The cache warmup system has two primary functions:
Keeping the site optimized when automated cache purges happen
Preemptively optimizing all pages found in a configured URL source.
The warmup system prepares optimized versions of your pages without having to wait for organic traffic. This is great because it helps you prepare your pages for visitors without relying on organic traffic.
For optimal results, the system needs a source of links for your site. You can provide a homepage URL or a sitemap XML.
Important Note: The option to provide a sitemap XML is available only for users on paid plans.
If both sources are configured, the sitemap takes precedence. Otherwise, only the links found on your homepage will be warmed up.
If you don’t define a source, the system will warm up only URLs purged via automated events (for example, after editing a post, changing the price of a product, etc.).
When a homepage URL or a sitemap is configured, you should manually start a full warmup of all URLs found in the source via the green start button.
Once you click the button, the system estimates how many optimizations will be used in the process. After the estimate is done, you can confirm the start of the warmup.
The warmup system prepares optimized versions for desktop and mobile devices.
Additionally, variation cookies with known values are configured, the system will prepare optimized versions of all possible combinations of the cookies and their known values. This ensures great coverage of possible organic requests resulting in a much better cache hit ratio after the warmup is complete.
Further information for this feature implementation per platform can be found in the following articles: