Force page caching
Most caching plugins for WordPress use a de facto standard to exclude pages from being cached: the DONOTCACHEPAGE WordPress Core constant. If defined as true during a request, WP Rocket would not cache the page in question, but allow a regular database request to WordPress.
WP Rocket's optimizations are tied to the ability to cache the page, except for Image Lazyload and Preload Links. Consequently, a page using DONOTCACHEPAGE will not be optimized as well.
However, in some rare cases, that behavior needs to be overridden, and WP Rocket lets you do that. Here is how.
Overriding DONOTCACHEPAGE via Filter in WP Rocket
Important! Before overriding the DONOTCACHEPAGE, reach out to the plugin using it to understand if it's a requirement for it to work properly or not.
As handy as a commonly used constant like DONOTCACHEPAGE can come in, there may be cases where a site admin needs to override it in order to still get a specific request cached, no matter whether a third-party plugin has tried to employ the common constant for cache exclusion of a page.
WP Rocket has you covered in that case. All you need to do is pass true to a special filter in WP Rocket, and WP Rocket will ignore the DONOTCACHEPAGE constant.
add_filter( 'rocket_override_donotcachepage', '__return_true', PHP_INT_MAX );
Helper Plugin
The following helper plugin will help you easily override a DONOTCACHEPAGE constant and force WP Rocket's page caching:
📥 Download (.zip): WP Rocket | Force Page Caching
Developers: You can find the code for this plugin on GitHub.
Heads up! Using the Force Page Caching Helper plugin will not override excluded pages in the Never Cache URL(s), Never Cache Cookies rules. or individual Never cache this page option on the pages.
The helper will not affect any pages automatically excluded by WP Rocket, such as Cart, Checkout and My Account pages that WP Rocket automatically excludes for some e-commerce plugins (these pages will remain excluded from caching and optimizations).
In case DONOTCACHEPAGE is a requirement, you can use the WP Rocket | Force Page Caching helper plugin in combination with WP Rocket | Disable Page Caching to keep page cache turned off while still benefiting from optimizations.
Example: Cached Pages for Members
Let’s say you use a membership plugin to serve specific content for logged-in users only. You would want to enable the User Cache option in WP Rocket in order to provide fast-loading, cached pages for your logged-in site members.
Some membership plugins define the DONOTCACHEPAGE constant for logged-in users because an everyday use case would be to not serve static but dynamic content to members.
In our example, however, you would only aim to deliver static content to your logged-in member in addition to what non-logged-in users would see. So you would need to override the DONOTCACHEPAGE directive set by the membership plugin in order for WP Rocket’s User Cache option to work properly.
In order to do so, you’d best use the helper plugin provided above.