On 06/02/06, Stéphane Thibault thibault.stephane@gmail.com wrote:
With my level of technical knowledge, I'm not exactly sure why this would defeat page caching. Do you have a link or two to suggest so I would understand better what's at stake here.
Basically, page caching means storing processed pages so that they can be served to multiple users without the extra processing required to recreate them from wikitext. If you get as many visitors as, say, Wikipedia, this amounts to a *huge* saving in the amount of servers you need to keep the site responsive.
If you had a {{USERNAME}} variable, no two users would ever see the same version of a page, so they couldn't be cached. (Obviously, the link to "User:..." at the top of the screen is generated each time anyway, but the *content* of the page can still be cached locally, and stuck inside the extra bits of skin)
As Rob says, though, if you're only running a small site, it may not be too much of a problem to disable the relevant levels of cache, letting each page be rendered fresh.
-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]