Softminal Cache

by Softminal

Description

Softminal Cache makes your site fast and keeps it safe while doing so. 🛡️ Risky changes are checked on your own site right after you save them, and every change can be undone.

🎁 100% free, forever. There is no Pro version, no upsell, no ads and no account. Every feature is in this plugin, and nothing leaves your server.

🧩 More from Softminal

ImageCraft – image optimizer: compression, WebP & AVIF, AI alt text and titles, SEO file names and an image SEO audit. Works side by side with Softminal Cache.
B2B Suite for WooCommerce – wholesale prices, customer-group pricing, trade registration, quantity rules and a bulk order form.

⚡ Page cache

Pages are stored the first time they are built and served to the next visitors before WordPress loads, through a standard advanced-cache.php drop-in. If the drop-in cannot be installed, pages are still served from inside WordPress.
Clears itself when you publish or update content, approve a comment, change the theme, menus or widgets, or install updates. Purge everything or one page from the plugin screen or the admin bar.
Separate copy for phones, serve the old copy while rebuilding (stale-while-revalidate), and optional caching of 404 pages, feeds and logged-in users (private per-session copies, never for editors or administrators).
Keep pages from 1 hour to 7 days; exclude URLs with wildcards or regular expressions; add your own never-cache cookies; tracking parameters such as utm_*, fbclid and gclid share one cached copy.
Preload rebuilds pages in the background from your sitemap (or your homepage links), at a speed set from your host’s limits.
Browser cache and compression rules for Apache and LiteSpeed, and a snippet to copy for Nginx.

✨ Optimize

JavaScript: minify, load scripts after the page is visible (defer, WordPress 6.3+), remove jQuery Migrate, with an exclusion list.
CSS: minify stylesheets and inline styles, with an exclusion list.
Fonts: host Google Fonts on your own site, show text while fonts load (font-display: swap), preload the main fonts.
Images: lazy-load images, videos and embeds (the first pictures always load at once), add missing width and height, WebP and AVIF copies of new uploads served through <picture> (when your server supports them; the screen shows it), convert existing images in the background, and a media audit for huge images and missing alt text.
Script Manager: turn any script or stylesheet off everywhere, only on certain pages, or for logged-in users only. Files other files need are never removed.
Bloat: remove the emoji script, embeds, Dashicons for visitors, XML-RPC, head clutter, self-pingbacks and version numbers; slow down Heartbeat; limit revisions.

🧹 Database

Clean post revisions (keeping the newest ones; autosaves are always kept), auto-drafts, trashed posts and comments, spam, expired transients, leftover post meta and pingbacks, with a confirmation step and a scheduled clean-up (daily, weekly or monthly).
Optimise tables and convert old MyISAM tables to InnoDB, each with a dry run first.
See where your database space goes, which options are loaded on every page, and which scheduled tasks are stuck.

📊 Dashboard, profiles and safety

Speed audit with a score out of 100, measured on your own site in your browser: page load, server response, page weight, requests and the largest image, with a history of every audit and a Fix button on each finding.
Profiles: Safe (the default), Balanced and Aggressive, with a table of what each one turns on.
Self-check: after a change that could break pages, the plugin loads your homepage and a post, watches for errors, and switches the change back by itself if the site got worse.
Undo the latest change for 24 hours, a full settings history to restore any earlier one, and Safe Mode to pause every optimisation while you check something (the page cache keeps working).
Detects other caching plugins and host caches (Kinsta, WP Engine, Flywheel, Pressable) and stays out of their way; detects other optimisation plugins and leaves their area to them.

🧰 Tools

Import settings from WP Rocket, and (beta) from LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, WP-Optimize, Autoptimize and Perfmatters. You see what came over and can undo it.
Export and import settings as a JSON file; a debug log of what the cache did; a config file (wp-content/softminal-cache.json) for sites managed from code; WP-CLI commands (wp softminal-cache purge|preload|status|db clean|settings export|import).

🔒 Never cached, automatically

So carts, logins and private pages always stay correct:

Logged-in users (unless you turn on their private copies) and recent commenters.
Cart, checkout, account and receipt pages of WooCommerce, FluentCart and Easy Digital Downloads, and shoppers who have a cart.
Search results, previews, password-protected and private pages, page-builder editors.
Form submissions and any request that isn’t a normal page view; pages that set a cookie.
Any page where another plugin asks for no caching with the standard DONOTCACHEPAGE constant.

🤝 Contribute

Softminal Cache is developed and maintained by Softminal. Contributions are welcome: report a bug, suggest a feature or send a pull request on GitHub.

If another caching plugin is active, deactivate it first; two page caches fight each other.

Third-party services

Softminal Cache does not connect to any external service and collects no data. Two things make requests, both started by you:

Test cache, Preload, the speed audit and the self-check request pages of your own site (home_url()) to measure or rebuild them. Nothing is sent anywhere else.
Host Google Fonts on your site (Optimize Fonts, off by default): when you turn it on, your server downloads the stylesheet and font files your theme already loads from fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com once, in the background, and serves them from your site from then on. See Google’s Fonts terms and privacy policy. Your visitors stop connecting to Google.

Screenshots

Dashboard: speed score, recommended fixes with one-click Fix buttons, and the cache tiles.
Cache tab: page cache options, exclusions, preload and server rules.
Optimize → JavaScript: minify, defer and jQuery Migrate, with the self-check result on the right.
Optimize → Images: lazy loading, WebP/AVIF copies, converting existing images, media audit.
Database: clean-up with counts, scheduled cleaning, table sizes, autoloaded options.
Tools: settings history with Restore, debug log, config file and WP-CLI reference.

Faq

Does it work with WooCommerce and FluentCart?

Yes. Cart, checkout, account and receipt pages are never cached, and visitors who have a cart always get a live page, so nobody ever sees someone else’s cart.

Why does it change wp-config.php?

WordPress only loads a page cache early (before plugins and themes) when WP_CACHE is on. Softminal Cache adds define( 'WP_CACHE', true ); // Added by Softminal Cache near the top, and removes exactly that line when you deactivate it. If the file can’t be written, nothing breaks: pages are still cached from inside WordPress, and the plugin screen shows the line so you can add it yourself.

Where are cached pages stored?

In wp-content/cache/softminal-cache/ (each site has its own folder on a network). To use another folder, add define( 'SOFTMINAL_CACHE_CACHE_DIR', '/full/path/' ); to wp-config.php. Minified files, font copies and WebP/AVIF images are kept in wp-content/cache/softminal-cache-assets/ and next to the original images.

How do I check that a page came from the cache?

Open the page in a private window and look at the response headers: X-Softminal-Cache: HIT means it came from the cache, MISS means it was built and stored, and BYPASS: reason says why it wasn’t cached. The Dashboard’s Test cache does this for you.

Does it work on Nginx, Apache and LiteSpeed?

Yes. Pages are served by PHP, so no server rules are needed for caching. Browser-cache and compression rules are written to .htaccess on Apache and LiteSpeed; on Nginx the plugin gives you a snippet to add to your server block. On Nginx, also add the snippet’s deny rules: Apache reads the cache folder’s .htaccess, Nginx does not, and the rules keep the cache folder and the config file from being opened directly.

Does it work on multisite?

Yes. Each site keeps its own settings and cached pages, and pages are served from inside WordPress. Table changes (optimise, InnoDB conversion) need a network administrator.

Does it work with other image plugins?

Yes. If ImageCraft, ShortPixel, Performance Lab or Modern Image Formats already makes WebP/AVIF copies, Softminal Cache leaves image formats to that plugin and its Dashboard says “Handled by” that plugin. Lazy loading and image sizes still work.

I use a host with its own page cache.

Managed hosts such as Kinsta, WP Engine, Flywheel and Pressable already cache pages; Softminal Cache detects them, keeps its page cache off and still runs every other optimisation.

Will it break my site?

Every risky change is checked on your site right after you save it and switched back by itself if your homepage or a post got worse. If something still looks wrong, click Undo, turn on Safe Mode, or Purge.

Does the plugin send anything anywhere?

No. There is no account, no telemetry and no external service. See “Third-party services” below for the one optional download.

How do I remove it completely?

Deactivate it to remove the drop-in, the WP_CACHE line, the .htaccess rules and all cached pages. Delete it to also remove its settings, its history table, its cache folders and the WebP/AVIF copies it made (copies made by another image plugin are left alone). To keep the settings when deleting, add define( 'SOFTMINAL_CACHE_KEEP_DATA_ON_UNINSTALL', true ); to wp-config.php.

Reviews

Changelog

1.0.0

Optimize: minify and defer JavaScript, remove jQuery Migrate, minify CSS, local Google Fonts with swap and preload, lazy loading and missing image sizes, WebP/AVIF copies of uploads with bulk conversion and a media audit, Script Manager, Bloat removal.
Cache: separate copy for phones, stale-while-revalidate, 404 and feed caching, logged-in private copies, regular-expression exclusions, custom never-cache cookies and ignored parameters, preload from the sitemap, browser-cache and compression rules.
Database: clean-up with confirmation and schedule, table optimise and InnoDB conversion with dry runs, autoloaded options, stuck scheduled tasks.
Dashboard: speed audit with score, history and Fix buttons; Safe, Balanced and Aggressive profiles; self-check that undoes a change that broke the site; Undo for 24 hours and a settings history with Restore; Safe Mode.
Help: a ? button in the top bar opens the docs, blog, support and more free plugins from Softminal.
Tools: importers for seven other plugins (six of them in beta), settings history with pages, settings export/import, debug log, config file, WP-CLI.
Security: pages that set a cookie are never stored, full-length atomic writes, per-site cache and file folders on a network, private logged-in copies tied to WordPress’s secret keys, wp-config.php edits written owner-only.

0.1.0

First release: page cache served before WordPress loads, Test cache, automatic clearing, Purge from the plugin screen and admin bar, cache lifetime and URL exclusions, safe handling of carts, logins and private pages, light and dark mode.