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I am keen to get some more information on cached pages.

I currently have a store through wordpress/woocommerce and use hummingbird to cache pages.

On of the options is to opt to serve cached pages to logged in users and suggests allowing this could cause issues.

when I searched google on this subject, there where a lot of site owners asking how to stop serving cached content to logged in users...

I notice, however, that if i am not logged in, the pages load quickly as im receiving the cached version, when I log in, there is a noticeable increase in page load time.

Is this a genuine issue, is it genuinely recommended that I do not serve cached pages to logged in users? if so, could someone explain why? potential pros/cons etc?

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One important consideration is how dynamic the content on your site is. If the content changes frequently because of updates, a search, or some other criteria, a visitor might see a cached page rather than the current content of the page.

If your site is mostly static HTML then caching is unlikely to be a problem.

Most caching solutions include a TTL (time to live) that you may be able to set for yourself. e.g. the TTL may be 1 hour for frequently updated sites or 1 week for a site that rarely changes.

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  • Thank you for your answer. So if i am right in my understanding... If I make any changes to my website, I normally clear the cache so that I can see the effect straight away, so that I know it has had the desired effect. The fact that I clear the cache, I am assuming then would mean that there would be very little if any negative effects on serving the cached pages to a logged in user? Is TTL similar to or the same as the far future expiry date?
    – SupGen
    Aug 16 '18 at 11:16
  • Clearing the cache may have the changes be available straight away, but there could also be browser caching, server caching and even ISP caching. They are all an effort to reduce speed, bandwidth or the amount of work done. Yes, TTL is the same as the expiry date.
    – Steve
    Aug 16 '18 at 21:50
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You don't want a page generated for a logged in user to be put in the cache. That page might have sensitive information on it. For example, it might have the users shopping cart. If a page generated for a specific user gets put into the cache, the page may be served to other users from the cache.

The obvious solution there would be to only put non-logged in pages INTO the cache. But then there is the problem of logged in users getting the basic page that says "please login" and which isn't personalized with important info like their shopping cart. So if every page on your site includes customized information for the current logged in user, you can't used cached pages for logged in users.

Some caching plugins may allow you to do more granular caching. For example just caching the main body of the page that isn't customized for a logged in user. If you caching plugin has options for that, you may be able to tune it rather than disable it entirely for logged in users.

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