Setting cache-control or expires with nginx static only app

sean

igor currently our Apache setup is not great. We're using mpm-itk to secure Apache in our multi-tenant environment, and unfortunately that setup has to spawn a separate httpd process for every single request.

This means, for example, if you have a page that loads 10 images, 2 JS files, and a CSS file the server has to spawn 14 httpd processes to serve the page and all of its resources.

We're working to improve the Apache setup and hope to have some changes rolled out soon.

stephenmwatts

sean Love to hear it! I went with a CDN experiment to see if that would help my problem. It was just simpler for me, and I really don't want to get into managing my own private server stack as long as I can reasonably avoid it. There is still room to speed up serving my application as well. Do you expect your changes to affect things across the board or just with static resources?

stephenmwatts

igor That's what I'm hoping. I just finished a CloudFront implementation last night and submitted a request for verification on the failure. Jury is still out, but it's good to hear I MAY HAVE BEEN on the right track.

sean

stephenmwatts the Apache changes I mentioned are only for Apache apps and are not related to caching.

When we do add caching options they'll be available for all app types.

stephenmwatts

sean okay - yes. Django NGINX Stack. I’m always willing to entertain performance improvement! When you helped me with Memcached, that helped a LOT. Google Page Speed on my critical pages for desktop went up to 98%, so I’m not suffering too badly. Main problem now is too much stuff on each page… I’m thinking CloudFront will help over time as well. Thanks again for your great support!

stephenmwatts

igor I have done something similar with AWS CloudFlare CDN. My Google Verification for Mobile issues still fails because (I believe) several of my resources are not loading due to the fact that there is no "cache-control: max-age<seconds>" header available to the browser. Are you pulling your resources from OpalStack as the origin, or did you set up an origin somewhere that actually handles cache control? If you are pulling from OpalStack, how did you accomplish adding max-age or expires? I can't figure out if I can do it on CloudFlare, and if so, how... I do think I can accomplish it if I move my static resources to S3 and make that the origin, but it would be simpler just to have the CDN add appropriate cache headers if it can.
If you can offer any assistance, I would appreciate it.

igor

stephenmwatts I'm using Opalstack as origin yes. As I mentioned before this is on Apache so I just added caching headers in .htaccess file.

stephenmwatts

sean I changed my mind a bit. I have a private nginx stack set up, and am trying to modify the config file to add appropriate header for cache and, hopefully, gzip to the nginx config file. Best I can tell, the files I load up with my browser still don't serve up with the right headers. Can you have a quick look at the setup for static_media_files_pvt_stk and see if I have things setup correctly? I am more interested in cache than gzip if it comes down to that.

sean

stephenmwatts You need to move your location {...} block that defines your cache settings into the location / {...} block as I described earlier, ie so you have one block nested within the other.

Once you've done so restart your stack.

stephenmwatts

sean Excellent. That's working. Thanks! Now I'll incorporate the new static/media apps and see how it affects the overall site.

I am also trying to enable GZIP, and https://www.giftofspeed.com/gzip-test/ says it isn't happening. Shall I ask the question in another thread, or stick around here. I don't see anything showing up in the response headers - which is where I think it should be... That, and a compressed response of course.

stephenmwatts

sean So, unlike Caching headers, CloudFront CDN seems to be taking care of GZIP for me. Thanks.

Veritas

Are there any options for setting up static cache policies on Nginx on a VPS. Need for WordPress site.

sean

Veritas we hope to make cache options available soon, but for now you'll have to use a private Nginx/FPM stack if you need that sort of configuration.

Veritas

sean

Thanks for the update. We'll stand by until something is rolled up for our configuration.

Thanks Sean!

sean

Good news, cache options are now available!

To use them:

Go to https://my.opalstack.com/apps/.
Click the edit icon for the app that you want to cache.

Use the Cache dropdown list to set your cache expiry:

The "Max" parameter sets the cache headers to the far-ish future:

Expires: Thu, 31 Dec 2037 23:55:55 GMT
Cache-Control: 10 years

The "Epoch" parameter sets the cache headers to the past (ie an explicit "do not cache" policy):

Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache

The remaining cache options are 1 year, 30 days, 1 day, 5 minutes, and "off".

Click "Update Application" to save your settings.

This setup allows you to individually cache each application on a site, so for example you can:

Set a short cache expiry on your site's main application, ie the app served from /.
Set a longer cache expiry on your site's static assets, ie the app served from /static.

If you're a WordPress user you can do something similar to cache your uploaded media:

Set a short cache expiry for your WP app on /.
Create a "Nginx Static Symlink" app pointing to your app's uploads, eg /home/you/apps/appname/wp-content/uploads/.
Edit the new symlink app to set its expiry to "max".
Edit the site to route the new symlink app to /wp-content/uploads.

Please give it a try 🙂

anjanesh

This is superb.

Set a longer cache expiry on your site's static assets, ie the app served from /static.

Do you recommend doing the same for /media of a Django app ?

sean

anjanesh if you want to cache content served from /media then yes, that's my recommendation.

fwkit

Something is wrong, the button "Update application" on the "Cache" popup is frozen and not touchable. I tried many times, Safari and Chrome.

sean

fwkit if you're trying to set the cache on a symlink app, that's currently broken due to a bug. Please email support and we'll set it for you.

If you're trying to set it on a regular PHP app then please ensure that you have a valid PHP version selected in your app's PHP version settings and try again.

If it's some other app type, then please contact support.

fwkit

sean
Thanks. Yes, it was a symlink app. I can wait, np.

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