I’m trying to figure out the best way of caching my site, while having updates refresh automatically. Currently I have the Kirby cache enabled for pages, but every time I make a new test post the content doesn’t reflect when I reload the page—I have to manually refresh PHP/opcache on my server. Is that not what the cache is supposed to be doing, or am I misunderstanding? Fast-CGI and opcache are running on the backend, and I’ve enabled the Kirby cache using the following code in config.php:
'cache' => [
'pages' => [
'active' => true
]
]
Also I see Bruno Meilick has a boost plugin that is supposed to refresh when content gets updated, but a) I’m not sure what advantage that would have over the default cache, and b) I don’t fully understand its installation and configuration.
the pages cache you activated will be flushed by the panel when you edit or create any content in the panel.
are you using the panel or do you upload your posts (content folders) with SFTP?
opcache only needs to be flushed when you make changes to php files and do not want to wait of the automatic flush after a few minutes (or whatever your setting is).
my boost plugin is about reducing the load time of content files. its intended to be used when you need to read more than a few hundred content files in a single request to kirby - like searching a bigger archive etc.
Thanks Bruno, ironically I had tried installing your plugin as it indicates it would handle updating the cache upon content changes. Unfortunately I managed to bork my install somehow and lock myself out of the panel. Sounds like it’s not something I’d require anyway.
As to the content updates, I was entering everything in the panel as this was still just testing and playing around getting things working. Regardless what I tried, new or updated posts (in the starter kit notes) wouldn’t reflect on page refresh in the browser. Even clicking the arrow within the post itself would load the direct page with the previous content, so something’s definitely not working properly.
Any ideas what I did wrong?
Update: I just followed the advice to change the opcache_revalidate_freq to 0, and both new posts or updates to an old post are not reflecting—either on reload of the site, or clicking to load the post from the panel. I’m at a loss why this doesn’t work.
I’ve tracked down what seems to be the problem, which is fastcgi caching. If I disable the cache entirely, content updates will correctly reflect on page reload in the browser. With the cache running, I have to manually flush the fastcgi cache on the server backend before updates will populate.
Is there an nginx/fastcgi configuration setting that will flush the cache automatically when changing/creating content, or is there a plugin that will perform this?
I dont think you can trigger that from PHP since the cache will hit before you have a chance to check.
The fastcgi_cache_valid sets the cache time depending on the HTTP status code. In the example above, responses with status code 200, 301, 302 will be cached for 60 minutes. You can also use time period like 12h (12 hours) and 7d (7 days).
if you have
fastcgi_cache_path /tmp/nginx keys_zone=myzone:8m
just call
rm -Rf /tmp/nginx/*
which you could add in a page.updated:after hook with an exec php call.
From what I’ve read the cache shouldn’t be flushed from PHP, but rather you would have a path in your nginx config that then calls fastcgi_cache_purge, this path would then be called via hooks.
Bruno and Sonja, thank you again. Can you tell I’m still a noob trying to learn the ropes with all of this? I probably would’ve saved myself a lot of hassle if I’d stuck with Apache, but I’m a sucker for a performant site. I mean, the reality is the chance of me making the front page of Hacker News or being Fireballed are less than my hairline coming back, but I still don’t care.
Sounds like it’s not something I’d require anyway.