A Joomla CMS plugin for high traffic (or SEO concerned) websites compatible with RFC 7234 optimized for fault-tolerant and very fast responses (from > 1s to < 0.05s) while requiring 4-10 times cheaper hardware.
Since the idea of making the site faster is more than install a plugin, this section give a quickstart on the topic.
- Download a version
- For example, the latest version from https://github.com/alligo/joomla_plg_system_alligovarnish/archive/refs/heads/master.zip.
- Upload to your Joomla test site, like any other Joomla plugin.
- It can be a test version of the real site. A localhost installation could be used for basic testing, but full implementation with Varnish would require that even your test site is served by Varnish.
- Enable the plugin and check potential incompatibilities with other plugins.
- The Joomla plugin "System - Cache" (on disk:
plugins/system/cache) while is recommended to be used for big sites without Varnish-Cache and a a lot of free disk space, may be not incompatible with this plugin, but may not increase performance. Do your tests. - Note: the cache configurations for Joomla on
Administrator Panel > System > Cache configurationsstill worth to NOT disable. They are important for reusable parts of the site (like cache at module level). Reason: while this plugin works as full page cache (at server level, on Varnish or equivalent), the cache done by Joomla for modules is important to keep it enabled, even if for short time! 1. Example: if a slow efficient module (like one that request weather for a city, or currency quotations) is slow (as in 0.3s) and is loaded on all pages of your site, Varnish will be 0.3s faster for each first page it caches.
- The Joomla plugin "System - Cache" (on disk:
- Customize each functionality of the plugin
- This plugin requires configuration and testing based on how you're
caching servers operate. This is why it has so many options and is
inviable create a generic version of Varnish
default.vclfor everyone.
- This plugin requires configuration and testing based on how you're
caching servers operate. This is why it has so many options and is
inviable create a generic version of Varnish
Since joomla_plg_system_alligovarnish mostly give hints of how content should be cached, it requires some frontend caching server even to maximize use on Browser caching to remove the cookies when the user is not authenticated.
You must select one option.
The cheapest way to do it yourself (or some expert contracted by you using this plugin) have one or more Varnish servers. Since the community version of Varnish does not offer HTTPS, our recommendation is serve the HTTPS with NGinx.
Visitor -> NGinx (HTTPS) -> Varnish -> YourSiteProtip: at bare minimum, compared to standard Varnish configuration, options remove cookies used by Joomla for non-authenticated users is necessary. Without this, both Varnish (or equivalent) will not cache.
Recommended reading:
- Varnish references
- Published examples using varnish
- The @mattiasgeniar have some references like varnish-6.0-configuration-templates
Short answer: yes, it is possible.
Long answer: While it is possible to use NGinx to replace entirely Varnish-Cache (not just to serve the HTTPS layer, a role that NGinx is perfect), the end result would be less than "4-10 times cheaper hardware". Yes, is possible, but not as efficient. One main argument to not recommend this if is viable use Varnish is that the end result will be harder to debug, in special when cache invalidation is necessary.
The joomla_plg_system_alligovarnish is tested against customized Varnish servers, but since it abstract RFC 7234, and try to be as flexible as possible, it is likely to make easier to use other providers.
Sadly, some, like Cloudflare, will not provide caching for Joomla generated content (the HTML versions, not the images) on the free option like is possible to do with custom Varnish server. **In other words:
(...TODO explain more...)
- RFC 7234 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching
Note: this plugin was mostly tested with Varnish 6.0 (https://varnish-cache.org/docs/6.0/index.html) with some customizations on default.vcl (to not require Varnish Plus) and HTTPS via NGinx. But as it implement part of RFC 7234 is likely to be more flexible, including other caching solutions. Please note that Joomla, like any other CMS, will use cookies even for non-logged users, but workaround strategies for this are also more Generic. Is no feasible to create a Joomla plugin to rewrite such cookies since even client side JavaScript libraries (including Google Analytics) would invalidate this.
- Varnish-Cache purge via Joomla administrative panel
- Protip: configure the Varnish servers to allow purge/ban from all IPs of your Joomla installations and install this plugin to let end users clean caches.
- Joomla CMS banners module for Joomla + Varnish
- Joomla CMS content plugin for Google Analytics Event Tracking to show Article visualizations
- Google Analytics Event Tracking - Alligo Helper, JS library
The Alligo has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.