LebGeeks

Kassem

Member

Page Caching?

Hey guys,

What do you think about page caching? Is it a good idea to do that or would it just stand in the way of usability?

BashLogic

Member

Re: Page Caching?

for static and heavy content, its good. for dynamic content its a nuisance.
personally i always disable cache ability unless i have a bad connection or so..

arithma

Member

Re: Page Caching?

Google's Web Applications, and a lot of the libraries written in Javascript assume web caching for performance. It would be rather contrived to disable web caching unless you have a good reason to (even with high bandwidth).
Most of our caching problems root from the ISP's stupid caching techniques and retarded in-compliant behavior.
What specifically are you talking about? I feel you're talking about Page Caching abilities from the server side (as in ASP.NET, PHP Frameworks,..) rather than the server's caching techniques (like Apache's or IIS). You should know the difference between the levels here.

Web Application -> Web Server -> Proxy -> [Possibly More Levels with Large Websites like Hotmail that balance loads] -> ISP -> You PC.

Almost at every level, there could be possible caching. Keep that in mind.

rolf

Member

Re: Page Caching?

Caching is already implemented by default. Apache does some caching, and sends back "not modified" headers if the requested file is not modified, so as not to send it again. You can increase control by using the php header() function to simulate the above behavior.
Also most (all?) ISP implement transparent proxy caching, sometimes to spare the maximum bandwidth they set up their proxy in very annoying ways.

Kassem

Member

Re: Page Caching?

Thanks for the replies guys. Appreciated.

@ arithma, to answer your question, I'm talking about server-side caching. To be more specific, I'm talking about ASP.NET caching which has amazing abilities when it comes to caching which includes page caching, page fragments, caching by control, data caching... etc.

Kassem

Member

Re: Page Caching?

Ok I guess caching large images on the page would be a good idea. What about videos and swfs? can those be cached/would it affect them in any way? And by the way, what would be a reasonable duration for which the content would still be cached?