Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Varnish-Joomla Pack 1.3.1 with Joomla 3.2 support is out

New features:

  • Support for Joomla! 3.2
  • Support for HikaShop
Joomla! 3.2 support has been tested with core components and the following extensions:
  • JomSocial
  • Akeeba Backup
  • Admin Tools
  • Kunena Forum
  • Community Builder
  • HikaShop
Virtuemart does not support 3.2 (and never will), and that's the only reason why it's not included in the test. We continue to support it. As explained here, the patch for Joomla! 3.2 does not prevent creating new sessions for anonymous users. If you have a lot of cache misses caused by anonymous users, there will be an extra disk write operation per cache miss - if this concerns you, move your sessions to memcached or XCache.

Upgrade from 1.3.0 and 1.2.2: Just replace the default.vcl file. As always, the upgrade is free for existing users.

New users - order to speed up your Joomla! and its extensions.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Varnish for Joomla! 3.2 on its way

Varnish for Joomla 3.2 will be released next week. The plan was to release it this week, but Joomla 3.2 increased its dependence on sessions and the patch can not operate the same way it did before.
In previous versions, we did what we could to not even create sessions in the database, thus lowering the number of disk writes required to serve users' requests. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's possible any more and the best we can do is not sending session cookies to the user.
This is a new approach and while it passes all internal tests against a vanilla Joomla install, it needs more testing with supported 3rd party components.
I'm sorry for the delay, we got many requests about 3.2 availability in the past two weeks.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Varnish-Joomla package 1.3.0 released, with cache purging

The new Varnish-Joomla package 1.3.0 is now available. New features include:

  • Purging cache when saving articles
  • Support for more Joomla! extensions and static file types
  • Improved cache hit rate because of Accept-Encoding normalization
  • Support for Piwik and CloudFlare
  • More debugging headers
The biggest news is cache purging - this means that the moment you save your article, it is visible to your visitors. Behind the curtains, our Joomla plugin connects to your Varnish and tells it to remove cached copies of the saved page, pages of categories it belongs to, and the front page. This feature is optional, you don't need to install the plugin if this is not the desired behavior.
The package has support for Joomla 2.5.4+, 3.0.x and 3.1.x, just like the previous version.
There is good news for our existing customers: the patch to Joomla core didn't change, all features are implemented with the Varnish VCL file and an easily installable Joomla plugin.
As usually, the upgrade is free, contact us to receive the latest package if you've already purchased it.