Surge

Description

Surge generates and serves static HTML files for your WordPress site, causing quicker requests, faster load times and a shorter time to first byte (TTFB).

Surge does not require configuration, and has no options. It works out of the box on any well-configured hosting platform. Cached files are stored on disk, and automatically invalidated when your site is updated.

In various load tests, Surge has shown to easily handle 1000-2500 requests per second at 100 concurrent, on a small single-core server with only 1 GB of RAM. That’s over 70 times faster than a stock WordPress install.

Installation

Via the WordPress Dashboard: navigate to Plugins – Add New. In the search bar type “surge” and hit Enter. Find the Surge plugin in the search results, hit Install, then Activate.

Manually: download the Surge plugin .zip file from www.ads-software.com. In your WordPress admin navigate to Plugins – Add New – Upload. Select the .zip file and hit Upload. Activate the plugin after upload is successful.

Manually via FTP: download the Surge plugin .zip file from www.ads-software.com, extract the archive, make sure the directory is called “surge”. Use your FTP/SFTP client to upload the “surge” directory to wp-content/plugins. Then activate the plugin in your WordPress admin from the Plugins section.

Using WP-CLI: wp plugin install surge –activate

FAQ

Where is the plugin configuration screen?

There isn’t one.

How do I clear the cache?

Toggle the plugin activation or run wp surge flush using WP-CLI.

Is my cache working?

Visit the Site Health screen under Tools in your WordPress dashboard. Common caching errors, like installation problems, etc. will appear there. Otherwise, open your site in an Incognito window to see the cached version. You could also look for the “X-Cache” header in the server response.

Why am I getting cache misses?

Below are a few common reasons:

• You are logged into your WordPress site
• You have a unique cookie set in your browser
• A unique query parameter will also cause a cache miss, except common marketing parameters, such as utm_campaign, etc.
• Request methods outside of GET and HEAD are not cached

Can I exclude page X from being cached?

Of course. If you pass a “Cache-Control: no-cache” header (or max-age=0) the request will automatically be excluded from cache. Note that most WordPress plugins will already do this where necessary.

fpassthru() has been disabled for security reasons

It seems like your hosting provider disabled the fpassthru() function, likely by mistake. This is a requirement for Surge. Please get in touch with them and kindly ask them to enable it.

How can I support Surge?

If you like Surge, consider giving us a star on GitHub and a review on www.ads-software.com.

Reviews

A tiny caching plugin that works and needs no adjustments!

skeeterseatery February 28, 2024 1 reply

I wanted to extend my deepest appreciation for your invaluable contribution. Your Surge Cache plugin has revolutionized the performance of my website. Amidst the challenges of compatibility issues between FlyingPress and WP Rocket with Sucuri WAF, your plugin emerged as the beacon of hope. Previously, grappling with other caching plugins led to severe CPU spikes, pushing my site to the brink of breakdowns. While perfmatters provided some relief, I still needed a lightweight page cache plugin to navigate peak traffic periods seamlessly. Enter your Surge Cache plugin. Its seamless integration with my site has not only bolstered its speed but also its overall performance. I am now confident that my website remains steadfast and responsive even during the busiest of times. Thank you, from the depths of my heart, for crafting such an exceptional tool. Your unwavering dedication to enhancing website functionality is truly commendable. With warm regards, Greg

fpassthru

silzsyk September 22, 2023 1 reply

Hello, for this plugin to work must the fpassthru function be activated or not? There is a difference?

Finally a Caching Plugin I can get behind!

Jason LeMahieu (MadtownLems) February 6, 2024 1 reply

Over the years, I’ve looked at all the top caching plugins, and never found one that I liked. They were either too complex, too finicky, or tried to do too many things. Surge just works, and it works great. Update: I ran some basic performance testing of the same sample content with and without Surge activated.Surge increased my Requests per second by a factor of 21x and reduced my time per request by a factor of 25x. Beyond that, Konstantin has been amazing as far as support goes for a free plugin. Besides addressing issues and requests, he’s gone above-and-beyond at helping work through issues, to the point of looking at where we are using Surge and making additional configuration recommendations. If it were possible to give 6 stars, I would!

Just works!

Timi Wahalahti January 24, 2023

This plugin works! Install, activate, and check WP_CACHE value and boom – your site is fast!One nice feature that is happening under the hood is caching of specific REST API requests. That makes, for example, dynamic parts of the site with javascript filtering blazingly fast.

Brilliant plugin. No bloat. FAST!

James September 22, 2022 1 reply

I almost gave up on finding a WP cache plugin that ONLY did that… cache! Everything is bloated with minify, CDN, image optimize, and a bunch of features I just don’t need because we have those taken care of otherwise.

What a gem!

SickNick April 6, 2022 1 reply

I’m using it for 1 month on different sites with different themes and plugins, and some big ones over 150-200GB. Works just perfect!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

1.1.0

• Improved Multisite compatibility
• Fixed occasional stat() warnings in cleanup routines
• Fixed expiration by path being too broad
• Added a filter for flush actions
• Feature: added a simple events system for s-maxage and stale-while-revalidate support

1.0.5

• Fix woocommerce_product_title compatibility
• Honor DONOTCACHEPAGE constant
• Use built-in is_ssl() WordPress function for better compatibility

1.0.4

• Add a WP-CLI command to invalidate/flush page cache
• Fix redirect loop with Core’s redirect_canonical for ignore_query_vars
• Fix warnings for requests with empty headers
• Fix warnings when cron cleanup attempts to read a file that no longer exists
• Add a filter to disable writing to wp-config.php

1.0.3

• Invalidate cache when posts_per_page is changed
• Fix redirect loop with unknown query vars caused by Core’s redirect_canonical
• Ignore X-Cache and X-Powered-By headers from cache metadata
• Allow multiple headers with the same name

1.0.2

• Fix PHP notice in invalidation
• Protect against race conditions when writing flags.json
• Add support for more post statuses in transition_post_status invalidation

1.0.1

• Add support for custom user configuration
• Various invalidation enhancements and fixes
• Remove advanced-cache.php when plugin is deactivated
• Add a note about fpassthru() in FAQ
• Minor fix in Site Health screen tests

1.0.0

• Anonymize requests to favicon.ico and robots.txt
• Improve cache expiration, add cache expiration by path

0.1.0

• Initial release