How to enable the Redis object cache in Kiravo

To enable Redis on your Kiravo website, open the website’s Advanced dropdown, choose Developer tools, then Redis in the sidebar. Toggle Redis on. The Redis service runs inside your website’s PHP container; your application (typically WordPress with a Redis plugin) just needs to know it’s available.

Redis is a fast in-memory key-value store. For a WordPress site, Redis is most often used as an object cache — caching the results of expensive database queries so the same query doesn’t have to run on every page load. The visible effect is faster page loads, less database load, and a site that holds up better under traffic spikes.

What “object cache” actually means

WordPress is built on database queries. Every page render involves dozens of queries — fetching the post, looking up comments, loading widget content, resolving user permissions. Most of these query the same data repeatedly across requests.

An object cache stores the results of those queries in memory. The next time WordPress would run the same query, it serves the cached result instead — measured in microseconds rather than milliseconds.

Redis is one of the most popular object cache backends because it’s fast, mature, and well-supported. The Kiravo platform runs a dedicated Redis instance inside your PHP container, so there’s no separate server to manage.

Enable Redis on the server

1. From your website’s dashboard, click Advanced in the top menu bar.
2. Choose Developer tools.
3. In the sidebar on the left, click Redis.
4. Toggle Redis on.

That’s the server-side work done. Redis is now running and available for any application that wants to use it.

Connect WordPress to Redis

Enabling Redis on the server isn’t enough by itself — your WordPress install also needs to be told to use Redis as its object cache. The standard way is the Redis Object Cache plugin (sometimes called WP Redis Object Cache).

1. In WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add new.
2. Search for “Redis Object Cache” (the plugin by Till Krüss is the de facto choice — it’s widely used and well-maintained).
3. Install and activate it.
4. Open the plugin’s settings page (under Settings → Redis in your WordPress admin).
5. Click Enable Object Cache.

The plugin connects to the Redis instance running inside your PHP container. If everything’s wired up correctly, the status reads Connected.

You can manage the WordPress plugin via the WordPress Toolkit too — installing and managing plugins from the panel rather than from wp-admin.

Verify it’s working

The plugin’s status page shows:

• Status: Connected — Redis is reachable and being used.
• Hits and misses — how often a query result was found in cache (hit) versus had to be computed (miss). Healthy sites see a high hit ratio (>90%) after a brief warm-up period.

You can also see the speed improvement by loading a typical page once (warm-up), then loading it again — the second load is usually noticeably faster.

When you might not want Redis

For most sites, enable Redis. The cases where it’s not worth it:

• Static or near-static sites where every page is already cached by Nginx FastCGI cache anyway. Redis helps where PHP actually runs; if PHP rarely runs, the benefit is small.
• Tiny development sites where performance isn’t the point.
• Applications that don’t support Redis — anything that doesn’t have an object-cache-aware integration won’t benefit.

For an active WordPress site — especially one with WooCommerce, BuddyPress, LearnDash, or anything else that runs lots of dynamic queries — Redis is one of the biggest single performance wins you can apply.

Note

Redis vs Nginx cache. They cache at different layers and complement each other. Nginx FastCGI cache stores the rendered HTML of each page — when a request matches, PHP doesn’t run at all. Redis caches the results of database queries — useful when PHP does have to run (logged-in users, AJAX, etc.). Run both: Nginx serves anonymous traffic instantly from the page cache; Redis speeds up everything that bypasses the page cache.