Glossary Entry
What is Cache?
Cache without the jargon — the definition, the analogy, and why any site owner should care.
The short answer
A cache keeps hold of work already done, returning finished pages, query results and assets straight from memory rather than rebuilding them for every visitor.
The rest of the page opens it up — the mechanics, why a site owner should care, and one concrete example of it at work.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
0
Jargon left undefined
100+
Entries, all cross-linked
Real
Working examples
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To read, always
A web stack caches at several different levels. Page caches keep finished HTML, object caches such as Redis keep database results, OPcache keeps compiled PHP, the browser keeps assets on the visitor's own machine, and a CDN keeps copies near the people asking.
Each layer trades a little freshness for the saving, so each needs its own way of being cleared the moment content changes. When somebody says 'my edit is not showing', one of them is nearly always staying loyal to a version you replaced already.
Cache, by way of an analogy
A bakery whose bestsellers are out of the oven before the doors open. Service then moves at the speed of handing something across rather than the speed of the oven, and the skill lies in knowing when yesterday's tray stops being fit to sell.
Any analogy flattens the detail, naturally — but this one is solid enough to think with, and thinking is what a jargon buster is for.
Why this term earns a page
No lever in hosting moves speed further than caching. Something needing hundreds of milliseconds to compute returns from a cache hit in microseconds. Understand the layers and performance stops being a mystery and turns into configuration.
Nobody expects you to work at this layer daily. The aim is recognising it when it explains something — and that moment is exactly when this page pays for itself.
How it turns up day to day
An article goes round and ten thousand arrivals each receive the same stored copy. The server built that page exactly once, then spent the remaining hours passing it out.
Entirely unremarkable once you have seen it — which is the point: most hosting ideas are plain machinery behind an intimidating label.
Where it sits inside your own account
Here it largely looks after itself, since the defaults are sensible and the panel puts the controls within reach the moment you want them. Read on: LiteSpeed, Redis, CDN and OPcache.
Hosted somewhere else already? We move the whole site at no charge, usually within 24 hours, and it goes on answering visitors throughout.
Why a hundred definitions were worth the writing
Sooner or later every confusing hosting term turns into a support ticket, so we defined the hundred commonest ones properly — once, in the same plain English we use with customers.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is on us.
- 100+ entries, plain English all the way
- Ordinary analogies, working examples
- Neighbouring ideas linked together
- Written by our own support engineers
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Jargon-free by design
Definitions written for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — translation rather than restatement.
The next step, drawn out
Carry on into LiteSpeed and Redis — ideas rarely travel alone, so the neighbours are linked in.
This term, properly landed
Cache defined, pictured by analogy and located in your own panel — recognise-level after a single read.
Clear about how deep to go
Most of these are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and every entry says which it is.
Tied to real hosting
Examples name platforms you would genuinely use, never an abstract diagram on a whiteboard.
Analogies that hold
Every concept comes with a mental model that returns exactly when you need it.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find it in your own account
Open the control panel and find where this idea sits — a definition turns into understanding the moment it attaches to your own site.
- 2
Check the defaults as they stand
Look at how your account has it configured. Nine times in ten the default is right, and a check turns the guess into certainty.
- 3
Chase the neighbouring terms
Hosting terms travel in groups — LiteSpeed, Redis and CDN finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read away.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- WordPress and 400+ further applications installed in one click
- A renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- People on the support desk every hour of every day
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Why has my change not appeared on the site?
One of the layers is still handing out the version that predates your edit. Clear the site cache first, then reload hard enough to get past your browser's own copy. Where a CDN sits in front, it needs purging as well. Your caching plugin names every layer it knows of, so work outwards from the innermost.
Can caching break a dynamic site?
Careless configuration will, which is why baskets, checkouts and signed-in pages must be excluded, and are wherever the setup was done properly. Done well, the dynamic fragments go on behaving dynamically while everything around them comes back instantly.
Does hosting include mail?
Yes — every hosting plan includes mailboxes at your own name, with webmail, IMAP, POP and SMTP plus spam filtering on from the start. There is standalone email hosting too, for a name whose website lives somewhere else.
What does round-the-clock support actually cover?
A reply from a person at any hour, covering the practical jobs: setting up a mailbox, a DNS record, a WordPress fault, a restore. Not 'server is up, closing ticket'. Put a hard question to us before you buy — the answer is a fair sample of what follows.
Keep reading
OPcache
OPcache keeps compiled PHP bytecode in memory, sparing every request the work of recompiling the scripts, w…
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A CDN mirrors your site's assets across servers in many countries, so each visitor collects them from which…
Best Hosting With Redis Object Caching
Weighed properly, ending in a verdict rather than a table of ticks.
Email Hosting
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