Settings

Open Cache Warmer > Settings. The settings are grouped in panels. Some panels have a folded section with less common settings; open it to see them.

Changes are not saved until you click Save settings in the bar at the bottom. Revert throws away unsaved changes.

Tip

Every setting here is also in the setup wizard, laid out as six steps with the pace worked out as you type. Click Restart setup at the top of the tab to go through it again.

General

Setting	What it does	Default
Worker	The master switch: warm the queue in the background. With it off nothing is fetched, but the queue and your settings are kept, so turning it back on carries on where it stopped.	Off until the wizard’s last step
Debug	Writes a log line per URL with the cache header that came back. Turn it on while you work out why pages answer MISS, then off again.	Off
Canonical domain	The host pages are fetched as. Every warmed URL must sit under it; anything else in the sitemap is skipped. Empty means the site address.	Empty
Sitemap URL	The sitemap to read. Empty means <domain>/sitemap_index.xml. A plain urlset is accepted.	Empty

Running the worker

The secret cron address and its key. See Cron and WP-CLI for how to use them.

• Cron command: the whole line to paste into a cron panel, built from the address below.
• The address on its own: for an external cron service or a URL monitor.
• Key: Generate a new key replaces the secret in the address. The old address stops working immediately.

Pace

With Adaptive pacing on, these numbers are ceilings: a slow answer or a loaded machine makes the next run smaller on its own.

Setting	What it does	Default	Range
Batch size	URLs one run takes. 15 URLs every 5 minutes is 180 an hour.	15	1 to 200
Requests at a time	Requests sent in parallel. With the mobile pass on, each URL is two requests.	3	1 to 20
Worker interval	Minutes between runs. With WP-Cron, a quiet site runs late; a real cron makes this exact.	5	1 to 60
Rewarm after	Hours a warmed URL is left alone before it is due again. Keep it below your cache lifetime.	12	1 to 168
Delay between requests	A pause after each request, in milliseconds, so a burst does not look like an attack to the host.	250	0 to 5000

Under Request handling:

Setting	What it does	Default
Request timeout	Seconds before a page that has not answered is recorded as a failure. Range 3 to 60.	15
Adaptive pacing	Slow down when the site is under load. See Pacing.	On
TLS verification	Validate the certificate on every request. Turn it off only for a staging site with a self-signed certificate.	On

Quiet window

Hours when the warmer uses its own, larger pace. Outside the window, the values under Pace apply.

Setting	What it does	Default
Quiet window	Push harder during the hours below. The current site time is shown next to it.	Off
From	The hour the window opens, 0 to 23, in site time.	2
Until	The hour it closes. A window may cross midnight: 22 until 6 works.	6
Batch size then	URLs per run inside the window.	40
Requests at a time then	Parallel requests inside the window. Raise it in small steps on shared hosting.	6

Cache buckets

Setting	What it does	Default
Mobile pass	Also warm the mobile copy of every URL. Doubles the requests per cycle.	On
Identify the warmer	Sends the X-Brainrune-Cache-Warmer header and DNT: 1, so you can filter this traffic out of access logs and server-side analytics.	On
Warm on change	Queues a page at the front when it is published or updated.	On
Reset on purge	Starts a fresh pass after a full LiteSpeed purge.	On

Under User agents, header and log:

Setting	What it does
Mobile user agent	Sent with the mobile pass. Must contain Mobile, Android, Silk/, Kindle, BlackBerry, Opera Mini or Opera Mobi, or the request lands in the desktop bucket.
Desktop user agent	Sent with the desktop pass. It reads like a browser, because some hosts and firewalls treat unknown agents differently.
Cache header	The response header that says HIT or MISS. Empty means detected from the response. Fill it in only to force one header when the automatic choice reads the wrong one.
Keep log entries	Days to keep log entries. Older ones are deleted once a day. Default 14.

What gets warmed

Setting	What it does	Default
Content fallback	Walk published content when no sitemap can be read.	On
Query strings	Skip URLs carrying ?parameters. Extra URLs are still warmed.	On
Image sitemaps	Do not process image sitemaps. They list files, not pages.	On
Personal pages	Read cart, checkout and account from WooCommerce and never warm them, in every language. The pages found are listed below the switch.	On
Extra URLs	One URL or path per line, warmed on top of the sitemap. They skip the exclusions, but never the personal pages, and must be on this site.	Empty
Never warm these paths	One path per line, blocked on top of the detected pages. A path also blocks everything under it.	Empty
Additional exclusions	One pattern per line: a plain substring, or a * wildcard, such as /author/* or /tag/*.	Empty
Post types	Used by the content fallback only. Types that are not public are skipped.	post, page, product
Taxonomies	Used by the content fallback only.	category, product_cat
Archive pagination	Warm page 2, 3 and so on of categories, brands, the shop and the blog.	Off
Deepest page	How many archive pages deep to go, 2 to 20.	3
Fallback ceiling	A cap on the content fallback, 50 to 20000 URLs. A sitemap is never capped.	2000

Note

Additional exclusions are applied when the queue is rebuilt. An existing queue keeps what it holds until you click Rebuild the queue on the dashboard.

Alerts

Setting	What it does	Default
Email alerts	Write to you when too many pages come back cold.	Off
Send to	The address alerts go to. Empty means the site admin address.	Empty
Miss threshold	The share of warmed URLs still answering MISS that triggers an alert, in percent.	40
Send a test alert	Sends one message now, to check that the site can send mail. It uses the saved settings.

Under When an alert is allowed to fire:

Setting	What it does	Default
Minimum sample	A cycle with fewer measured URLs than this is never judged.	50
Wait before repeating	Hours before another alert can be sent.	12

More in Alerts.