Batcache: New WordPress Caching Plugin

Batcache is a fresh caching wordpress plugin on the scene that will keep your shared hosting server up when Digg hits your site. After the WP-Supercache built on the success of WP-cache, the new caching wordpress plugin Batcache promises to be different.

But when I am super satisfied that WP-Supercache is working great on our site and recommend it as one of the most essential wordpress plugins, why should I use Batcache?

Why use Batcache?

Andy Skelton, creator of Batcache explains that WP-Super-Cache is good for anyone with a single web server with a writable wp-content/cache directory, but in enterprises with multiple servers that don’t share disk space, Batcache comes in useful where you can’t or won’t use file-based caching.

By default it looks for URLs that receive more than two hits from unrecognized users in two minutes. When a URL’s traffic crosses that threshold, Batcache caches the document for five minutes. You can configure these numbers any way you like, or turn off traffic metering and send documents right to the cache.

Once a document has been cached, it is served to eligible visitors until it expires. This is one place where Batcache is different. Most other caches delete cached documents as soon as the underlying data changes. Batcache doesn’t care if it’s serving old data because “old” is relative (and configurable).

Some people may see older pages when they have not interacted with your web site before. However, once they have logged in or left a comment they will always get fresh pages.

So does it work out of the box like other plugins? No. You need to have Memcached working first. Memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load, initially developed by Danga Interactive to enhance the speed of LiveJournal.com.

There are lot of updates and to-do lists lined up to improve batcache, and the author says it’s so experimental that it doesn’t even have a version number!