WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache htaccess code, Custom Code

[silas88]

There’s a  fairly clear explanation here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag and there is some interesting commentary here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/499966/etag-vs-header-expires#500103

It seems to me that for most low traffic web sites that Etags will not be of any significant benefit.

[silas88]

AITPro,

Saw your post above re problems with caching plugins. Have you looked at proxy / CDN based caching solutions such as CloudFlare or Varnish?

[AITpro Admin]

Yep, that is pretty much the same conclusion that we came to after much research on ETags – either it will not add anything beneficial or it may help.  So based on that rationale we went with ok then let’s give it a go.

We have researched CDN possibilities and they would not work for us due to what we have built and are doing:  API Server, Automated Server Security Systems, Automated Secure Areas that should be completely controlled only by us, other automated systems that would be negatively impacted.  CDN’s like Cloudflare are great for the average website/website owner, but will not work with our automated systems and API Server.

[AITpro Admin]

And on a personal note, I must remark on how well oiled our systems are.  We are still using Shared Hosting and doing all these things so that is a great testament to good design/architecture, etc.  😉  Our unique visitor traffic is now around 25k-30k per month and things are still running well.  At some point we will have to upgrade to Dedicated hosting, but we’ll push it as far as possible just for testing purposes.

[Young Master]

Interesting, I also used to use htaccess caching using the code pasted above and it worked well by improving my page speed grade from C to A. But I had use wp super cache with the above code I pasted after my site got suspended using too much server resources. I think the reason is because the above only does compression of css, html, javascript, images etc but it doesnt do page caching. I wish not to use any caching plugin in any of my site but I still havent found a better code for page caching. If there is anyone who has got a better page caching code, I would really appreciate if he/she is going to share  it with us.

[Young Master]

I just wanted to say Thank you @Edward for your great caching .htaccess code. They are so amazing and they really helped me to improve my Yslow grade from C to B all thanks to you @Edward for your great work, kind and sharing. From now on I will be using your caching .htaccess code to all of my websites. 😉

[AITpro Admin]

Yep, the caching code works pretty well, but nothing beats the speed increase of page caching.  I have some logical ideas that I want to play around with so once we get the next 2 major version releases out for BPS Pro then my next project will be to figure out exactly what was causing the random blank corrupted cached pages in WPSC.  Maybe just creating some kind of add-on or additional plugin that hooks into WPSC would do the trick. Or maybe creating a new plugin that focuses /specializes entirely on page caching would be a better approach.

[Young Master]

I think that would be a great idea. I cant wait to see your new caching tweaks. Personally I havent experienced the kind of problem you have experienced in any of my websites.

[silas88]

X-Robots tags might be useful also

# ref https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag

<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpe?g|png|woff)$">
Header append Cache-Control "public"
Header append X-Robots-Tag "noindex"

[Young Master]

@Edward…I have also started to experience the same problem you have experienced until I empty cache.

[AITpro Admin]

So once you added the .htaccess caching code then the blank pages/corrupt cache problem started occurring?  If so, then that would actually be a great thing because that would mean that the .htaccess caching code is conflicting with WPSC caching code and causing the corrupted cache problem/blank pages.  The most logical thing that would be causing a conflict would be gzip.  I will do some additional testing and see what happens.  Thanks.

[silas88]

So far this is the best article I have found on Etags, lots of other interesting tips and info on this page also.

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags

[Young Master]

Thats what I thought so. But I dont think if its a gzip that is causing conflict because I also have another site which I use my .htaccess caching code I pasted above which also has got module deflate but that site never dislplayed a blank pages. Something else is causing this problem. But let me observe this site for few days and see if the problem is still there.

[Young Master]

@Edward is there a way of testing if WPSC expires and garbage collection works fine? Because thats where I think the problem lies if am not mistaken. If emtpying the cache makes a website display again then it would mean that expires or garbage collection doesnt function as it is supposed to.

[Young Master]

Thanks @ silas88 I will check it out. What does robot tags do? I have never heard anyone using them.

[Author]

Posts