Caching Score: https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/
Summary
GradeA+
627/627
Requested URL checks
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
100
What is this check, and why should you care
Using a long cache lifetime helps to ensure a high cache hit rate.
In order to get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
Current cache lifetime is 2628000 seconds (1 month and 2 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
100
What is this check, and why should you care
Using a CDN is extremely useful for caching purposes.
Maximum possible points
50
What is this check, and why should you care
The time that it takes for a user's browser to receive the first byte of page content.
The lower the TTFB, the faster your site will be perceived by the end user.
In order to get maximum points, your TTFB must be less than or equal to 30ms. If your TTFB is more than 1 second then you get no points here.
Maximum possible points
50
What is this check, and why should you care
Using ETag identifiers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. This mechanism allows caches to be more efficient and saves bandwidth, as a Web server does not need to send a full response if the content has not changed. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of "1744771889" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
30
What is this check, and why should you care
Using Last-Modified headers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
30
What is this check, and why should you care
Having tiered caching can help improve the cache hit ratio of your site because it provides an additional layer of caching in front of your origin.
Maximum possible points
25
What is this check, and why should you care
Caching HTTP 404s is a great way to offload requests from your origin.
In order to get maximum points, you need to have the ability to cache an HTTP 404 for any amount of time.
This check requested the URL https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/cachingscorebrokenurltest.
Maximum possible points
20
What is this check, and why should you care
The purpose of HTTP compression is to reduce the size of the files sent by a CDN/web server by eliminating redundant information in those files. The smaller the size of the files, the more quickly they can be served over the World Wide Web.
On top of faster delivery, compression also reduces the amount of bandwidth used by the CDN/web server. This is especially important for mobile devices, where the bandwidth is often limited.
The response header Content-Encoding had a value of br.
Fastly has documentation on how to enable automatic compression.
See the Wikipedia page on HTTP compression for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to use Brotli or Zstandard compression.
Maximum possible points
20
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 8+ provides an Internal Page Cache module that is recommended for small to medium-sized websites.
There is extremely limited value in using this module, even when you are using Fastly and having a relatively high cache lifetime of 1 month and 2 days.
In order to get maximum points, you must have the module page_cache disabled.
See Drupal's documentation on the Internal Page Cache module. Also, Wim Leers wrote a really awesome blog post on the release of this module with important background.
Maximum possible points
20
What is this check, and why should you care
CSS aggregation reduces the number of assets your site needs to download. The filename contains a hash of all the file contents, meaning you can cache these files for an extremely long time with no negative consequences.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Javascript aggregation reduces the number of assets your site needs to download. The filename contains a hash of all the file contents, meaning you can cache these files for an extremely long time with no negative consequences.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 9.5+ introduces a new debug setting to make it easier to debug render caching. This setting will add cache debugging output for each rendered element.
The main issue with this is that this slows down your page loads (on top increasing your page weight).
In order to get maximum points, you must disable the render cache debug.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 7+ provides a Statistics module to which records content view statistics in Drupal's database.
The main issue with this module is that it sends an un-cacheable HTTP POST request to your site to record a 'content view' statistic. This does not scale well as you Drupal site gets more traffic.
In order to get maximum points, you must disable the statistics module.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 8+ uses Twig for templating, and the Twig template engine offers a debug tool to which emits out a list of template filenames in the HTML source.
The main issue with this is that you often also have other Twig related performance issues as well, e.g. automatic reloading.
In order to get maximum points, you must disable Twig debug.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
FBCLID is one such parameter that can be stripped by your caching server. This query parameter only really serves a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read it from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/?fbclid=1745027164.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
GCLID and GCLSRC are two such parameters that can be stripped by your caching server. These query parameters only really serve a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read it from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/?gclsrc=1745027164&gclid=1745027164.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
TTCLID is one such parameter that can be stripped by your caching server. This query parameter only really serves a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read it from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/?ttclid=1745027164.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
UTM is a collection of parameters that can be stripped by your caching server. These query parameters only really serve a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read them from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/?utm_source=1745027164&utm_medium=1745027164&utm_campaign=1745027164&utm_id=1745027164.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
There is a SPAM protection module in Drupal called Honeypot.
The honeypot module has a feature that adds a time based hidden form field to forms to protect against bots filling them in too quickly. This is a nice feature, however it happens to disable caching for the entire page. This is terrible for high traffic sites.
It is recommended to disable this time based feature, and only use the core honeypot feature of a hidden input field.
Maximum possible points
5
What is this check, and why should you care
There are 2 filesystems in Drupal - public files and private files.
Private files force Drupal to bootstrap in order to serve the file, and access control is checked every single time. This is useful for sensitive files, but a hindrance when your site is under high load.
It is recommended to use Drupal's public file system for static, non-sensitive files, and reserve the use of private files for dynamic, or sensitive files.
Maximum possible points
5
Image checks
Performed on the asset: https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-07/Chevron.png
See the HTTP headers for this image file.
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Using a long cache lifetime helps to ensure a high cache hit rate.
In order to get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
Current cache lifetime is 2628010 seconds (1 month and 2 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Using ETag identifiers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. This mechanism allows caches to be more efficient and saves bandwidth, as a Web server does not need to send a full response if the content has not changed. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of "5f0d4efb-6060" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
Using Last-Modified headers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
3
CSS checks
Performed on the asset: https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/css/css_A_KuoARp7ZqI640kRRPXd9AUGRUJcvmUNXok0Xs66fg.css?delta=0&language=en&theme=vcat&include=eJx1zmFqBCEMBeAL2fFIktG3jmzGiInTevvKwjIspf_yvoRHkuRDhiLsFJ-5y6gplJMy_A1fL3A61XAuV7jIpDo_5hOq60zdFcl8ZtmJHdOUYSEVjXKhTy8VUdg16pQ7tUN96qMRb7dso7axc9EDye0wQw_4aaJI4VF4RfUZFX31XwXfGvBYC3BSmP8jm9rkUrNTUI9HoFYCDZMoZ2MY_D_utBgCMbq9f7zlF8SGe1I
See the HTTP headers for this CSS file.
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Using a long cache lifetime helps to ensure a high cache hit rate.
In order to get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
Current cache lifetime is 2628010 seconds (1 month and 2 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Using ETag identifiers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. This mechanism allows caches to be more efficient and saves bandwidth, as a Web server does not need to send a full response if the content has not changed. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of "67c39867-5b0b" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
Using Last-Modified headers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
The purpose of HTTP compression is to reduce the size of the files sent by a CDN/web server by eliminating redundant information in those files. The smaller the size of the files, the more quickly they can be served over the World Wide Web.
On top of faster delivery, compression also reduces the amount of bandwidth used by the CDN/web server. This is especially important for mobile devices, where the bandwidth is often limited.
The response header Content-Encoding had a value of br.
Fastly has documentation on how to enable automatic compression.
See the Wikipedia page on HTTP compression for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to use Brotli or Zstandard compression.
Maximum possible points
2
Javascript checks
Performed on the asset: https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/js/js_XWOclcSlhzAxPdj9RHs4MwftwK9m4c2xu-4ItgmER1w.js?scope=header&delta=0&language=en&theme=vcat&include=eJx1jlGOwzAIRC_khiMh7FDixg6uDasef91WVbQr9QOJGQa9iQ7Rl7Rx2rmHVWVTH4yR0i5d_VgxVxKG07i8jPCTyECKRipBVKUwGgmI1b-S5L9e6EaP1z9SazAHC_kxO3Q0lRkNkc2m4kfTwStec5lygPDBffK-nMlNcXis2ULSzrB2b1SWq_YaBlNP2yRmfOaS1lbYGL747353z2mfnGxwrmFkY6TC3T6E0_kFME2EKg
See the HTTP headers for this Javascript file.
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Using a long cache lifetime helps to ensure a high cache hit rate.
In order to get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
Current cache lifetime is 2628010 seconds (1 month and 2 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Using ETag identifiers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. This mechanism allows caches to be more efficient and saves bandwidth, as a Web server does not need to send a full response if the content has not changed. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of "67c0d1f2-1887c" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
Using Last-Modified headers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
The purpose of HTTP compression is to reduce the size of the files sent by a CDN/web server by eliminating redundant information in those files. The smaller the size of the files, the more quickly they can be served over the World Wide Web.
On top of faster delivery, compression also reduces the amount of bandwidth used by the CDN/web server. This is especially important for mobile devices, where the bandwidth is often limited.
The response header Content-Encoding had a value of br.
Fastly has documentation on how to enable automatic compression.
See the Wikipedia page on HTTP compression for more background.
In order to get maximum points, you need to use Brotli or Zstandard compression.
Maximum possible points
2
HTTP Response headers
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Status Code | HTTP 200 |
| Accept-Ranges | bytes |
| Age | 51074 |
| Cache-Control | max-age=2628000, public |
| Connection | keep-alive |
| Content-Encoding | br |
| Content-Length | 14887 |
| Content-Type | text/html; charset=UTF-8 |
| Content-language | en |
| Date | Sat, 19 Apr 2025 01:46:03 GMT |
| ETag | "1744771889" |
| Expires | Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT |
| Fastly-Debug-Digest | ae1d99bea14f3e5ff0f42734e7a848c625ec326bdd96159f51d435c3f02443b6 |
| Fastly-Debug-Path | (D cache-wsi-ysbk1060046-WSI 1745027164) (F cache-wsi-ysbk1060041-WSI 1744978205) (D cache-syd10163-SYD 1744978205) (F cache-syd10163-SYD 1744976090) |
| Fastly-Debug-TTL | (H cache-wsi-ysbk1060046-WSI - - 51074) (H cache-syd10163-SYD 2625884.364 86400.000 2116) |
| Fastly-Drupal-HTML | YES |
| Fastly-Drupal-VCL-Uploaded | 8-1.0.2 |
| Last-Modified | Wed, 16 Apr 2025 02:51:29 GMT |
| Server-Timing | HIT, fastly;desc="Edge time";dur=0, HIT-CLUSTER, fastly;desc="Edge time";dur=1 |
| Surrogate-Control | max-age=2628000, public |
| Surrogate-Key | YKde NJ9K HJ0s nKdz Snzg UNov y/T6 9c87 M+4p drSZ +fwM vtpp CvVg ZC5g /Cv/ mkXK oG0c HHnP 806L nbKW ByL2 wGx8 m052 2f3k jojc R5wi MfUa nZVy I4kd WCFq AIn7 rYG4 e6/k Zuo+ Fru/ Lkcd LCF4 TUqt mDmk dxet uwkT jd+Z D7ET CXzr q/Yl 0ASG 2lSe csXO 4lTi 2ER+ Coe3 rmOi yfYl OHY2 RdKk Ntv0 pPWl ExhJ sLhV /E2i 4bPw hKtq hxik TwPp JHnJ eVS9 ++8n q6H7 RBlD YvMR tqNP VmKG dw+U Ci/O BH2I EmVC ByA0 dyab wAdy 7laM K1UC ZbDx ek3E dpz/ i0mY qIPw lMRC e0P2 XL4d MWaL fVZl hYaN FAql mTmV dK/h zmyH 1RHj ezla q1+7 sY8W 3PY1 dKtG ZLds N+o8 jkp1 1tma gFCw zSzK oao0 OBce DK2Y v247 28A7 Qwqz Deeh Xvk7 RjYO +wYR LBpy Oelc MHDX M/7b /cHO q+nO uO0X Bz1t n3hk E1gi snFu yUqK 3jWv be4R J12B /t5O N2T+ kb4c 8ObV EaIz nZeb Zg5U jRgU OpKE X3+q ILPv QEjy 4p7F Bh1g FtcP pO/T 9rhH m6ZM UrPX fDuC dqpD JJAk /rj1 yeEM uRMV nSXB tZcv MQ0P hoxn T5jy f8SH ZF1T upau 7scV Rjxx YsBx rETw Up9s LrCo u7M2 XVaR bvUd Rr/+ r/HH vAnp Ecsn 1dYD fY8l d6sx Nh34 4oNR E//A a/B+ CW7l LS8b Jfq2 bdQk oCmi www.vcat.vic.gov.au |
| Vary | Cookie, Accept-Encoding |
| Via | 1.1 varnish |
| X-Cache | HIT |
| X-Cache-Hits | 1 |
| X-Drupal-Dynamic-Cache | MISS |
| X-LAGOON | amazeeio-dh1>sigsci-ingress-nginx>vcat-website-drupal8-2020-deploy-lagoon-production:nginx>nginx-c9b995d95-q59xh |
| X-Served-By | cache-wsi-ysbk1060046-WSI |
| X-Service-Id | 0VfjtEv26MEnPZwvF4qtZO |
| X-Static-Asset | 0 |
| X-Timer | S1745027164.852657,VS0,VE1 |
| X-Waf-Block | 0 |
| X-Waf-Block-Id | 0 |
| alt-svc | h3=":443";ma=86400,h3-29=":443";ma=86400,h3-27=":443";ma=86400 |
| fastly-request-id | a8d1162dbb167d7dfb64e53b, 24bb815fb5fed77107aa03d9 |
If you want to do this yourself
You can use the following cURL command:
curl -sLIXGET -H 'Fastly-Debug: 1' -H 'Accept-Encoding: br, zstd, gzip, deflate' 'https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/' | sort