While reading a post about the Super cache plugin for WP and how well it handled the digg effect, I came across another php caching script that I thought I’d give a try. The Xcache Plugin by neosmart seems to have helped a lot to keep the load on my server down. As soon as I had it installed and configured correctly (it took me a minute or two) the load dropped on my server.

The first thing you need to do is download and install XCache itself. On my debian server with apache2 and php5 this was as easy as #apt-get install php5-xcache. The install ran and set everything up. I did have to edit the /etc/php5/conf.d/xcache.ini file.

Look for two things: xcache.size and xcache.var_size. Set the first one to 64M and the second to 10M (you can set it higher or lower, but in order for the wp-plugin to work it has to be set greater than 0). Save and exit and restart apache.

Next download the actual plugin. Once you have it downloaded unzip it and copy it to your wp-content directory. Thats all you have to do. It does the rest. Check your server load and for the fun of it pull up your site and see if it loads any faster. I’d be suprised if it doesn’t.

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