If you run a site that is heavy in dynamic content, you either have a belly full of ulcers or you are utilizing a Content Management System. A CMS can be a major time saver for the admin who is constantly on the go, making day-to-day tasks such as adding and updating content easily doable from any web browser and Internet connection. Rather than transferring files to and from an FTP server, content is stored in a database and pages are generated at every request.

Generating pages one-by-one works great under normal conditions, but what about when your site gets slammed by heavy traffic? Generating pages for a single visitor isn’t too difficult, but multiply that by thousands and you’ve got problems ranging from an overworked processor to an overloaded database.

One solution to this dilemma is page caching. Rather than generating page upon page, code generated from a specific database query is stored directly on the web server for anywhere from ten minutes to a day. This cache will save plenty of processing time by preventing the constant rebuilding of your index and other commonly requested pieces of content. If you don’t want to cache for everyone, you can even cache for anonymous visitors while generating fresh pages for registered users.

If you didn’t develop your own CMS or you aren’t quite sure how to go about implementing a page cache, you may want to try out free and open source solutions such as Light PHP CMS and Drupal.