Auto Purge Settings

WPinThai
(@wpinthai)

4 days, 10 hours ago
Please can you help me understand the “Auto Purge Rules For Publish/Update” settings in the Litespeed Cache plugin’s Cache menu, Purge tab

Background info …

I have a not-very-busy WordPress WooCommerce website for my flower shop
I sometimes add/change content on my WordPress “static” pages such as “About” and “Delivery”
I sometimes add/change products
Few of the additions/changes above will change my Front Page or Home page
I have no blog, nor user-generated content (such as Comments, Reviews) on the website

My web hosting is shared hosting and my web server seems to max out on resources quite frequently, so I am trying to minimize the need to purge too many pages at once & have to refresh the site cache too much/often.

About the “Auto Purge Rules For Publish/Update” settings …

Under the settings, text says … Select which pages will be automatically purged when posts are published/updated.
- Does the above text apply also to WordPress “static” pages & WooCommerce product and product archive pages?
- When I update one of my WordPress “static” pages or WooCommerce product and product archive pages, will the cache of that pages be automatically purged, whatever options I enable in “Auto Purge Rules For Publish/Update” settings?
In the top row of the settings, the option are … All Pages, Front page, Home page & Pages
- If I enable/check just “Pages”, will all my my WordPress “static” pages or WooCommerce product and product archive pages be purged when I change just one of those pages?
- do you think I should leave all the options in the top row of the settings disabled/unchecked?
In the other rows of the settings, the option are … various “archive” pages
- are they only non-WooCommerce archive pages (i.e. Blog page archives?
- do you think I should leave all the options in the top row of the settings disabled/unchecked?
Many thanks in advance

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

Plugin Support litetim
(@litetim)

2 days, 11 hours ago
Hi,

Good questions. Here is how those settings actually work.

1. Does this apply to static pages and WooCommerce products?
Yes. “Posts” here means any post type: pages, products, and so on. Whenever you publish or update anything, LiteSpeed Cache always purges that item’s own page, no matter which boxes are ticked. The checkboxes only control which other pages get purged along with it.

WooCommerce products also get their product category and product tag pages, see this settings: https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/cache/#woocommerce-tab.

2. The top row
- All pages: purges the entire cache on every update. This is the heaviest option. Keep it off.
- Front page: the page set as your homepage in Settings → Reading. Enable it only if your homepage shows products or content that changes when you edit things (for example “featured” or “new” products).
- Home page: despite the name, this is the WordPress blog posts page (the “Posts page” in Settings → Reading). You have no blog, so you can turn it off.
- Pages: yes, as you guessed(static pages). With this ticked, every WordPress page (About, Delivery, etc.) is purged whenever you update anything, including a single product. For your site you can turn it off, because the page you edit is purged anyway.
- Pages with recent posts: pages that show the “Recent Posts” widget. You have no blog, so turn it off.
3. The archive rows
- Author / Yearly / Monthly / Daily archive: these are blog-style archives. With no blog they aren’t relevant, so turn them off.
- Term archive: category and tag pages, which includes WooCommerce product category pages. It’s cheap, since it only purges the categories the updated item belongs to. It’s fine to keep on, although WooCommerce product categories are purged anyway as mentioned above.
- Post type archive: for products, this is your Shop page. Keep it on if you want the Shop page to show product changes straight away.
Suggested setup for your site:
- ✅ Front page (only if it lists products)
- ✅ Term archive
- ✅ Post type archive
- ❌ Everything else
This keeps each update limited to the item you changed, its categories, the Shop page and (optionally) the homepage.

On rare occasions when you change something site-wide, such as a menu, footer or theme setting, just use Purge All from the admin bar.

Hope this helps!
Thread Starter WPinThai
(@wpinthai)

1 day, 11 hours ago
Hi

Many thanks for your detailed and extremely helpful reply. I have changed my settings as a result!

Perhaps you could arrange for the https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/cache/#purge-tab &/or https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/cache/#woocommerce-tab KB pages to be updated with such info?

One extra thing …

While reading https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/cache/#woocommerce-tab I saw the Note section which said … “It is highly recommended that you enable ESI while using WooCommerce. ESI allows flexible caching of mixed public and private data in an ecommerce environment.”
- BUT also noticed that the “enable ESI” link in the above text is broken – it goes to an error page that says … “This topic does not exist yet”
At the moment, I have ESI disabled in my Litespeed cache plugin, because I thought I did not need ESI. Can you point me to a page (fix the above link?) that explains why & how to use ESI with WooCommerce?

Many thanks in advance
Plugin Support litetim
(@litetim)

1 day, 10 hours ago

@wpinthai Ops 🙂 Our bad. The link will be fixed, I sent to fix.
Correct links should be: https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/cache/#esi-tab

rbabt
(@rbabt)

1 day, 8 hours ago

That is a great bit of information! I’ve just been and disabled all of them options.

On a fairly static service site like ours with no products we really don’t want to be purging anything other than the page we’re working on!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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