Moving Caching from PHP to the Web Server
PHP application-level caching plugins incur overhead because every request must still initialize PHP and WordPress execution. In contrast, Nginx FastCGI micro-caching intercepts requests at the server level, delivering fully cached static HTML in under 50 milliseconds.
Pairing FastCGI Cache with Redis
While Nginx FastCGI serves static page requests directly to visitors, Redis persistent object caching accelerates backend queries, admin interactions, and WooCommerce dynamic carts, providing balanced full-stack performance.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Nginx FastCGI caching saves compiled HTML output directly on the server filesystem, allowing Nginx to serve requests without executing PHP or MySQL.
Redis stores database query results and WordPress object caches in memory (RAM), eliminating repetitive database lookups on dynamic pages.
Yes. Nginx cache rules inspect session cookies (such as wp-postpass, wordpress_logged_in, and woocommerce_items_in_cart) to bypass cache for authenticated sessions.
Server-cached responses typically deliver TTFBs between 20ms and 80ms globally when paired with an edge CDN.
Yes. As long as the Elementor editor endpoint (`elementor-preview`) bypasses cache, frontend pages serve smoothly from server cache.
