Features
Cache Preloading
Cache preloading automatically crawls your site after the cache is cleared, generating fresh cached pages before any real visitor requests them. This ensures the first visitor to any page always gets a fast cached response.
How it works
When the cache is cleared (manually or automatically), the preloader reads your XML sitemap to discover all pages on your site. It then crawls each URL, generating a cached copy. The crawl respects configurable rate limits to avoid overloading your server.
Key settings
Enable Preloading
Master on/off switch. When enabled, preloading runs automatically after every cache clear.
Sitemap URL
The plugin auto-detects sitemaps from popular SEO plugins:
- Yoast SEO (
sitemap_index.xml) - Rank Math (
sitemap_index.xml) - All in One SEO (
sitemap.xml)
You can also enter a custom sitemap URL if your SEO plugin uses a different path or you have a manually generated sitemap.
Batch Size
How many pages to crawl simultaneously. Default: 4.
- Low (1-2): Gentlest on your server. Best for shared hosting.
- Medium (4-8): Good balance for most VPS and cloud hosting.
- High (10+): Fastest completion. Only for dedicated servers or high-resource plans.
Request Timeout
How long to wait for each page response before moving on. Default: 30 seconds. Increase if your site has slow-responding pages; decrease if you want the preloader to skip problematic pages faster.
Manual preloading
You can trigger a manual preload from the Preload tab or, with Pro, via WP-CLI:
wp cachingout preload
wp cachingout preload --batch_size=8
Progress is shown on the Preload tab; there is no status subcommand.
Performance considerations
- Preloading generates server load proportional to your batch size and site size. On shared hosting with a large site (500+ pages), keep the batch size at 2-3.
- The preloader respects the cache lifespan setting. Pages older than the lifespan will be regenerated.
- Preloading runs as a background process using WordPress cron. It does not block admin page loads.
Troubleshooting
Preloading never completes. Check your PHP error log for timeout errors. Try reducing the batch size or increasing the request timeout. Some hosts limit background process execution time.
Some pages are not preloaded. Verify those pages appear in your sitemap. The preloader only crawls URLs found in the sitemap. Add missing pages to your sitemap via your SEO plugin.
My server slows down during preloading. Reduce the batch size. The preloader is designed to be gentle, but every server has different limits.