LightSpeed Cache with CDN

Although there are other plugins which does similar work, but lightspeed does it in detail and differently.

Lightspeed Cache has been regarded as the topmost plugin for website speed optimization. Although there are other plugins which does similar work, but lightspeed does it in detail and differently.

Now if we look at no of downloads of Lightspeed cache versus others, I found a very interesting pattern. Lightspeed download counts are at 2 million and others like W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, WP-Optimize and all others remain at 1 million or below.

Why Caching

If we talk about caching, server side caching is the utmost important to speed up the websites. This job is done by caching plugins. The caching plugins can cache both static as well as dynamic files. Plugins caches the files at the webserver location and at the host where it is installed. It cannot cache the files at the nearest servicing location of the client.

Why CDN

Now CDN comes into play when static files needed to be cached and distributed across the world prior to servicing any client at the browser. The popular CDN provider like cloudflare does it with the reverse proxy method. With reverse proxy, it fetches the data from the web server for a first time request near the location and then keep a cache of files on the server at that location which it will serve when someone from that area tries to access the website. So this way it does not have to go to the original server to make a request. This functionality is called a reverse proxy. In this case cloudflare acts as proxy for the webserver. This works well for static content, but it can create problem for dynamic html files.

When to use Lightspeed Cache

Lightspeed has got few caveats to work properly, Lightspeed needs Lightspeed webserver, it does not work with other servers like apache, nginx or others. Recently they have introduced QUIC.cloud CDN which can be used for Lightspeed cache. This is especially useful for sites which works on apache, nginx etc. Now to make the server side caching work, the website will have to depend on external QUIC.cloud CDN. It remains extremely problematic to use multiple CDNs. If someone is already having cloudflare CDN and want to use Lightspeed cache, it is like almost switching to QUIC.cloud CDN.

When it comes to using both together, it could create few issues wrt additional configuration. I would not prefer to use both together. It is better to use a Cloudflare CDN with lightspeed cache when the host has Lightspeed server installed.

If you want to use best of both world, check more details below

When not to use Lightspeed Cache

If the web server is apache or any other than Lightspeed server, it is not advisable to use lightspeed cache as the server side caching is best done on the web server rather than on CDN like QUIC.cloud.

Please let me know your experience and thoughts on same.

Author: Rajnish K

About Author : 

Rajnishk is founder of studyobject.com , R&D Expert ,passionate for Web Stack. He can be reached at [email protected]m

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