Preloading cache

https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/crawler/
https://blog.litespeedtech.com/2017/06/14/wpw-crawl-your-site-make-it-fly/

Unfortunately my webhost does not allow to enable the crawler…

You can use other methods that do the same like crawler. Check this:

https://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by serpentdriver.

It seems like for the moment WP Rocket is your best bet here. Even when te crawler is enabled, WP Rocket is far better in maintaining pages in cache against LS Cache. For instance WP Rocket automatically preloads any changed (and purged) page whereas LS Cache is losing the cache until the crawler has crawled the whole site again.

That said: it probably has to do with the technical considerations too. WP Rocket seems far more reliable on serving cached content. Not sure why, but I’m seeing regular cache misses even when absolutely nothing on the site happens and TTL set at 1 week. WP Rocket serves content from cache until TTL expires when it will preload automatically again.

In theory, there is no need for a daily or hourly (or whatever interval) cron to crawl when all content is simply cached. There’s only need for a new crawl when specific pages get purged because of changes (and then only these pages need to be crawled) or expired TTL which can be a week or even more.

WP Rocket is far more superior on this prelod topic.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Maurice.

whereas LS Cache is losing the cache until the crawler has crawled the whole site again.

This is wrong. You don’t need crawler to get a URL being cached. Every HTTP request will cache it. This can be a normal user request, a request from bot or whatever.

WP Rocket is a PHP driven cache. Cache Plugin for WP is a webserver driven cache. Cache plugin for WP is only a control panel to control the webserver. This is a huge difference. With WP Rocket you need both, webserver and PHP interpretor. With LScache you need only webserver. That means, the load for running cache is much higher than with LScache. You are on a shared hosting with very restricted resources, so why wasting these restricted resources for superfluous processes that costs load you don’t have on a shared hosting?

Anyway…. If your webhost allows .htaccess override add the code below to your .htaccess and see if crawler works.

<IfModule Litespeed>
  CacheEngine on crawler
</IfModule>

Learn more about which advantages you get with crawler:
https://blog.litespeedtech.com/2017/06/14/wpw-crawl-your-site-make-it-fly/

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by serpentdriver.

The thing with caching is it all about performance for the enduser/visitor on the website and nothing else. The exact technique being used not that important.

So I do agree with you that when cached, LS Cache performs better. But WP Rocket keeps pages in cache while LS Cache depends on a crawler that comes by on a regular base. Even then, after the crawler has come by, some pages are still cache “missed” and end up slow loading the first time. This could be to a page update, plugin update etc. WP Rocket preloads the changed page immediately after saving which brings far more reliable performance.

It would be different when LS Cache is able to reliably keep pages in cache like WP Rocket does. Better performance, better conversion and more visitors due to a better ranking/CWV. Consistant performance is viable for sites like webshops, blogs with ads or affiliate based websites.

@emiz0r
You seem to be very new with LiteSpeed and LScache and you don’t have enough experience with it, but anyway, if you think a PHP script is better than a webserver HTTP cache you should continue using technology from the last century.