WP Super Cache is a full page caching plugin for WordPress that makes your site faster, and helps deal with unexpected surges in traffic.
Over the last few months we’ve been busy working on the plugin to add new features and fix bugs and we can almost call it ready. It’s stable and usable and runs on this site but we would love more people to test it out before we release a new version.
Here’s just some of the new features and bug fixes we’ve been working on:
- The plugin was based on WP-Cache which stored cache files in a single directory, and those (legacy caching) files were for the most part stored the same way all this time but now they’re being placed in the supercache directories (#177). This makes it easier to manage these files. The plugin doesn’t have to search through potentially hundreds of cache files for those that need to be deleted if a page updates or someone leaves a comment. Now all those files will be in the same directory structure the anonymous “supercache” files will be. I’m really excited about this feature as it makes caching for logged in users/users who comment and caching of pages with parameters so much faster now.
- We’re adding a REST API to the plugin because in the future not everyone is going to use wp-admin to take care of their sites. Take a look in the rest directory for the code we’re working on.
- Debug logs now have a username and password to protect them from prying eyes.
- And many bugs fixed over the last few months.
Since “legacy caching” or “WP-Cache caching” is now more maintainable and faster we want to change the language describing how the plugin caches and delivers pages.
Currently the plugin asks you to choose between mod_rewrite, PHP and “Legacy page caching” which isn’t really useful. Most users won’t recognise those terms. It’s also not accurate as “legacy page caching” is active all the time as long as caching is enabled.
Instead we should have “Standard Caching” and “Super Caching”. Super Caching will then have simple and expert delivery methods.
Simple delivery is through PHP, while expert delivery uses mod_rewrite rules which means the .htaccess file has to be updated and hopefully the warning below it will discourage casual users from testing it.
Due to the huge number of changes in the plugin we really need people to give it a try and check if everything works ok. The changes to the settings page will hopefully make it easier for new users to get to grips with it too.
You can find the newest code on Github. The changes to the settings page are in #255 if you want to comment on them.
Thanks in advance! 🙂
Great job DONNCHA and your Automattic team mates.
Super cache has been my cache plugin for years and totally love it.
If I manually install this, will I get future automatic updates? or do I need to install from wordpress.org for them to work?
Thanks
Yeah, you will. WordPress will still look for the version number on WordPress.org so when it gets bumped it will be upgraded!
It would be great if the ‘Standard Caching’ php files are stored in OpCache for those that uses PHP7.
I don’t the OpCache is the right place to put those files. There will be a lot of them, and if a user is visiting the same pages over and over again I expect that PHP will have the scripts already compiled and cached.
But, it would be interesting to see what kind of difference the cache makes so hopefully someone will write a Supercache plugin to add that functionality!