boost

The Boost cache is generated when an anonymous user first visits a web page. The cache is then cleared when new content is published (if you have enabled the expire module), or when the cron is run.

However, depending on the type of traffic your site receives, you may want pages to be automatically re-cached when their cache expires. For example, a complex page could take over 10 seconds to render, causing users to occasionally stumble on it and wonder why it is taking so much time (or affect your Google ranking because the crawler finds that your website is not efficient).

This is where the Boost crawler can be helpful: it will automatically regenerate the cache for expired pages.

Installation

Requirements:

• httprl module
• expire module (> 7.x-1.0-alpha3, as of August 2012, this means the "dev" snapshot)

To enable the crawler:

• go to your modules page and enable the "Boost Crawler" module (boost_crawler).
• go to Admin > Configure > System > Boost > Crawler, tick the checkbox to enable the crawler to run on cron.

How it works

See:

• Boost with nginx and Debian squeeze
• https://github.com/yhager/nginx_drupal

As well as: #244072: Nginx integration

If you like the boost module, please contribute to the community and take a few minutes to help complete this handbook page!

This is a summary of: #615474: Support for IIS 7 and applies to IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 with IIS Rewrite Module 2.0 module. Installation and configuration of the Boost 7.x and 6.x module itself are the same for IIS as any other webserver, with the exception of the following:

1. Make sure IIS Rewrite Module 2.0 is enabled. If you have IIS Rewrite, you need to upgrade for this to work. See http://www.iis.net/download/URLRewrite for info on this module. Note install of this module requires a server restart!

2. Add CONTENT_TYPE to allowed server variables. In the IIS Server Manager, go into URL Rewrite feature of the site. Click 'View Server Variables...' and add CONTENT_TYPE as an allowed server variable. If you don't do this you'll get a 500 error due no permissions to change the CONTENT_TYPE variable below. If you do not see the 'View Server Variables...' configuration option, you may have IIS Rewrite module 1.0 installed.

3. Add the rewrite rules. The attached files rewrite rules (boost_iis_7_with_IIS_rewrite_II_module.txt) should be added to your sites web.config list, before the Drupal clean URLs rule. The second attachment (default_web_config_with_boost_rules_in_it.txt) is the boost rules included in the default web.config that ships with drupal 7.

Boost is a contributed module that provides static page caching for Drupal websites. It can help you realize a significant performance increase for personal blogs, small business, corporate sites, portals and directories that receive mostly anonymous traffic. For shared hosting this is your best option in terms of improving performance and enhancing your website visitor's experience.

For previous versions of Boost, see the Drupal 6.x Boost handbook.

Features

• Improves website performance for anonymous users.
• On-Demand page caching.
• Supports shared, VPS and dedicated hosting.
• Nginix and IIS semi-supported
• Supports Multi-site Installations.
• Supports and designed for Apache.
• Supports HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON/AJAX.
• Built-in htaccess file generator if needed.
• Page cache status/flush block. See: #1448476: Admin status block in 7.x-1.x
• Gzip page compression. (partial, see: #1416214: Basic gzip support for 7x)
• Adjustable cache lifetimes.
• Uses cron run to trigger cleaning of cached files.
• Choose which pages are cached.
• Injects HTML comment to provide easy verification of Boost.
• Easy to install and setup.

Introduction

This tutorial is a description of how to setup the mobile version of a Drupal site with theme switching and automatic redirection to the mobile site that works with static page caching mechanisms (Boost module). Redirection is done on Apache's level instead of the PHP level (.htaccess instead of php code).