Cache Management

Console → WAF → [your domain] → Cache — configure how long HEIMWALL and visitor browsers hold your content, switch caching mode, and purge stale files immediately after a deploy.

Development Mode

Temporarily disables the entire cache system. While on, every request bypasses the edge and goes directly to your origin; the Speed optimizations (except HTTP/3) also stop working.

Enable it when making changes to see results without purging. Turn it off when done.

Cache Mode

Determines which content types are eligible for caching on HEIMWALL edge servers.

Mode	What gets cached
Standard	Static content only — `.jpg .png .webp .css .js .woff2 .svg` and similar. HTML is fetched fresh from origin on every request. Recommended for most sites.
Full	All content including HTML and API responses. Minimizes origin load; the most resilient mode under high traffic or attack.

Edge Cache TTL

Sets how long HEIMWALL edge servers store a response before re-fetching from your origin. Configured independently from the browser TTL — content is refreshed automatically once the TTL expires.

System Default: 30 minutes for static content · 5 minutes for HTML

Disable the System Default to set a custom value in the 5 minutes – 24 hours range.

Browser Cache TTL

Sets the Cache-Control: max-age value sent to visitor browsers, overriding the origin’s own header.

Preset options: Off · 30 minutes · 2 hours · 1 day · 1 week · 1 month

Off passes the origin’s Cache-Control header through unchanged.

You can also enter a custom value in seconds (0–31,536,000).

Ignore Query Parameters

When on, query parameters (?v=3, ?utm_source=email, etc.) are stripped from the cache key. Requests for the same file with different parameters resolve to a single cache entry.

# Off — each parameter variant is a separate entry
style.css?v=1   → entry #1
style.css?v=2   → entry #2
style.css?utm=x → entry #3

# On — single cache entry
style.css?v=1   ┐
style.css?v=2   ├→ one cache entry, higher hit rate
style.css?utm=x ┘

Leave this off for pages that return different content depending on query parameters (e.g. search results).

Purging the Cache

Immediately invalidates cached entries on HEIMWALL edge servers.

Purge by path — enter one path per line, or comma-separate them; up to 100 entries, each starting with /. Only the specified paths are cleared; other cached content is unaffected.

Purge all — clears every cached entry for the domain. Until the cache warms back up, requests go directly to your origin and load may temporarily increase. This action is irreversible and requires confirmation.