Support for proxy caches

Does LiveWhale support proxy caches?

Yes.

If your Apache server cannot handle incoming connections fast enough (whether for web pages, css, javascripts, images, etc.) then this is where a proxy cache can help. You will want to configure your cache to handle requests for content within designated css/js/image directories so that overall perceived page loads are affected, as this is where a real world benefit will be seen.

We do not recommend using a proxy cache for individual web pages, however, except potentially for your homepage or other select pages that may receive extremely high traffic. LiveWhale has its own cache layer which typically performs as well as a proxy cache for requests of web pages. For example, the Squid proxy cache only improves the request for a page by less than one millisecond. The LiveWhale page cache also ensures that content is refreshed frequently enough that your user base will be able to see changes to their dynamic content reflected on their web pages. If you do use a proxy cache with web pages anyway, you should ensure that it does not cache requests with query strings, as these are server-side scripts that need to bypass proxy cache behavior, and avoid caching content behind a login for security reasons.