BLOB Caching : Boost Performance

A typical sharepoint site refers multiple CSS, JS and Image files. Other than the page itself, if we can add non-zero directive to the rest of items, then we can reduce the server round trips and in a way can improve the performance. It's not at all complex to turn on disk based caching in Sharepoint (BLOB Caching). Simply find the following line in web.config

< BlobCache location="C:\blobcache" path="\.(gif¦jpg¦png¦css¦js)$ " maxSize="10" enabled="false" />

and set enabled="true" from enabled="false"

Location : Physical Location of the temporary files

Path : Filter for files (extension) to be included in process

MaxSize : Max. Size in GBs for the files to be stored on file system

additionaly we can set one more property

Max-age : (seconds) The amount of time in seconds that items should be cached on the client computer.

By setting the max-age attribute to a non-zero value, items have a expiration value associated with them and the browser no longer needs to download the item or verify if it has the latest version.

On a side note, following points should also be kept in consideration with BLOB caching

• All front end web serves should have the BLOB caching enabled with same configuration
• BLOB Caching works only for items in Sharepoint libraries
• Changes in CSS, JS etc, might not reflect immediately. If such a case occurs then the option is to flush the cache by navigating to the site collection's Site Settings. Select "Site Collection Object Cache" and then click "Force this server to reset its disk based cache."