How to: Install Memcache for php and WordPress

How to: Install Memcache for php and WordPress

In what seems the eternal quest of having a good performing hosting server one of the tools that are generally referred to is Memcache. What Memcache offers you is a centralized server/cluster that holds in memory cached information. Some of the reasons why it is so popular is because:

• It allows you to share a common cache store across servers. Think accessing db cached information obtained by Server01 on Server02 or sharing session information between servers.
• Because it stores information in memory, it is supposed to be fast.

WordPress can leverage Memcache either through php or with plugins. Php can leverage shared session for instance while a plugin like W3 Total Cache can use object caching through Memcache. This could provide a great performance improvement specially if your site is hosted on multiple servers.

Now, this installation instructions are meant to be simple and provide a quick way to deploy Memcache. I am no expert so some important settings might be overlooked but this should be a good starting guide for someone new to Memcache that wants to deploy it on a Ubuntu box.

Note: There are two flavors for the php libraries: php5-memcache and php5-memcached. Fortunately for us W3 Total Cache has decided to go with memcache so we can avoid a lenghty discussion of which is better and why.

First install memcache and the php library in order for it to work with php and WordPress:

apt-get install memcached php5-memcache

and that’s it! Well, that was rather short. So now let’s go into some settings worth taking a look at:

I. Increase Max Memory Memecached can use

I know it says that the default (64MB) is enough, but you may need more. I am already using 64 mb for what I consider a small site.

1. Open /etc/memcached.conf 
2. Look for value -m 64
3. Change it to -m 256
4. Restart memcached: sudo service memcached restart

II. Move PHP’s session storage to Memcache

Open /etc/php5/mods-available/memcache.ini

Add following lines:

session.save_handler = memcache
session.save_path = "tcp://localhost:11211"

As mentioned this would effectively allow you to share session across multiple servers that use Memcache.

III. Web-Viewer for Memcache Stats

There are many options out there but I saw phpmemcacheadmin and liked it, plus many sites referenced it.

To install visit the site to obtain the latest version: http://blog.elijaa.org/index.php?pages/phpMemcachedAdmin-Download-Version-1.2.2

cd /var/www/memcache.CloudIngenium.com/wwwroot/

wget http://phpmemcacheadmin.googlecode.com/files/phpMemcachedAdmin-1.2.2-r262.tar.gz

tar -xvzf phpMemcachedAdmin-1.2.2-r262.tar.gz

chmod 0777 Config/Memcache.php


So now we need to configure Apache:

cd /etc/httpd/conf.d

sudo nano memcached.conf
include the following in memcached.conf

Because we didn’t specify the Allow from directive only localhost would be able to access this site. Don´t forget to add this site to Apache and restart for it to publish it.

If you wanted to use nginx you should use the following conf config as a template:

server {

    listen 80;

        server_name  memcached.CloudIngenium.com;

        access_log   /var/log/nginx/memcached.CloudIngenium.com-access.log  main;

        location  / {

            allow 10.0.0.1/32;

            deny all;

            proxy_set_header Host $host;

            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;

            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;

            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80;

        }

}