File-Based Extension to the WordPress Object Cache

WordPress 2.5 has just been released, and has users are quickly finding out, file-based object caching has been removed from this release.

We’ve just released another extension to the WordPress object cache mechanism, supplementing our existing plugins for adding eAccelerator and XCache support to WordPress’s object caching features.

NeoSmart Technologies’ File-Based object caching extension for WordPress re-implements the cache-to-disk object caching feature of WordPress 2.0 through to 2.2. NeoSmart Technologies is also committed to the maintenance and support of the file-based caching mechanism.

Please be careful with the use of this plugin. It’s been disabled in the default WordPress codebase since WordPress 2.1 as a result of certain shared webhosts complaining of increased disk I/O access and thrashing when WordPress is subjected to extreme load times (as in the event of a Digg or Slashdot attack); so make sure your disk is fast enough to make it worth using this extension.

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WordPress 2.5 and the Object Cache…

Caching and Why We Need It

Ever since the creation of interpreted languages and the birth of dynamic web content, developers have been on the lookout for tools, workarounds, and extensions in search of a solution for a solution to bring maximum performance to the world of dynamically-generated web pages.

Perhaps the simplest, most straight-forward, and most effective of these solutions is the caching technique. In most caching implementations, the dynamic content generated by user requests to a particular URI on a server trigger the caching mechanism which then stores the generated content in a "storage facility" somewhere. Future requests to the same URI retrieve the stored content rather than spend time and effort re-creating the response.

The most-popular method of caching involves the archiving of the complete HTML response generated by the webserver and then stored as a static content on the hard drive for retrieval at a later date (usually with some mechanism responsible for expiring the content upon certain actions or after a set amount of time).

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