The most common thing is to have Mailchimp campaigns to your Magento 2 store. You might use the Mailchimp module to integrate with Magento 2 or just upload a CSV list to your new email campaign. What if your website speed became very slow or even down every time you send email campaigns? Well, this is what I’m going to help you to solve today.
Server slow (Varnish)
Varnish is the cache system from the server-side. Every time that someone access a unique URL, a cache of this page is created for the next user. That said, why your email campaign is causing a performance issue?
If you use Mailchimp, Zuuba or Klaviyo, your server might be prepared to the dynamic URL that the systems will use to track the clicks.
Mailchimp example
If you add a product in your email campaign with the URL store.com/product.html it will become something like store.com/product.html?mc_uniq=3jfZ3f&mc_id=3kgoaj. The results are the same, however, the dynamic parameters in the URL will say to your Magento 2 Varnish to skip the cache to this page for each customer. It’s the same thing that you have thousands of customers accessing your Magento 2 store without Varnish cache.
How to solve it
I recommend you contact a specialist from your server-side and let them help you with that. You might be able to get an example of how the Varnish cache system must be configured in your hosting via the admin panel, as you can see in this screen below.
You just need to click in the Export VCL for Varnish 4 or 5, depending on which one you might have in your server. If you run an outdated Magento version, you might need to adjust the file to predict Mailchimp params in the URL and not skip the cache for it.
If you use other systems that I mentioned and not Mailchimp, you just need to add the possible tracking params in the VCL file.
Varnish 4 VCL
If you want to see a good example of VCL file, your can see here below.
vcl 4.0;
import std;
# The minimal Varnish version is 4.0
# For SSL offloading, pass the following header in your proxy server or load balancer: '/* {{ ssl_offloaded_header }} */: https'
backend default {
.host = "/* {{ host }} */";
.port = "/* {{ port }} */";
.first_byte_timeout = 600s;
.probe = {
.url = "/pub/health_check.php";
.timeout = 2s;
.interval = 5s;
.window = 10;
.threshold = 5;
}
}
acl purge {
/* {{ ips }} */
}
sub vcl_recv {
if (req.method == "PURGE") {
if (client.ip !~ purge) {
return (synth(405, "Method not allowed"));
}
# To use the X-Pool header for purging varnish during automated deployments, make sure the X-Pool header
# has been added to the response in your backend server config. This is used, for example, by the
# capistrano-magento2 gem for purging old content from varnish during it's deploy routine.
if (!req.http.X-Magento-Tags-Pattern && !req.http.X-Pool) {
return (synth(400, "X-Magento-Tags-Pattern or X-Pool header required"));
}
if (req.http.X-Magento-Tags-Pattern) {
ban("obj.http.X-Magento-Tags ~ " + req.http.X-Magento-Tags-Pattern);
}
if (req.http.X-Pool) {
ban("obj.http.X-Pool ~ " + req.http.X-Pool);
}
return (synth(200, "Purged"));
}
if (req.method != "GET" &&
req.method != "HEAD" &&
req.method != "PUT" &&
req.method != "POST" &&
req.method != "TRACE" &&
req.method != "OPTIONS" &&
req.method != "DELETE") {
/* Non-RFC2616 or CONNECT which is weird. */
return (pipe);
}
# We only deal with GET and HEAD by default
if (req.method != "GET" && req.method != "HEAD") {
return (pass);
}
# Bypass shopping cart, checkout and search requests
if (req.url ~ "/checkout" || req.url ~ "/catalogsearch") {
return (pass);
}
# Bypass health check requests
if (req.url ~ "/pub/health_check.php") {
return (pass);
}
# Set initial grace period usage status
set req.http.grace = "none";
# normalize url in case of leading HTTP scheme and domain
set req.url = regsub(req.url, "^http[s]?://", "");
# collect all cookies
std.collect(req.http.Cookie);
# Compression filter. See https://www.varnish-cache.org/trac/wiki/FAQ/Compression
if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) {
if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|gz|tgz|bz2|tbz|mp3|ogg|swf|flv)$") {
# No point in compressing these
unset req.http.Accept-Encoding;
} elsif (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") {
set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip";
} elsif (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate" && req.http.user-agent !~ "MSIE") {
set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate";
} else {
# unknown algorithm
unset req.http.Accept-Encoding;
}
}
# Remove all marketing get parameters to minimize the cache objects
if (req.url ~ "(\?|&)(gclid|cx|ie|cof|siteurl|zanpid|origin|mc_[a-z]+|utm_[a-z]+)=") {
set req.url = regsuball(req.url, "(gclid|cx|ie|cof|siteurl|zanpid|origin|mc_[a-z]+|utm_[a-z]+)=[-_A-z0-9+()%.]+&?", "");
set req.url = regsub(req.url, "[?|&]+$", "");
}
# Static files caching
if (req.url ~ "^/(pub/)?(media|static)/") {
# Static files should not be cached by default
return (pass);
# But if you use a few locales and don't use CDN you can enable caching static files by commenting previous line (#return (pass);) and uncommenting next 3 lines
#unset req.http.Https;
#unset req.http./* {{ ssl_offloaded_header }} */;
#unset req.http.Cookie;
}
return (hash);
}
sub vcl_hash {
if (req.http.cookie ~ "X-Magento-Vary=") {
hash_data(regsub(req.http.cookie, "^.*?X-Magento-Vary=([^;]+);*.*$", "\1"));
}
# For multi site configurations to not cache each other's content
if (req.http.host) {
hash_data(req.http.host);
} else {
hash_data(server.ip);
}
# To make sure http users don't see ssl warning
if (req.http./* {{ ssl_offloaded_header }} */) {
hash_data(req.http./* {{ ssl_offloaded_header }} */);
}
/* {{ design_exceptions_code }} */
}
sub vcl_backend_response {
set beresp.grace = 3d;
if (beresp.http.content-type ~ "text") {
set beresp.do_esi = true;
}
if (bereq.url ~ "\.js$" || beresp.http.content-type ~ "text") {
set beresp.do_gzip = true;
}
if (beresp.http.X-Magento-Debug) {
set beresp.http.X-Magento-Cache-Control = beresp.http.Cache-Control;
}
# cache only successfully responses and 404s
if (beresp.status != 200 && beresp.status != 404) {
set beresp.ttl = 0s;
set beresp.uncacheable = true;
return (deliver);
} elsif (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "private") {
set beresp.uncacheable = true;
set beresp.ttl = 86400s;
return (deliver);
}
# validate if we need to cache it and prevent from setting cookie
if (beresp.ttl > 0s && (bereq.method == "GET" || bereq.method == "HEAD")) {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
}
# If page is not cacheable then bypass varnish for 2 minutes as Hit-For-Pass
if (beresp.ttl <= 0s ||
beresp.http.Surrogate-control ~ "no-store" ||
(!beresp.http.Surrogate-Control &&
beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "no-cache|no-store") ||
beresp.http.Vary == "*") {
# Mark as Hit-For-Pass for the next 2 minutes
set beresp.ttl = 120s;
set beresp.uncacheable = true;
}
return (deliver);
}
sub vcl_deliver {
if (resp.http.X-Magento-Debug) {
if (resp.http.x-varnish ~ " ") {
set resp.http.X-Magento-Cache-Debug = "HIT";
set resp.http.Grace = req.http.grace;
} else {
set resp.http.X-Magento-Cache-Debug = "MISS";
}
} else {
unset resp.http.Age;
}
# Not letting browser to cache non-static files.
if (resp.http.Cache-Control !~ "private" && req.url !~ "^/(pub/)?(media|static)/") {
set resp.http.Pragma = "no-cache";
set resp.http.Expires = "-1";
set resp.http.Cache-Control = "no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0";
}
unset resp.http.X-Magento-Debug;
unset resp.http.X-Magento-Tags;
unset resp.http.X-Powered-By;
unset resp.http.Server;
unset resp.http.X-Varnish;
unset resp.http.Via;
unset resp.http.Link;
}
sub vcl_hit {
if (obj.ttl >= 0s) {
# Hit within TTL period
return (deliver);
}
if (std.healthy(req.backend_hint)) {
if (obj.ttl + /* {{ grace_period }} */s > 0s) {
# Hit after TTL expiration, but within grace period
set req.http.grace = "normal (healthy server)";
return (deliver);
} else {
# Hit after TTL and grace expiration
return (fetch);
}
} else {
# server is not healthy, retrieve from cache
set req.http.grace = "unlimited (unhealthy server)";
return (deliver);
}
}If you already have Varnish configured, check if you have the health check and the possible URL params that might not skip the cache in your VCL. The example below shows the change that made Magento 2 Varnish recognize Mailchimp params.
Are you struggling to solve simple issues? Let me help you, sending me a message.
