What is the best way to implement web server caching?

1 Choose the right caching strategy

Depending on your website's content, traffic, and architecture, you may need to adopt different caching strategies to optimize your web server caching. Time-based caching is suitable for static or infrequently updated content, such as images, stylesheets, or scripts. Validation-based caching can be used for dynamic or frequently updated content by comparing ETag or Last-Modified headers with the original server. Fragment caching is a great option for web pages with both static and dynamic content, like e-commerce sites, social media platforms, or forums since it only caches parts of the page. All of these strategies involve setting an expiration date or a maximum age for the cached resources and refreshing or invalidating them when needed.

2 Configure the caching headers

In order to implement web server caching, you need to configure the caching headers that control how the server and the client interact with the cached resources. These include Cache-Control, which specifies directives such as public, private, no-cache, no-store, max-age, or must-revalidate; Expires, which indicates when the cached resources should expire and be refreshed or invalidated; ETag, a unique identifier for the cached resources; Last-Modified, which indicates when the cached resources were last modified on the server; and Vary, which specifies factors such as user-agent, language, or encoding that may affect the content of the cached resources. Reporting and documenting these headers will help ensure your web server caching is successful.

3 Use a caching tool or service

To simplify and automate the process of web server caching, you can use a caching tool or service that offers various features and benefits. Caching plugins are software applications that integrate with your web server or content management system (CMS) and enable you to configure and manage your web server caching settings, such as WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, or LiteSpeed Cache. Caching servers are software applications that run on a separate server or a cloud platform and act as a proxy between your web server and your clients. They store and serve the cached resources to the clients and reduce the load on your web server, like Varnish, Nginx, or Cloudflare. Caching networks are networks of distributed servers that store and deliver the cached resources to the clients from the nearest location, improving speed, scalability, and security of your website. Examples of caching networks are Akamai, Fastly, or CloudFront.

4 Test and monitor your web server caching

To ensure your web server caching is operating efficiently, you need to test and monitor its performance and impact. This can be done through testing tools such as WebPageTest, GTmetrix, or Pingdom; monitoring tools like Nagios, Zabbix, or Datadog; and feedback tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or SurveyMonkey. Web server caching is a powerful and essential technique that can improve website performance and efficiency. By following these tips and best practices, you can implement web server caching effectively and reap its rewards.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?