Cache warmers

A cache warmer crawls your website over HTTP and keeps its pages cached. This page covers creating one, running it, and reading the results. For a field-by-field explanation of every option on the form, see Warmer settings.

Warmers live under Account → Warmers.

Creating a warmer#

Click Add warmer. The form is grouped into sections, and only two fields are genuinely required: a name and one entry URL.

1. 1

   Leave Active off while you configure

   Turn it on deliberately once you are happy with the settings. An inactive warmer never runs and never costs you anything.

2. 2

   Name it for your future self

   “Main site”, “Shop — categories”, “Docs”. The name is only ever shown to you and your teammates.

3. 3

   Add entry URLs

   Full absolute URLs including https://. Your homepage is the usual choice.

4. 4

   Turn on Include sitemaps if available

   The single highest-value option for most sites. Your CMS already maintains the list of pages worth warming.

5. 5

   Set exclusions if you need them

   Keep admin paths, carts, and endless filter URLs out of the queue.

6. 6

   Sanity-check the limits

   Depth and max URLs per minute decide how big and how aggressive this warmer is. Defaults suit most sites.

7. 7

   Save, then activate

   Create the warmer, run it once by hand, check the results, and only then leave it running on a schedule.

Choosing entry URLs#

An entry URL is where a run begins. Most sites need exactly one — the homepage — because sitemaps and link discovery find everything else.

Add extra entry URLs when a section is not reachable within your depth limit from the homepage:

• A campaign landing page that is only linked from adverts.
• A deep category that sits four clicks from the homepage.
• A second verified subdomain, such as blog.example.com.
• A sitemap index, if you prefer to point directly at it.

Using sitemaps#

Sitemaps are the most reliable way to cover a site completely, because your CMS or SEO plugin keeps them up to date automatically. When a new page is published it appears in the sitemap, and the next warm run picks it up without you touching anything.

Turn on Include sitemaps, and optionally add the sitemap URL itself as an entry URL:

https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml
https://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml

Sitemap indexes that point at other sitemaps are followed. This matters on large WordPress and WooCommerce sites, where the index typically splits into separate post, page, and product sitemaps.

Excluding URLs#

Some URLs should never be warmed. Add them to Excluded URLs:

On plans that include it, Use regex lets exclusions be patterns rather than literal strings, which is far more practical for query-string families.

Running a warmer#

Once Active, a warmer starts a fresh run every auto start interval seconds. You can also start one immediately from the warmers list, which is what you want when testing a configuration change.

Runs can also be triggered externally — after a deploy, or as part of a CDN purge. See Deploy triggers and CDN integrations.

Reading the results#

Open a warmer to see what it did. Summary figures across the top cover the whole run:

Below that is a row per URL, showing hostname, URL, depth, status code, user agent, content type, content length, when it was last crawled, and both load times.

What good looks like

• Status codes are overwhelmingly 200.
• Second load times are a fraction of first load times.
• The URL count roughly matches how many pages you expect to have.
• Failures are rare and explainable.

What to investigate

How many warmers should you have?#

One warmer per site is the normal starting point. Split into several when different parts of your site deserve genuinely different treatment:

• By priority — a small, frequent warmer for your homepage and top landing pages, and a larger, slower one for the long tail.
• By section — a store warmer with tight exclusions, and a separate blog warmer with sitemaps and deeper crawling.
• By hostname — separate subdomains are usually clearer as separate warmers.
• By client — agencies should use one workspace per client rather than mixing everything together.

Editing and deleting#

Editing a warmer takes effect on the next run; a run already in progress finishes with its previous settings. Deleting removes the configuration and its history, and cannot be undone — if you only want to stop it temporarily, switch Active off instead.