Increasing caching in Site Factory | Site Factory

By default, Site Factory sets the maximum age for items included in the Varnish® page cache (page_cache_maximum_age) to 3600 seconds (60 minutes). It is possible to customize this value based on your website’s needs:

Increasing all cache lifetimes on all websites
Per-environment cache lifetime increases
Increasing cache lifetimes with Drush (Drupal 7 only)

Increasing all cache lifetimes on all websites¶

To increase the cache lifetime value from the default for all websites in your Factory that run Drupal 7 or the current Drupal version, create a post-settings-php hook as described in Hooks triggered after website actions, setting a new value (in seconds) for page_cache_maximum_age:

// For Drupal 7, uncomment this line to set a new cache lifetime:
// $conf['page_cache_maximum_age'] = 21600;
// For the current Drupal version, uncomment this line to set a new cache lifetime:
// $config['system.performance']['cache']['page']['max_age'] = 21600;

Items in the page cache will now persist for 6 hours (21,600 seconds).

Per-environment cache lifetime increases¶

To increase the cache lifetime value from the default for all websites in your Factory that run Drupal 7 or the current Drupal version, create a post-settings-php hook as described in Hooks triggered after website actions, altering the code to match your website’s installed version of Drupal:

// Verify we're on an Acquia-hosted environment.
if (file_exists('/var/www/site-php')) {
  if (isset($_ENV['AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT'])) {

    // Alter '01dev,' '01test', and '01live' to match
    // your website's environment names.
    // Alter the variable names to match your version of Drupal:
    //   The current Drupal version uses $config['system.performance']['cache']['page']['max_age']
    //   Drupal 7 uses $conf['page_cache_maximum_age']

    switch ($_ENV['AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT']) {
      case '01dev':
        // Cache settings.
        $config['page_cache_maximum_age'] = 0;
        break;
        case '01test':
        // Cache settings.
        $config['page_cache_maximum_age'] = 3600;
        break;
        case '01live':
        // Cache settings.
        $config['page_cache_maximum_age'] = 21600;
        break;
    }
  }
}

Items in the page cache on the testing environment will now persist for 60 minutes (3,600 seconds), and items in the production environment will persist for 6 hours (21,600 seconds). Items in the development environment will not be cached.

Increasing cache lifetimes with Drush in Drupal 7¶

You can also use Drush to update your website’s settings in Drupal 7. First, create a post-settings-php hook as described in Hooks triggered after website actions:

<?php
/**
* @file
*
* This post-settings-php hook is created to conditionally set the cache
* lifetime of Drupal to be a value that is greater than 300 (5 minutes).
* It also does not let you set it to be lower than 5 minutes.
*
* This does not fire on Drush requests, as it interferes with site
* creation. It also means that drush will report back incorrect values for
* the cache lifetime, so using a real browser is the easiest way to
* validate what the current settings are.
*
* How to enable this for a site:
*  - drush vset acsf_allow_override_page_cache 1
*  - drush vset page_cache_maximum_age 3600
*/
if (!drupal_is_cli()) {
  $result = db_query("SELECT value FROM {variable} WHERE name = 'acsf_allow_override_page_cache';")->fetchField();
  if ($result) {
    $acsf_allow_override_page_cache = unserialize($result);
    if ($acsf_allow_override_page_cache) {
      $result = db_query("SELECT value FROM {variable} WHERE name = 'page_cache_maximum_age';")->fetchField();
      // An empty array indicates no value was set in the database, so we ignore
      // the site.
      if ($result) {
        $page_cache_maximum_age = (int) unserialize($result);
        if ($page_cache_maximum_age > 300) {
          $conf['page_cache_maximum_age'] = $page_cache_maximum_age;
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

After creating and uploading the post-settings-php hook, use one of the following methods to implement the change:

Update locally using Drush aliases

From your local command line, run the following Drush commands, substituting in your website’s details for the text in brackets:
```
drush @[sitename].[env] --uri=[site.host.com] vset acsf_allow_override_page_cache 1
drush @[sitename].[env] --uri=[site.host.com] vset page_cache_maximum_age 21600
```
where:
- [sitename] - Your website’s name. For more information about your sitename, see the Sitename definition page.
- [env] - Your website’s environment (such as prod or 01live)
- [site.host.com] - Your website’s URL
Update directly on your website’s server

From the command line, SSH into your environment, and then run the following Drush commands, where [site.host.com] is your website’s URL:
```
drush --uri=[site.host.com] vset acsf_allow_override_page_cache 1
drush --uri=[site.host.com] vset page_cache_maximum_age 21600
```

Items in the page cache will now persist for 6 hours (21,600 seconds).