Serving Without PHP

Speedy works as soon as it’s installed: PHP sends cached pages without building them, which is already many times faster. For the fastest pages, let the web server send them itself, so PHP never starts.

On our test site, the store locator page took 316 ms to build, 30 ms from Speedy through PHP, and 1 ms from the web server.

Get the rules

They’re in Utilities → Speedy Cache → Serve pages without PHP, or print them:

php craft speedy/server-rules            # Nginx
php craft speedy/server-rules --apache   # Apache

The rules use your settings, so print them again if you change cachePath or set up a CDN.

Nginx

Add the rules to your site’s server { … } block, before location / { … }:

# Speedy Cache: serve cached pages without PHP.
set $speedy_page "/speedy/$host$uri/index.html";
if ($request_method !~ ^(GET|HEAD)$) { set $speedy_page ""; }
if ($args != "") { set $speedy_page ""; }
if ($http_cookie ~* "_identity|speedy_state|_commerce_cart") { set $speedy_page ""; }
if ($http_x_requested_with != "") { set $speedy_page ""; }
if ($http_hx_request != "") { set $speedy_page ""; }
if ($http_x_up_target != "") { set $speedy_page ""; }
if ($http_x_speedy_warm != "") { set $speedy_page ""; }
if (-f $document_root$speedy_page) { rewrite ^ $speedy_page last; }

location ^~ /speedy/ {
    internal;
    default_type text/html;
    gzip_static on;
    add_header X-Speedy "STATIC" always;
    add_header Cache-Control "no-cache, s-maxage=0" always;
}

Then test and reload Nginx: sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx.

What the rules do:

• Only GET requests without a query string get the cached file, from visitors who aren’t logged in, have no cart and have nothing in their session (speedy_state), and not Ajax requests (X-Requested-With, HX-Request, X-Up-Target).
• Cookies you list in skipCookies are added to the cookie line.
• Speedy’s own rebuild requests (X-Speedy-Warm) always reach Craft.
• internal stops anyone opening the cache folder directly.
• gzip_static sends the compressed copy Speedy saves next to each page (index.html.gz), so nginx doesn’t compress it on every request. It’s included in most nginx builds; if nginx -t says it’s unknown, remove that line.
• Everything else goes to Craft as usual, which still serves cached pages through PHP.

Apache

Add the rules to web/.htaccess, after RewriteEngine On and before Craft’s own rules:

# Speedy Cache: serve cached pages without PHP.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^(GET|HEAD)$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(_identity|speedy_state|_commerce_cart) [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Requested-With} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:HX-Request} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Up-Target} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Speedy-Warm} ^$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/speedy/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -s
RewriteRule .* /speedy/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html [L,E=SPEEDY:1]
Header set X-Speedy "STATIC" env=REDIRECT_SPEEDY
Header set Cache-Control "no-cache, s-maxage=0" env=REDIRECT_SPEEDY

mod_rewrite and mod_headers must be enabled.

Check it

In Utilities → Speedy Cache, click Check server serving. Speedy loads your homepage twice and tells you who sent the second copy:

Or with curl: x-speedy: STATIC means the web server sent it.

Laravel Forge, Ploi, DDEV and others

• Forge and Ploi: edit the site’s Nginx configuration in their dashboard and paste the rules above location /.
• DDEV: save the rules as .ddev/nginx/speedy.conf and run ddev restart.
• Hosts that don’t let you edit the server config: skip this step. Speedy still serves cached pages through PHP.
• Craft Cloud and Servd, the Craft-specific hosts, cache pages themselves, so you may not need Speedy there. On Craft Cloud, and any host that sets CRAFT_EPHEMERAL, the disk is temporary, so Speedy turns itself off and says so on the utility and settings pages.