W3 Total Cache – Possible to have custom expiry for different post types?

First of all, great plugin that has helped a lot in optimizing my sites.

There are however a number of questions on the features of W3 Total Cache that I have been wanting to ask:

1. The TTL of the page cache is the same as the browser cache TTL. Why is this the case? I would think that a feature to allow users to set custom expiry for different post types would be ideal. Something similar to WP Fastest Cache or Cloudflare using their page rules system. Essentially these two system use URL patterns combined with regex to specify cache timeout and various other options. The rationale is that sometimes a site has a lot of static posts that does not need to be recached or purged, while concurrently having archive / categories / pages that list posts of which the first 5 pages or so should be purged frequently due to frequent updates. It would be very inefficient having to re-cache thousands of posts for a short period just to accommodate the updates that supposed to be reflected only on the first few pages of the archive pages. Because of this, one cannot set the expiry longer. But if one were to set it to a shorter period says 2 days, as there are so many static posts, sometimes the archive pages are not cached at all.

Another point would be that, the target of the browser cache and the page cache are essentially different. While the browser cache is mainly aiming at repeat visitors, the disk page cache is more beneficial for new visitors. To increase the expiry for the disk page cache, one will have to increase the expiry of the browser cache, essentially making repeat visitors unable to see fresh updates due to the longer expiry. But if one were to set a shorter expiry, then the site would become slower to new visitors. There needs to be a solution that helps large sites to cache more efficiently.

It would be great if this feature can be added into W3 Total Cache. If however a solution is already available but I wasn’t aware of it, please kindly enlighten me. Thanks so much.