Deleting Nginx cache via WordPress plugin

marowi

Hey guys,

does anyone have instructions on how to get the Nginx Helper plugin from rtCamp or Nginx Cache from Till Krüss to work? I am unable to delete the cache via plugin. I have already found the corresponding cache directory:

/var/nginx_cache/mydomain.com

And defined it in the wp-config.php:

define( 'RT_WP_NGINX_HELPER_CACHE_PATH', '/var/nginx_cache/mydomain.com' );

But it doesn't work and seems to be due to missing permissions.

Does anyone use one of these plugins and can help?

Best regards
Manuel

rdbf

marowi does anyone have instructions on how to get the Nginx Helper plugin from rtCamp or Nginx Cache from Till Krüss to work? I am unable to delete the cache via plugin.

Enhance uses FastCGI, which you can clear via the hosting panel and is integrated with Nginx. What's the benefit of using a 3rd party plugin then?

marowi /var/nginx_cache/mydomain.com

Your user (that runs php-fpm) can write inside the /var/www/<id>/ folder, not in /var/nginx_cache, that's for the www-data user (nginx/fastcgi). Just as the plugin says, that won't work.

marowi

It's one less step if you can delete the FastCGI cache directly in WordPress and don't have to log into the hosting panel every time.

This is also useful if several users are working on a website and not all of them necessarily have access to the hosting panel.

rdbf

marowi It's one less step if you can delete the FastCGI cache directly in WordPress and don't have to log into the hosting panel every time.

If you need to purge/delete FastCGI cache all the time (I assume when developing/designing?), why not disable it until the website is ready to take advantage of caching? That will save you even more time than constantly figuring out if FastCGI is the one causing caching issues each time, and precautionary purging it at every step.

marowi

Yes, I would not activate the FastCGI cache for dev sites. But I have some customers who are constantly working on their website, making minor changes to the header and footer or creating new pop-ups for marketing purposes. Many also still use the Elementor Page Builder, which is known for creating lots of CSS files for all kinds of things. This often leads to problems with page caching.

Perhaps it's not such a big problem with Nginx, because as far as I know, content is only cached for 60 minutes. Most WordPress caching plugins keep it for many hours. Still, I would have felt more comfortable if customers could delete the cache themselves directly in WordPress.

rdbf

marowi But I have some customers who are constantly working on their website, making minor changes to the header and footer or creating new pop-ups for marketing purposes. Many also still use the Elementor Page Builder, which is known for creating lots of CSS files for all kinds of things. This often leads to problems with page caching.

If it's one customer working on one website, could a Collaborator user account in the Control Panel not give them what they need to clear it? Anyways, I'm not trying to change your business, just mentioning options; 3rd party plugins can't do this, due to the separation of nginx and php-fpm users with Enhance. Elementor can be an extra headache...... Elementor internal cache -> FastCGI cache / Redis cache / OPcache -> CDN cache -> Browser cache, drives designers crazy sometimes,

marowi

Unfortunately, it's not just one customer, otherwise access to the hosting panel would be a solution. Often, several people work on a website, and in this case, it would have been easier to be able to delete the FastCGI cache in WordPress.

Hmm, too bad that's not possible.

smitty

@marowi I have the exact same position as you on this -- many clients always making changes, resulting in broken caches. And to be unable to clear FastCGI within WordPress is a a big headache for us, because we have to train them to how to do it via Enhance.

I've started on a work-around for this, which i'll admit, is a bit of a hack:

Create a new server-side API endpoint specifically listening for FastCGI clearing requests
The API endpoint then send a message to Enhance (via Enhance API) to clear the FastCGI cache for that website
Write a lightweight MU plugin for WordPress that speaks directly to your custom API from step 1 to send that request.

The reason for the middleman? So you do not expose your Enhance API (and credentials!) to the WordPress website.

That's all I've got so far. I wish there was an easier way, and Enhance mentioned that it was something they could fix in another thread here, but have not implemented it yet.

marowi

smitty Interesting solution, but sounds quite complicated too. I think I'll stick with the hosting panel for now, and maybe the Enhance team will find a easier solution in the future.

Andrei

Ideally, there should be a WordPress plugin that automatically clears the cache when content is updated. Easy Engine is doing this with their Nginx Helper plugin, Runcloud with their own plugin. Unfortunately, Enhance is not very focused on Nginx, which is a shame, the Nginx stack could definitely receive some love.