MSCache Varnish Purge for WordPress

MSCache Varnish Purge helps WordPress administrators purge the Varnish cache for sites running behind a Varnish HTTP reverse proxy. It is developed by Managed Server S.r.l. and provides settings for configuring the Varnish connection, automatic cache invalidation when content changes, and manual purge tools available from the WordPress admin area.

This plugin is useful when your WordPress site sits behind Varnish and you need cached pages to be invalidated after content is published or updated, or on demand. It requires a reachable Varnish instance whose VCL is configured to accept PURGE requests from the WordPress server (see the FAQ for a reference VCL).

The settings page is available at Settings → MSCache Varnish Purge. On WordPress Multisite, shared connection settings are configured at Network Admin → Settings → MSCache Network, while each site keeps its own purge options.

Key Features

Asynchronous raw socket PURGE — sends PURGE requests via a direct TCP socket (fsockopen) without waiting for the Varnish response, so the purge request does not block the WordPress request.

Automatic purge on content changes — when a post, page, or custom post type is published, updated, trashed, or deleted, the plugin automatically purges the affected URLs including the post itself, home page, categories, tags, author archives, and date archives.

Full cache purge — supports multiple methods for purging the entire cache: PURGE wildcard, PURGE custom path, or BAN with configurable header.

Additional URLs — define a list of extra paths to purge alongside content changes or on demand.

Exclusion patterns — define glob or regex patterns for URLs that should be excluded from caching. Matching requests receive the ms-cache: excluded HTTP header, which can be used by Varnish to skip caching.