Optimizing Your WordPress Cache Loads in Lighttpd.

If you don’t configure your wordpress virtual host properly in lighttpd, your wordpress cache will still make use of PHP.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all those cached requests were served directy from the webserver as the static files that they are, bypassing the CPU/memory load PHP can have, and use those resources for otherthings?

Install and Enable mod_magnet

For this to occur with lighttpd, you will need mod_magnet, so assuming you’re on a Ubuntu/Debian based linux distro let’s make sure we have it installed.

sudo apt-get install lighttpd-mod-magnet

Then let’s make sure it’s enabled, you can do this manually on your lighttpd.conf by adding “mod_magnet” to the list of enabled modules…

server.modules = (
        "mod_fastcgi",
        "mod_access",
        "mod_alias",
        "mod_accesslog",
        "mod_compress",
        "mod_rewrite",
        "mod_redirect",
        "mod_status",
        "mod_proxy",
        "mod_setenv",
        "mod_magnet"
)

or you can do it the lighty way:

sudo lighty-enable-mod magnet

(this simply makes a symlink to the 10-magnet.conf file inside /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled which lighty will check upon startup)

The cache logic script that will be executed by lighttpd

Now, on your wordpress directory, create a file called rewrite.lua and paste the following script in it:

function log(str)
   -- wanna tail -f a log to see what's happening    
   fp = io.open("/path/to/some/lua.log","a+")
   fp:write(str .. "\n")
   fp:flush()
   fp:close()
end

function serve_html(cached_page)
    if (lighty.stat(cached_page)) then
        lighty.env["physical.path"] = cached_page
        return true
    else
        return false
    end
end

function serve_gzip(cached_page)
    if (lighty.stat(cached_page .. ".gz")) then
        lighty.header["Content-Encoding"] = "gzip"
        lighty.header["Content-Type"] = ""
        lighty.env["physical.path"] = cached_page .. ".gz"
        return true
    else
        return false
    end
end

if (lighty.env["uri.scheme"] == "http") then
    ext = ".html"
else
    ext = "-https.html"
end

cached_page = lighty.env["physical.doc-root"] .. "/wp-content/cache/supercache/" .. lighty.request["Host"] .. lighty.env["request.orig-uri"]
cached_page = string.gsub(cached_page, "//", "/")
cached_page = string.gsub(cached_page, lighty.request["Host"] .. "/index.php", lighty.request["Host"])

attr = lighty.stat(cached_page)

if (attr) then
    query_condition = not (lighty.env["uri.query"] and string.find(lighty.env["uri.query"], ".*s=.*"))
    user_cookie = lighty.request["Cookie"] or "no_cookie_here"
    cookie_condition = not (string.find(user_cookie, ".*comment_author.*") or (string.find(user_cookie, ".*wordpress.*") and not string.find(user_cookie,"wordpress_test_cookie")))

    if (query_condition and cookie_condition) then
        accept_encoding = lighty.request["Accept-Encoding"] or "no_acceptance"

        if (string.find(accept_encoding, "gzip")) then
            if not serve_gzip(cached_page) then 
                serve_html(cached_page) 
            end
        else
            serve_html(cached_page)
        end
        --log('cache-hit: ' .. cached_page)
    end
else
    --log('cache-miss: ' .. cached_page)
end

Configuring your vhost in lighttpd for WordPress redirects and direct cache serves without php.

Then on your vhost configuration in lighttpd.conf add the following towards the end.
(Fix paths if you have to)

var.wp_blog = 1

magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( server.document-root + "/rewrite.lua" )

url.rewrite-if-not-file = (
   "^/(wp-.+).*/?" => "$0",
   "^/(sitemap.xml)" => "$0",
   "^/(xmlrpc.php)" => "$0",
   "^/(.+)/?$" => "/index.php/$1"
  )

Restart your lighttpd sudo service lighttpd restart

Now watch how your PHP processes breathe a lot better and you page loads are insanely faster.

You’re welcome 🙂