Web hosting includes a caching reverse HTTP/S proxy. All traffic to the website is first processed on a proxy server, where static website content such as static pages, images, CSS, JavaScript, etc. is stored (cached). Repeated requests for the same document are subsequently handled directly on the proxy server without the need for processing by the web server itself. Thanks to this, the performance of the web server is saved, which can thus be fully used for processing dynamic requests by PHP scripts.
An HTTP proxy speeds up the handling of static content, especially when the site has high traffic. The performance of the proxy is not limited in any way for individual websites, thus significantly increasing the possible website traffic compared to a normal solution.
To get the most of the benefits of proxies, it is necessary to have static content caching enabled on the website (it is enabled by default on our servers). Furthermore, it is very important to use caching in the web application itself, when dynamic pages (which do not change much) are saved as static content and these pages can then be cached on the proxy:
On the contrary, the dynamic content of the website can be displayed with a negligible delay (which the visitor should not register in any way) – the cause of this delay is the necessity of processing the request first on the proxy server and then on the web server.
The proxy server is fully transparent and the page looks and behaves exactly the same as without a proxy for the visitor. In the same way, from the point of view of the web application, nothing changes and there is no need to make any modifications to the website, except for the already mentioned caching of the page content.
The proxy server for WEDOS web hosting uses the Apache Traffic Server software – this is a high-performance caching proxy, originally developed as a commercial project for Yahoo! (where it is still used), currently being developed as an open-source project within the Apache Foundation.
- https://kb.wedos.com/en/web-hosting/htaccess-en/htaccess-caching-of-files-in-the-browser/
- https://kb.wedos.com/en/web-hosting/php-en/error-503-service-temporarily-unavailable/
I’m Having Trouble Loading the Current Content
If you are still seeing cached content in your browser, fresh content can be requested by refreshing the page with Shift + F5. Some browsers will prefer CTRL + F5.
Turning on the console with the F12 key can also help.
In extreme cases, you can turn off caching with .htaccess commands:
# DISABLE CACHING
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Cache-Control “no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate”
Header set Pragma “no-cache”
Header set Expires 0
</IfModule>