A new caching plugin: Wonder Cache

I’m excited to announce a brand new caching plugin, Wonder Cache. It’s a simple yet powerful caching plugin. It powers and abilities include: superhuman strength and durability. It’s forked from Batcache.

First of all, I want to highlight Batcache. It’s an amazing caching plugin that empowers WordPress.com around a decade. We definitely say it’s a battle-tested in many ways. And It’s one of my favorite plugins all the time. (check my answer on Quora)

How does Batcache work?

Batcache designed to work with persistent object cache (especially Memcached). Which means, it keeps rendered data in the memory. And it addresses cached content with a unique key per requested URL. This is how it access cached output immediately and serve the page from cache.

When the idea was born?

I see the problem while working on Powered Cache and simply the Pull Requests are not enough the solve those problems.

1. Batcahe is great, but it’s not a consumer product for the end-users. The installation is different than a normal WordPress plugin (and requires extra effort by nature).
2. Thankfully some of managed hosting companies provide object-cache backend but still not suitable for the majority. Which means you might not use batcache on the shared hosting environment. I’m pretty sure there are many multisite setups that work on shared hosting.
3. Depends on object cache.

The tech evolves

The initial code of the Batcache has written around 10 years ago and it hasn’t changed much more because it doesn’t need to. Meanwhile, the tech kept evolving.

• SSD disks are used broadly by hosting companies.
• PHP7.x is faster than ever. (comparing to 10 years ago, not PHP 7.4 to 7.x)
• RAM is getting cheaper too, but not comparable with an SSD drive

Roughly tested:

I get almost the same results with Memcache on the local setup. When you are using memcached without socket, there will be network IO too, so it’s an expected result.

Where the name comes from?

It comes from Wonder Woman. (There is a funny story between “WP Super Cache” and “Batcache”). I thought it would be nice to see a female superhero on the WordPress.org repository.

What are your superpowers again?

We are not rich as Automattic, so Wonder Cache would be great replacement where Batcache is not practical or not desired 🤣

According to the DC Comics wiki for Wonder Woman, the hero’s powers and abilities include: superhuman strength and durability (both assets during big battles); the power of flight (she can glide through the air on currents in the wind); superhuman speed, reflexes, and agility; finally, enhanced senses, including smell, vision, and hearing.

Features

• Wonder Cache has longer TTL by default 🙂 You can read the reason above “strength and durability”
• Dead-simple. The advanced-cache drop-in will be generated on the fly.
• No configuration needed; Yup! There is no settings page, just turn it on and relax.
• No dependency; you don’t need an object-cache backend.
• Compatible with multisite 🙌

You may wonder, why I made this plugin instead of adding those features to Powered Cache. The reasons are; It’s fun to make it a stand-alone plugin and I might adopt it Powered Cache.

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me ’bout the blue blue sky

Lemon Tree

Thanks for reading.

PS: I’ve submitted to WP.org repository, and I’d like thanks to meta team for making new plugin submissions even easier.