Caching

• Activating the cache
• Ignoring pages
• Cache drivers

For complex sites with lots of content or high amounts of traffic it might make sense to switch on Kirby's cache. Kirby's cache stores the entire result of a rendered page. As long as the cache is valid, visitors will be served the cached version which is pretty close in performance to a static html file.

Note that pages with content that should only be visible to authenticated users, should never be cached, otherwise it will be accessible to any site visitor. Also, forms will not work on cached pages, nor will any sort of dynamic content (shuffling, random content). If you want to cache content heavy pages with dynamic content, you can use a custom cache.

Activating the cache

The cache can be activated in /site/config/config.php

c::set('cache', true);

Ignoring pages

You can ignore pages from being cached, by adding their URI to the cache.ignore array

c::set('cache.ignore', array(
  'home',
  'projects/project-a',
  'search'
));

Cache drivers

Kirby has three built-in cache drivers. The default driver is a simple file cache. The cache driver can be changed in your config file:

// valid values: file|memcached|apc
c::set('cache.driver', 'memcached');

File

The default cache driver stores files in /site/cache. Make sure that the cache directory is writable by PHP in order to make the cache work.

c::set('cache.driver', 'file');

You can change the cache folder in the cache options like this:

c::set('cache.options', array(
  'root' => 'some_folder'
));

Memcached

If you are running Kirby on a VPS or dedicated server or your shared hosting company is really, really awesome you might want to make use of Memcached. It's one of the fastest available cache engines. In order to use Memcached the Memcached server must be running and the Memcached PHP extension must be installed.

c::set('cache.driver', 'memcached');

By default the Memcached driver is setup to use the localhost and the port 11211. You can change that with the cache.options variable:

c::set('cache.options', array(
  'host' => 'someotherhost',
  'port' => 22122
));

APC

Another fast option is the APC cache extension for PHP. If the extension is available you can switch on the cache with…

c::set('cache.driver', 'apc');