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Article from 2007
2008+ version -- throw your assets into CloudFront (or another CDN of choice), let CDN handle the caching. ;)
Article from 2007
Yep, I was surprised too to see it on HN :). I think one of the meta-takeaway is that understanding the fundamentals of web caching can help with your general CS knowledge ("There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." -- Phil Karlton). Looking at Apache, we see a few strategies: * Include last-modified metadata * Include content metadata (eTag/md5 of content) * Include…
Also there are may be many layers of caching between you and the user; not only HTTP caching in the browser, but you have to take into consideration any CDN's (Akamai, etc) and sometimes even caching reverse proxies in corporations.
At my previous job, we handled the versioning with deployment-time rewriting of the assets included in the base page to include the version number (As tagged by the build software with branch name + build number).
That said, enabling browser side caching was a huge win for page speed on the site.
This is a great article for an introduction to HTTP caching. It's well-written and even covers how to set up caching in Apache.
Thanks for the kind words (I'm the author). My main, ever-evolving goal when writing tutorials is to try to write what I'd like to see: 1) Explain the underlying concept 2) Show variations 3) Explain how to do it yourself 4) Show how to verify you did it correctly 5) Meta: be as concise as possible, maximize bang for the buck
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the kind words (I'm the author). My main, ever-evolving goal when writing tutorials is to try to write what I'd like to see: 1) Explain the underlying concept 2) Show variations 3) Explain how to do it yourself 4) Show how to verify you did it correctly 5) Meta: be as concise as possible, maximize bang for the buck
I really enjoyed your writing style. It didn't push its (successful!) attempts at humor and used them sparingly enough to be a joy when they were read.
This is a great article for an introduction to HTTP caching. It's well-written and even covers how to set up caching in Apache.
Thanks for the kind words (I'm the author). My main, ever-evolving goal when writing tutorials is to try to write what I'd like to see: 1) Explain the underlying concept 2) Show variations 3) Explain how to do it yourself 4) Show how to verify you did it correctly 5) Meta: be as concise as possible, maximize bang for the buck
Be careful with ETags if you're serving content from a web-farm - http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
There's an entire section in there devoted just to caching in HTTP. Very well worth reading in its entirety.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
2008+ version -- throw your assets into CloudFront (or another CDN of choice), let CDN handle the caching. ;)
I know you say that in jest, but I would say that it is still good to know the underlying technology. It is much easier to debug issues in the future once you understand them.