Summary

Sam reported WP Rocket plugin-screen notices saying it could not configure itself because several files/folders were not writable, including wp-content/advanced-cache.php, wp-content/cache/background-css/1/, wp-content/cache/used-css, wp-content/wp-rocket-config, wp-content/cache/wp-rocket, and wp-content/cache/min.

I treated this as a live WordPress/Cloudways incident and verified the origin over SSH. The issue was not that WP Rocket was missing or disabled. WP Rocket is active at version 3.21.1. The affected paths existed and were owned admin:php, but 92 WP Rocket-managed files/folders were not group-writable. The SSH user could write, but the PHP/web runtime could not reliably update those cache/config surfaces.

What shipped

• Created a timestamped rollback/permission snapshot on the server: /home/admin/wp-rocket-permission-repair-20260517-162826.
• Preserved wp-content/advanced-cache.php in that snapshot before touching it.
• Repaired only WP Rocket writable surfaces:
  • directories under wp-content/cache/wp-rocket, wp-content/cache/min, wp-content/cache/used-css, wp-content/cache/background-css, and wp-content/wp-rocket-config set to 2775.
  • files under those paths set to 664.
  • wp-content/advanced-cache.php set to 664.
• Verified not-group-writable count went from 92 to 0.
• Cleared WP Rocket domain cache through the available PHP function fallback because the wp rocket WP-CLI command is not registered on this install.
• Flushed WordPress object cache.
• Purged Cloudways app cache via API, operation flex-87447429.

QA performed

• WordPress runtime now reports all affected WP Rocket paths writable.
• php -l wp-content/advanced-cache.php returned no syntax errors.
• Public checks returned 200 for sitemap_index.xml, post-sitemap.xml, page-sitemap.xml, category-sitemap.xml, video-sitemap.xml, and robots.txt.
• Authenticated WordPress REST returned one post for /wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1.
• Rewrite rules measured 23701 bytes with 9 sitemap route matches.
• Rank Math sitemap modules include sitemap and video-sitemap.
• Cache-busted homepage returned HTTP 200 after the Cloudways purge.

What likely happened