If you’ve turned on BerqWP and want to confirm your pages are actually being served from cache rather than rebuilt on every visit, there are a few quick ways to check. This article walks through each one.
TL;DR: Open DevTools, check the
X-servedresponse header on a logged-out visit.serverordropinmeans it’s cached and fast,WP Hookorpluginmeans it’s cached but slower in the chain, and no header at all means the page isn’t cached. You can also check for a cache comment at the bottom of the page source, or addto any URL to see the original page for comparison.
Check the X-served Response Header
Every page BerqWP serves from cache includes an X-served header in the response, and it tells you exactly how that page was delivered. Here’s how to see it:
- Open your browser’s Developer Tools (press F12, or right-click and choose Inspect)
- Go to the Network tab
- Visit the page while logged out of WordPress, or use an incognito window. Logged-in visits are never served from cache, so checking while logged in will always look like caching isn’t working even when it is
- Click the first request in the list, which is the page URL itself
- Look in the Response Headers section for
X-served
What the value means:
| X-served value | What it means |
|---|---|
server | Best result. Apache or Nginx is serving the cached file directly, before PHP even loads |
dropin | Very fast. The advanced-cache.php drop-in is serving the page before WordPress fully loads |
WP Hook | Fast, but later in the request. Cache served through a WordPress hook |
plugin | Still cached, but the slowest of the four, served by the plugin itself |
| Not present | The page is not being served from cache at all |
If the header is missing entirely, the most common reasons are that you were logged in, the URL had a query string attached, a cookie on your browser is bypassing the cache, or the cache file for that page hasn’t been generated yet (it builds on the first visit after a flush).
Check the Page Source for a Cache Comment
Pages cached through BerqWP’s Local Optimization include a short HTML comment at the very end of the page source:
<!-- Optimized with BerqWP's instant cache. --->
To find it, right-click anywhere on the page and choose View Page Source, then scroll all the way to the bottom. If it’s there, the page was served from BerqWP’s cache.
Compare Against the Uncached Version
Add to the end of any URL on your site to load the original, unoptimized version of that page, regardless of whether caching is on. This is useful for comparing load times side by side, or for confirming what a page looks like before BerqWP’s optimizations are applied.
What to Do if the Page Isn’t Cached
If you’ve checked and the page genuinely isn’t being served from cache, start with the simplest explanation: make sure you’re testing logged out, with a clean URL and no extra query string. If it still isn’t cached after that, check whether another caching plugin is active alongside BerqWP, since running two cache plugins together usually causes one to interfere with the other, and check whether your hosting firewall might be blocking BerqWP’s optimization requests.
