About this plugin
This plugin is the control panel for ModPageSpeed — a web server optimization module for nginx and Apache. ModPageSpeed must be installed and running on your server for this plugin to function. It is not a standalone caching plugin.
The plugin does three things:
- Enables full-page caching — adds Cache-Control: public, max-age=N to anonymous page responses (WordPress does not send this by default), with explicit bypasses for logged-in users, WooCommerce cart/checkout/account pages, search, feeds, and 404s.
- Keeps the cache fresh — calls the ModPageSpeed purge API when you publish, update, or delete content, when comments change, when stock levels change, and when terms or theme settings change.
- Gives you control in WP Admin and WP-CLI — per-post-type TTLs, cookie bypass list, excluded URL patterns, a first-run setup wizard, and wp pagespeed flush|status|test-connection commands.
Works with both ModPageSpeed product lines (auto-detected), with one important difference:
- ModPageSpeed 2.0 caches full HTML pages itself — the plugin’s headers and purge calls drive the module’s page cache directly.
- mod_pagespeed / ngx_pagespeed 1.1 does not cache HTML (it is a streaming rewriter; its in-place optimization caches only images, CSS, and JS). Full-page caching on 1.1 requires an external cache layer in front (nginx proxy_cache, Varnish, or a CDN) plus ModifyCachingHeaders off or DownstreamCachePurgeLocationPrefix — with 1.1’s default ModifyCachingHeaders on, the module replaces this plugin’s Cache-Control header on rewritten HTML. On 1.1, the plugin’s purge calls evict optimized sub-resources and metadata, not HTML pages.
Server requirements
- ModPageSpeed 1.1 (v1.15.0+r3 or later) or ModPageSpeed 2.0 (v2.0.0 or later) installed on your web server.
- For 2.0: the worker admin API enabled ( --api-port ).
- For full logged-in-user correctness an nginx cookie-bypass map block is required — the setup wizard provides a copy-paste snippet and verifies it.
WP-CLI
- wp pagespeed flush [--url=<url>] — purge the home page (and posts page), or one specific URL on this site.
- wp pagespeed status — detected product, version, license tier, purge prerequisites, and last-purge status.
- wp pagespeed test-connection — verify the admin API is reachable and correctly configured (read-only, never purges).
License
0 or later. 0 license text is bundled with the plugin in the LICENSE file.
Third Party Services
This plugin makes HTTP requests to the operator-configured ModPageSpeed admin API URL. Data sent includes page URLs (for cache purging) and an API key (for authentication). No data is sent to We-Amp or any third party.