Matthew TelferSpeed and performance are two of the key factors that every website owner needs to optimise.
One of the best techniques to boost website speed and performance is pre-caching.
What is pre-caching?
Pre-caching involves intelligently loading resources so they are already in place and available for users before they visit a webpage or use an app.
This technology cuts out steps in the usual loading process, meaning that people get to what they need more quickly.
Pre-caching is available for our Reseller Hosting customers to activate through the Website Turbo add-on.
Once activated, we’ll start pre-fetching your websites at all our CDN locations around the globe.
In My20i, you also get access to a Cache Report that shows you the pages we’ve identified, whether they’re cacheable and if they’re not, the reason why not.
This provides a very easy way of identifying and resolving caching issues across their website to give you maximum performance.
The difference between cache and pre-cache
Caching is an important component of rapid content delivery. Caching and pre-caching both involve storing data locally to reduce latency and bandwidth usage.
Pre-caching stores files that are expected to be used, whereas caching deals with files that have already been requested by the user.
Our free and unlimited CDN comes with caching built-in as standard. Website Turbo enables pre-caching.
The benefits of pre-caching
There are loads of benefits that come with pre-caching, including…
⚡ Improved Load Times: By storing resources in advance, pages and applications can load faster.
This is because data can be retrieved more quickly from a local cache than from a remote server, reducing wait times and perceived latency significantly.
📈 Reliability and Availability: Pre-caching make applications more resilient to network fluctuations or downtime.
With resources stored locally, users can access content even in situations with poor connectivity, enhancing reliability – particularly for applications.
🙌 Enhanced User Experience: Faster load times and smoother interactions contribute to a better user experience.
Users are less likely to encounter buffering or lengthy waits while content loads, which can improve satisfaction and engagement.
🗺️ Efficient Bandwidth Use: By reducing the need to repeatedly fetch the same resources from the server, pre-caching can reduce needless bandwidth usage.
This is particularly beneficial for users with limited data plans or in areas with constrained bandwidth availability.
🛜 Support for Offline Use: Pre-caching is a crucial feature for applications designed to function offline as it enables content to be used in the absence of an internet connection.
💽 Reduced Server Load: Pre-caching helps with distributing loads across servers.
Serving cached content reduces the number of requests to the server for the same resources, which can help in managing server resources better and preventing overloading during peak times.
🔐 Enhanced Security : Pre-caching resources can indirectly improve security by mitigating the risk of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
When resources are readily available in cache, servers can handle requests more efficiently, reducing the potential for overload and service disruption that attackers might exploit.
Additionally, pre-caching can limit the number of requests that reach the backend servers as cached content is served directly to the user without the need to query the database or backend systems.
This reduction in direct access requests can decrease the attack surface, lowering the chances of successful network-based attacks, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS), which rely on manipulating backend processes through user requests.
Further reading
Alongside pre-caching, there are other optimisations you can apply to your site to make it even faster:
Richard Chambers
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