It’s time to lift the veil of secrecy on my latest project. With help from friends who diligently tested and reported bugs on this I can now present version 0.1 of WP Super Cache!
It is an extensive modification of the famous WP-Cache 2 plugin by Ricardo Galli Granada. This plugin creates static html files that are served directly by the webserver as well as the usual WP-Cache data files. It also goes one step further fixing a couple of bugs, adding some hooks and new features and making WP-Cache more flexible.
From the plugin page, here are some of the major changes and updates:
- A plugin and hooks system. A common complaint with WP Cache was that hacking was required to make it work nicely with other plugins. Now you can take advantage of the simple plugin system built in to change how or when pages are cached. Use
do_cacheaction() and add_cacheaction() like you would with WordPress hooks. Plugins can add their own options to the admin page too.
- Works well with WordPress MU in VHOST or non-VHOST configuration. Each blog’s cache files are identified to improve performance.
- Normal WP-Cache files are now split in two. Meta files go in their own directory making it much faster to scan and update the cache.
- Includes this WP-Cache and protected posts fix.
- Automatically disable gzip compression in WordPress instead of dying.
- As Akismet and other spam fighting tools have improved, the cache will only be invalidated if a comment is definitely not spam.
If your server is struggling to cope with the traffic your site gets this plugin could be just right for you. If your site regularly gets hit by spikes of traffic like a digging or slashdotting it’s definitely the right choice, and even for everyday use, you may very well notice your webserver is a little bit more responsive.
I contacted Ricardo last week and sent him on an earlier copy of the plugin but I haven’t heard from him yet however. I’d love to know what he thinks of my modifications!
Update! this post has been dugg, please digg it and we can really test the cache out!
Nov 6th: WP Super Cache 0.2 is out! I think all the bugs mentioned below are now fixed. I applied Tummbler’s patch (from Elliott and Reiner) that enables gzip compression of the WP-Cache data files and fixes feed content types.
Please note: PHP’s internal zlib compression must be disabled for this to work. Look in your php.ini for the zlib.output_compression and zlib.output_compression_level directives and comment them out by placing a “;” at the start of each line.
Check the plugin page above for the download link.
It’s crisis time here in Blarney. The local 
