Clear Cache for Me vs SQLite Object Cache

W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are great caching plugins, but they do not know when a widget is updated. WPEngine is the best place to host your WordPress installation, but their caching system is no smarter when it comes to updating widgets and menus. I created this plugin because my website did not see any changes when saving widgets or menus using these caching systems. Clear Cache For Me will purge ALL your cache each time you do a save without having to press an additional button. It may be overkill, which may be why it’s not built in, but some people need simplicity. In addition to clearing those pesky caching engines, Clear Cache for Me can force your browser to reload your current theme’s CSS and JS files. I modify my theme’s CSS and JS files every so often and always have trouble with the browser not getting the latest version. So now after clicking on the “Clear Cache Now!” button on the dashboard the browser will be forced to reload the current theme’s CSS and JS files. If you do not click the “Clear Cache Now!” button, the browser will cache the CSS and JS files like it normally does. The popular Qode themes has a options to set your own custom CSS and JS. Sometimes you may not see your changes for a long while because your browser is trying to get the cached file. Whenever you save your Qode’s options, the CSS and JS files will be forced to reload in the browser on the public side. Works with the following caching plugins: Autoptimize Breeze Cache Cache Enabler Cloudflare GoDaddy Cache Kinsta Cache LiteSpeed Cache Elementor (CSS cache) Premium Addons for Elementor SiteGround SuperCacher Super Page Cache WP Fastest Cache WP Optimize Cache WP Rocket WP Super Cache W3 Total Cache WPEngine Cache Clears all cache for following actions (requires a caching system above to be active): When Widgets are saved. When Customizer is saved. When Menus are saved. When a fields in Advanced Custom Fields are saved. When a Contact Form 7 form is saved. When a Formidable Form form is saved. When WooThemes settings are saved. When NextGen Gallery albums and galleries are updated (beta – may not clear cache on all actions). When Qode options are saved this plugin forces browsers to reload the custom css and custom js. When a WP Forms forms or settings are saved. When WooCommerce settings are saved. (Cache should already be clearing when products are saved.) When settings from the Insert Headers and Footers plugin by WPBeginner are saved. When Settings from a settings page is saved. This includes settings from WordPress core, Yoast SEO, and most other plugins using the Settings API. When WordPress is updated. When plugins are updated, activated, and deactivated. When WordPress, plugins, and themes are automaticallly updated. See the plugin’s homepage for more details. Note: Since some caching systems run in the shutdown hook, this plugin also runs in that hook. This means if PHP does not have enough time, some code including any hooks within the ccfm_clear_cache_for_all() function are not guaranteed to run. If you need code to run, consider using the ccfm_clear_cache_for_me_setup hook. Some plugins may have “auto purge” (like Cloudflare), but it doesn’t cover all the items this plugin covers. Developer Options ccfm_supported_caching_exists Use this filter to determine if this plugin should do anything including showing the button on the dashboard. Return true if a caching system is supported. Default: True if any of the supported caching systems is active. See Example 1 below. ccfm_admin_init or ccfm_init_actions Use this action to add hooks when cache is to be cleared. Or do any other setup activity. ccfm_clear_cache_for_me_before Use this action to clear cache from an unsupported caching system before the default caching systems clear their cache. ccfm_clear_cache_for_me Use this action to clear cache from an unsupported caching system after the default caching systems clear their cache. Example If you were using an unsupported caching system you’ll need to identify the caching plugin’s class or function which clears the cache. As an example, if the unsupported caching system called the MyOtherCache::clear_all() function, you would use the following code to get this plugin to clear the cache. <?php function my_other_cache_enable( $return = false ) { if ( class_exists( 'MyOtherCache' ) ) return true; return $return; } add_filter('ccfm_supported_caching_exists', 'my_other_cache_enable'); function my_other_cache_clear() { if ( my_other_cache_enable() ) MyOtherCache::clear_all(); } add_action('ccfm_clear_cache_for_me', 'my_other_cache_clear');

A persistent object cache helps your site perform well. This one uses the widely available SQLite3 extension, and optionally the igbinary and APCu extensions to php. Many hosting services offer those extensions, and they are easy to install on a server you control. What is this about? It’s about making your site’s web server perform better. An object cache does that by reducing the workload on your MariaDB or MySQL database. This is not a page cache; these persistent objects go into a different kind of cache. These objects aren’t chunks of web pages ready for people to view in their browsers, they are data objects for use by the WordPress software. Caches are ubiquitous in computing, and WordPress has its own caching subsystem. Caches contain short-term copies of the results of expensive database lookups or computations, and allow software to use the copy rather than repeating the expensive operation. This plugin (like other object-caching plugins) extends WordPress’s caching subsystem to save those short-term copies from page view to page view. WordPress’s cache happens to be a memoization cache. Without a persistent object cache, every WordPress page view must use your MariaDB or MySQL database server to retrieve everything about your site. When a user requests a page, WordPress starts from scratch and loads everything it needs from your database server. Only then can it deliver content to your user. With a persistent object cache, WordPress immediately loads much of the information it needs. This lightens the load on your database server and delivers content to your users faster. Who should use this? If your site runs on a single web server machine, and that server provides the SQLite3 and igbinary extensions to php, this plugin will almost certainly make your site work faster. And if that server provides the APCu extension, this plugin uses it too. Some hosting providers offer redis cache servers. If your provider offers redis, it may be a good choice. You can use it via the Redis Object Cache plugin. Sites using redis have one SQL database and another non-SQL storage server: redis. Other hosting providers offer memcached, which has the Memcached Object Cache plugin. And some large multipurpose cache plugins, such as the LiteSpeed Cache, also offer object caching based on one of those cache server software packages. The cache-server approach to object caching comes into its own when you have multiple load-balanced web server machines handling your site. SQLite doesn’t work correctly in a multiple-web-server environment. But, for single-server site configurations, SQLite, possibly assisted by APCu, performs well. And the vast majority of sites are single-server. APCu APCu is an in-memory storage medium. It lets php programs, like WordPress, store data in shared memory so it’s very fast to retrieve when needed. If APCu is available on your host server, you can configure this plugin to use it. It reduces the typical cache lookup time to one-fifth or less of the SQLite lookup time, which is itself a few tens of microseconds. Performance counts, especially on busy web sites. Please look at Installation to learn how to configure this plugin to use APCu. The plugin works fast without it, and faster with it. WP-CLI: Even if APCu is in use, caching with SQLite is necessary when your web site uses WP-CLI, because WP-CLI programs do not have access to the APCu cache. This plugin writes all cached data both to APCu and to SQLite and makes sure the two are synchronized. WP-CLI You can control this plugin via WP-CLI once you activate it. Please type this command into your shell for details. wp help sqlite-object-cache Credits Thanks to Till Krüss. His Redis Object Cache plugin serves as a model for this one. And thanks to Ari Stathopoulos and Jonny Harris for reviewing this. Props to Matt Jones for finding and fixing a bug that appeared on a heavily loaded system. Thanks to Massimo Villa for testing help, and to nickchomey for a comprehensive code review. All defects are, of course, entirely the author’s responsibility. And thanks to Jetbrains for the use of their software development tools, especially PhpStorm. It’s hard to imagine how a plugin like this one could be developed without PhpStorm’s tools for exploring epic code bases like WordPress’s. How can I learn more about making my WordPress site more efficient? We offer several plugins to help with your site’s database efficiency. You can read about them here.