New feature: home page caching

[Brent Simmons]

This pref, which you can set via the Editorial prefs page, allows you to
boost the performance of your home page. The version of the home page
that's cached is the version that non-logged-in browsers see -- since on
most busy sites that's where most of the hits come from.

The home page is not cached for members or editors, it's still dynamic.

The cache is automatically thrown away when you change your template, flip
the home page, edit the home page, and so on.

We ran some numbers to see what the performance increase is like. It was
an average 48.94 ticks when caching is off, and just 12.4 ticks when
caching is on. (These results can of course vary widely depending on many
different conditions. You may find that home page caching gets you even
better performance increases.)

This feature will be available on UserLand servers tomorrow. Manila server
admins should update manila.root.

To read about other recent Manila changes, see Frontier News:

http://frontier.userland.com/news/2001/09/17

-Brent