WP Super Cache and RSS

If you run your own blog and traffic starts to pick up a little bit then you may have been recommended to use something called WP Super Cache. I thought I might try it out to see if there was going to be much benefit for this blog given the increase in traffic it has seen particularly over the last few months.

However, the default settings for WP Super Cache can potentially cause problems for components such as RSS feeds. I found this out the hard way when my RSS feeds would not update for several days after the installation. Luckily, there is an easy way to fix this up once you know how to do it.

Essentially, you need to do the following:

1. Login to the administrative portal for your blog,
2. Click Settings on the left,
3. Click WP Super Cache on the left,
4. Click the Advanced tab,
5. Scroll down to the section entitled Accepted Filenames & Rejected URIs,
6. Tick Feeds (is_feed),
7. Click Save.

That should stop your RSS feeds from not refreshing for those who are subscribed to them. Mind you, this can be a good or bad thing. It can be good if you have lots of new content being published at high frequency but it can be bad if your website lacks the system resources to cope with increased traffic and serving up content without the help of a cache. However, depending on your site traffic patterns you may need to tinker with the cache expiry times to compensate and get the most out of WP Super Cache.