Caching, for our purposes here, is the temporary storage of website files in such a way (and often in various locations) that results in significantly faster website loading times for the end users. As a result, caching also reduces the overall resource usage on the server itself. In other words, when your website utilizes caching it consequently loads much faster for your visitors.
NGINX caching is now officially supported in cPanel; let’s talk a little bit more about it and how it benefits you and your website visitors.
NGINX Features And Benefits
As an officially supported cPanel caching layer, NGINX provides a number of valuable features and benefits other than the actual caching of files, images, and web pages, including:
- Resources being able to be shared to more users by web services.
- The ability to change the default caching location in the configuration files.
- Apache remaining active even with NGINX caching enabled.
- The ability to add one, multiple, or all users to NGINX caching.
- The option to force expire the cache at a predetermined time.
The end result of this is ultimately a faster website with less server resource utilization, which not only benefits the visitors to your website but also you, as the server owner, because you can safely host additional clients on the same server without any detriment to overall performance.
Enabling NGINX Caching In cPanel
In cPanel version 96 installation and management of NGINX caching is as simple as just navigating to the NGINX Manager; you’ll find everything you need there to for all the functions and configuration related to NGINX.
Additionally, NGINX is available in cPanel version 94 as well, through the EasyApache interface. Once you navigate to the EasyApache 4, click “customize your profile” and then under “additional packages” can can install NGINX.
Complete information on the NGINX Manager can be found here: https://docs.cpanel.net/whm/software/nginx-manager/
For those customers on v94 that want a similar experience we’ve provided command line utilities as well, located at https://docs.cpanel.net/knowledge-base/web-services/the-ea-nginx-script/
Is NGINX Caching Right For Your Website?
In almost all instances, the answer is yes. Given the universal benefits of NGINX caching to both the end user and the server itself, we’ve made the decision to fully support this technology. We covered NGINX cashing in depth in our recent cPanel LIVE broadcast, which you can watch below for a full demo:
For even more information about NGINX and its full capabilities and options within cPanel, visit https://docs.cpanel.net/knowledge-base/web-services/nginx-with-reverse-proxy/
As always, if you have any feedback or comments, please let us know. We are here to help in the best ways we can. You’ll find us on Discord, the cPanel forums, and Reddit. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
