Please enable HTTP caching with entity tags

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Saklad5
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Please enable HTTP caching with entity tags

Post by Saklad5 »

The vast majority of content at the WineHQ website, even the RSS feeds, is set to forbid caching of any kind. This is extremely annoying, especially since it means a relatively large amount of traffic is sent every time my RSS reader checks for Wine news.

While I understand worries about outdated caches, not using ETags here is inexcusable: simply provide a string (usually a hash, but it could be anything), and clients can check for if the cache is still valid by passing the server that string.

This may seem like a minor issue, but the amount of traffic being sent pointlessly is immense. Forbidding caching for RSS feeds is particularly obnoxious: if every RSS feed did that, I'd be downloading huge quantities of data over and over just to check for new content!

Thankfully, of the almost 100 RSS feeds I follow, WineHQ is one of the only ones that isn't using ETags. If every RSS feed was the same size and forbid caching, I'd be downloading gigabytes of unchanged RSS feed every week.

If you aren't sure how to do this, here's a more detailed explanation (from 2002, but still current) on the subject: https://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2002/10/2 ... ss_hackers.
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jnewman
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Re: Please enable HTTP caching with entity tags

Post by jnewman »

I played with the main website and worked with the last-modified and the etag header on the RSS feed. Let me know if that works better for you.
Saklad5
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Re: Please enable HTTP caching with entity tags

Post by Saklad5 »

That seems to have done the trick, thank you!
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