Cache Lifetime setting for Guest users in ACP

[WebCMS]

On IC cloud, Guest users who are not logged-in are served with cached pages which are cached for 15 minutes which is too long and not good for conversions/sign-ups. There is currently no way to configure this setting.

People want to see the web pages and site activity before they decide to go through sign up. If the pages are refreshing once in 15 minutes, that's a bummer! Using the same setting for ALL the sites, regardless of their activity, is not optimal. It should be based on the site traffic and activity.

Please provide an option in the ACP to set Cache-Lifetimes: 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

Site operators will choose an ideal cache lifetime based on the site traffic and activity which are controlled per-site using PHP.

This will not disable caching but allows the minimum lifetime to be set to 5 minutes for guest users. For newer sites with least activity, 5 minutes is very ideal. 15 minutes will kill newer sites.

Edited December 14, 2023 by WebCMS

[Jim M]

52 minutes ago, WebCMS said:

If the pages are refreshing once in 15 minutes

Keep in mind that it is a maximum of 15 minutes. If guest A goes to page 1 and guest B goes to page 1 two minutes later, guest B gets a cached version but that cached version is only 2 minutes old (hardly doubt much if any new content has appeared). However, if guest A and guest B, never go to the same page, neither will receive cached data.

[WebCMS]

30 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Keep in mind that it is a maximum of 15 minutes. If guest A goes to page 1 and guest B goes to page 1 two minutes later, guest B gets a cached version but that cached version is only 2 minutes old (hardly doubt much if any new content has appeared). However, if guest A and guest B, never go to the same page, neither will receive cached data.

Yep, understood. However, on new sites, due to low traffic, guest users almost always get served with cached pages regardless of if it is 5 minutes or 15 minutes (because there is only guest A but no guest B), so 5 minutes would be more ideal and shorter based on activity. They want to see the activity first if it is worth even going through the pains of signing up.

Edited December 14, 2023 by WebCMS

[Jim M]

Believe there is a misunderstanding still. If there is low traffic, guests would not get served cached pages because they would be the first guest to view it. If Guest A views Page 1 and then 15 (actual) minutes elapses, then Guest B comes to view Page 1 then Guest B would get live data.

If the traffic is low as well, odds will certainly be greater that you wouldn’t have new content in that time period either.

I would encourage you to build your community and not yet worry about this 🙂 . We have thousands of communities on our Cloud and it has only been brought up less than a handful of times so I would worry about building your community and less about settings ❤️

[My Sharona]

Is there a way to increase/lessen the cache times for guests?

I can see a scenario where, due to the nature of a site, you have a lot of guests at certain points and it would be ideal to have lesser cache times in those instances.

[Randy Calvert]

This specifically is for cloud hosted customers.  And no, the times cannot be adjusted up or down for cloud hosted customers as it’s managed at the IPS infrastructure layer. 

[Marc Stridgen]

2 hours ago, My Sharona said:

Is there a way to increase/lessen the cache times for guests?

I can see a scenario where, due to the nature of a site, you have a lot of guests at certain points and it would be ideal to have lesser cache times in those instances.

There is no way in which to decrease this on cloud, no.

[WebCMS]

On 12/13/2023 at 8:50 PM, Jim M said:

If the traffic is low as well, odds will certainly be greater that you wouldn’t have new content in that time period either.

While using the website, do logged-in users refresh cache for guests? Or is the cache meant for guests refreshed only by guests?

 

Edited December 16, 2023 by WebCMS

[Jim M]

7 hours ago, WebCMS said:

While using the website, do logged-in users refresh cache for guests? Or is the cache meant for guests refreshed only by guests?

 

Neither. A page only gets put into cache when a guest views it. It gets taken out from cache 15 min later.  It does not get put back into cache till another guest views it and starts that process over again.

[WebCMS]

That means guests generate cache meant for guests (logged-in users do not refresh cache meant for guests). If any new content is created after a cache is created, guests have to wait until it expires to see the new content (until then, they will see the stale pages). Typically before each page view, the logic checks to see if its cache is expired, if so it will regenerate cache or else it will use the cache.

Wondering for reasons why caching on IC cloud is implemented at the infra level instead of at the individual website level as data is specific to each website and not common to all websites (We are referring to data caching here or caching entire pages, not op code caching)

Edited December 17, 2023 by WebCMS

[Randy Calvert]

You’re thinking in very static terms here. There is not “one cache”. 

Each physical point of presence in the CDN network has its own cache. This means if a user in Washington DC accesses the content at 12:01 a user in Chicago accessing the same page at 12:09 would not get that cached version as it came from different edge servers.  There are over 300 unique physical locations around the world for the CDN that IPS uses.  So in reality… most “real” users are not getting old versions of content. 

And this kind of action is done because a MAJORITY of users don’t gain anything by having shorter periods of time. Even a site with hundreds of users online at a time are not accessing the same page/content AND also coming from the same physical location. 

You’re paying IPS to manage the infrastructure and to make users get a good experience. Let them do that.  Caching is a good thing. For example it helps SEO as Google (a guest) gets a super fast version of the site. It reduces the risk and impact of DDoS attacks as cached content does not generate server load and allows the network to scale more effectively. It also allows IPS to control infrastructure costs and not need to charge you as much to deliver cached content to what in a majority of cases is not even a real human viewing content as a guest. (Did you know that basically 50 percent of ALL web traffic comes from bots?!)  The value derived from serving that “live” is even further minimized.

 

[My Sharona]

2 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

Even a site with hundreds of users online at a time are not accessing the same page/content AND also coming from the same physical location.

Guests from, say a 300-mile radius, are accessing a sole server and getting cached pages. 

It is possible to have a national/global appeal and for it to also be very localized.

[Jim M]

12 hours ago, WebCMS said:

(logged-in users do not refresh cache meant for guests)

Time is the only thing which will refresh cache. It seems like you're still understanding this as cache is in place till a guest is on page for 15 min or something that someone is doing to refresh the cache. That would be incorrect. If a guest views a page, that page is put into cache and then 15 min of real, actual time of if an individual is on the page or not, and it expires and is gone from cache. The 15 min timer is independent of if anyone is on that page or not and any other action they would be doing, it is just pure time 🙂 . Then next guest to view the page will be live content.

[My Sharona]

@Jim M Would this apply to Live Topics as well?

[Matt]

19 hours ago, My Sharona said:

@Jim M Would this apply to Live Topics as well?

No, live topics are not cached.

The vast majority of traffic for any forum is guest traffic. This can be from bots, as well as people coming in from external links. We have some communities that may have 1500 people online, but 10,000 guests. Caching via CDN allows us to serve that traffic without touching any processing (PHP/MySQL/Redis, etc) for maximum efficiency. The cache lasts for around 15 minutes which is absolutely fine for communities. If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up. Logged in members will be served the live pages, not the CDN cache.

[Matt]

As an addendum, I would say that a core part of any community strategy is to convert guests into members. Members have more tools including notifications to make your site more 'sticky'.

Allowing guests too much scope will reduce the number of sign-ups you ultimately get. There is a balance of course, I dislike things like restricting viewing attachments (often photos) to members only and restricting the number of topics they read, but finding ways to encourage registration is a good long term strategy.

[My Sharona]

45 minutes ago, Matt said:

No, live topics are not cached.

Interesting. Thank you for the clarification.

[Joel R]

17 hours ago, Matt said:

If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up.

I've never seen any Guest Messages that encourage members to sign-up for instant updates.  

But maybe we should!  If you're hosting a community that has major events (like sporting events), it could be a best practice to have an Announcement ready and prepped and targeted to Guests, so that when the event starts, you simply activate the Announcement.  

Speed of news - not just the content of news, but how quickly the news is breaking - has value.  And maybe that's something we should be leveraging more as independent communities.