First of all, you specifically speak of the PAGE cache in the
/_cache/pages/ directory? Nothing to do with your /_cache
/images/ directory? If so, this should be clarified, as there is a big difference between caching pages and caching images.
As for your PAGE CACHE:
- X3 will create TWO cache-fragment files for each page. One for the page when loaded directly (full document), and one for the ajax json request, when the page is navigated to from the menu.
- In addition, if search engines are indexing your image-landing pages, or if you have disabled POPUP, each of your images on your website will create two cache fragments (html + json) for the image's own landing page (normally not visited by humans, but if cache elements are created, it is definitely visited by either humans are bots).
- If you have 100 pages and 1000 images, you might therefore get something around 2200 + cache files. The cache files might be between 20 kb - 50kb. In example above, that would require 110 MB.
- Just as an example, our X3 demo, which of course is relatively small, contains 217 page cache files, in total of 7.4MB [screenshot].
- Needless to say, if there was an option to disable page cache, your pages would load MUCH slower. This is perhaps the single-most important option for speeding up page-delivery from your server shared server. Because of this, there definitely should NOT be an option to disable page cache.
I don't know how you managed to gather that amount of page cache, but either you are created an abnormal amount of changes within a short time period, or you are accessing from different paths/domains ... I don't know.
It is entirely safe to delete your page cache. You can delete all the files, and then access one page after another, and you will see that cache-files are created only ONCE for each page/json request and/or image-landing page in the /_cache/pages/ directory. These files represent one json- or page request, and are crucial to speed up delivery of that request. X3 does not add random junk into here obviously, and will manage outdated cache fragments for existing paths.
You might consider deleting your the page cache once your website is more or less "ready", and then you will find that it will eventually populate to saturate all requests (as they are made), nothing more nothing less. It could be that there are loads of orphan files there right now if you for example have been copying, moving or renaming main folders.
The page cache is non-stop growing everyday (500Go to 1.5Go)
The page cache will definitely NOT continue growing, unless you inevitably continue to make extensive changes to folder paths and/or image structure. It will always saturate at the point where all requests are cached. It could be your cache might contain orphan cache files, in which case there is no problem deleting all cache (considering you must have been making lots of structure changes), but it won't continue growing inevitably.
5GB?
Having said all the above, and although your page cache seems abnormally large, I really don't understand what kind of hosts offer only 5GB these days. Many hosts offer unlimited storage, the cheapest
Godaddy package, is
100GB, and we even offer
unlimited storage with our
flamepix.com hosting, where we also offer
price-match. Thus, in 2019, I really don't see why anyone would need to spend their time worrying about how much storage that cache requires for a fast, modern website with extensive content.
To conclude:
- Page cache is important for speed, and should never be disabled.
- All newly created cache elements are unique. If they get created, it means they don't exist yet.
- It is safe to delete the cache files, as it will eventually re-populate from existing pages.
- Even at 500MB, cache storage should really not be a concern. If you want to host a modern website on your own hosting that is.
If you want full diagnosis, I would need FTP login. I would need to check the amount of folders and files in your content, and would delete the page cache, and then keep it under surveillance. It will eventually saturate, and definitely not grow inevitably.