Cloudflare recently introduced Speed Brain, a feature designed to optimize website navigation by prefetching the next page a visitor is likely to click on. While this innovation aims to enhance website speed and user experience, WordPress site owners are encountering serious issues, particularly with plugin updates.
Why Is Speed Brain Causing Problems?
The Speed Brain feature, which has been enabled by default on free Cloudflare accounts, is interfering with how WordPress handles updates. Since it preloads pages in the background, it disrupts the file replacement process during plugin updates.
As a result, plugin installations fail, and in some cases, the plugins disappear entirely, leaving websites vulnerable or non-functional.
Common Error Messages Caused by Speed Brain
WordPress users affected by this issue have reported encountering the following errors when updating plugins:
- “Installation failed: Could not copy file”
- “WordPress update failed: The package could not be installed – missing file”
- “Update failed: Could not move the old version to the upgrade-temp-backup directory”
- “Update failed: -1”
These errors indicate that WordPress is unable to complete the update process due to conflicts with Speed Brain’s prefetching.
How to Fix It: Disable Speed Brain
Until Cloudflare resolves this issue, the best course of action is to manually disable Speed Brain from your Cloudflare dashboard.
Steps to Disable Speed Brain in Cloudflare:
- Log in to your Cloudflare dashboard.
- Navigate to Speed > Optimization.
- Click on the Content Optimization tab.
- Locate the Speed Brain setting at the top.
- Toggle it off to disable the feature.
This change will prevent Speed Brain from interfering with WordPress updates while still allowing Cloudflare’s other performance enhancements to function normally.
What’s Next?
Cloudflare has yet to release an official fix, and since Speed Brain is still in beta, it remains unpredictable across different sites. Some users have reported no issues, while others have experienced severe plugin failures.
For now, disabling Speed Brain is the safest option for WordPress users to ensure updates run smoothly. Those who rely on Cloudflare’s performance tools should monitor updates from both Cloudflare and WordPress to determine when it is safe to re-enable this feature.
If you run a WordPress site and use Cloudflare, keeping an eye on plugin updates and Cloudflare’s development roadmap is essential. Until Cloudflare resolves this issue, keeping Speed Brain disabled is the best way to avoid disruptions.
Would you like further assistance on securing your WordPress setup with Cloudflare? Let us know in the comments.
