes/roots/assets/img/img.jpg it becomes simply /assets/img/img.jpg

But that’s it.

5

Thanks Kalen :smile:
Yeah I disabled it - W3TC works fine, and the only noticeable sacrifice is the pretty URLs