Webcache for Ibexa 4

Why WebCache for Ibexa

• Pages in milliseconds. Cached pages are answered before Ibexa routing, security and the content repository even start.
• Lower hosting costs. Far less PHP, database and search-engine work per visit, so the same servers handle much more traffic.
• Always fresh after publishing. Publishing clears the content's own page and every page that shows it: section listings, home page teasers, menus and embeds, on every site and in every language. The content's pages are then rebuilt straight away.
• Editors stay in control. A cache manager in the Ibexa back office shows every cached page, and lets editors clear it or mark it "never cache" with one click.
• Built for multi-site and multilingual. Supports 10 or more domains and all your languages. Each site and language has its own cache entries.
• Ready for clusters. Several Ibexa servers share one cache through Redis or a shared disk, and a change made on one server applies to all of them.
• Safe under traffic peaks. When a popular page expires, only one request rebuilds it. Every other visitor gets the previous copy or waits a moment, so expiry never causes a load spike.
• Plays well with your CDN. Works alone or in front of Varnish, Fastly or Cloudflare, and keeps the cache tags they use for purging.

Features

• Redis: set the server and port (password, database and Sentinel supported).
• Disk: set a folder, either local or a shared mount (NFS, EFS…) for several servers.
• Pages are compressed and written atomically, so nobody ever sees a half-written page.

• Default TTL from the back office: Never expires, 10 minutes, 60 minutes, 1 day, 1 week or 1 month.
• A different TTL per site (siteaccess).
• A different TTL per page, from the back office or from a simple "Cache TTL" field in the content form.
• When a page expires, the next visit rebuilds it automatically.

Exactly the right pages are cached

• Only public pages for anonymous visitors (GET) are cached. Logged-in users, personal pages and form submissions (POST) are never cached.
• Login, user profile, cart, checkout and API URLs are excluded out of the box, and you can add your own.
• "Never cache this page" can be set with one click from the cache manager, per URL or for a page in all sites. It can also be a checkbox in the content form.
• Extra URL parameters such as ?utm_source=… or ?test=1 are ignored, so they don't create duplicates.
• Search pages are never served from the cache (rule included in the supplied configuration). Paginated listings (?page=2) can be cached page by page and are refreshed when new content is published.

Back office cache manager

• All cached pages, grouped by site (domain/siteaccess), with the number of pages and total size per site.
• For each page: URL, date and time it was cached, TTL, expiry date and HTML size. It also shows the content it belongs to, its cache tags and the stored headers.
• Clear one page, a selection, a whole site, or everything.
• Never cache this page in one click.
• Settings page: enable or disable the cache, the default TTL, a storage health check, and the list of page rules.
• A Web cache tab on every content item shows its cached URLs and lets editors set its TTL or turn its caching off.
• Permissions (view / clear / configure) are assigned to roles like any other Ibexa permission.

For developers and operations

• Console tools to install, check status, clear (all, by site, URL, content or tag), clean up, and pre-load pages (for example from a sitemap).
• An X-WebCache response header (HIT, MISS, STALE, or the reason a page was not cached) makes diagnosis easy.
• Optional background regeneration with Symfony Messenger workers.
• The site keeps working even if the cache storage goes down.

How it works

1. A visitor asks for a page. If a fresh copy is in the cache, it is sent immediately.
2. Not cached yet, or expired? Ibexa renders the page once, and WebCache stores it for the next visitors. Only one request does this work, even under heavy traffic.
3. An editor publishes. WebCache clears every page that shows the content, on every site, and rebuilds the content's pages right away. CDN purges keep working as before.

Requirements

Quality

What you get

• The WebCache for Ibexa package (a Composer-ready zip).
• Step-by-step installation guide.
• Ready-to-use configuration file with every option explained.
• Changelog.