Feed Cache and Manual Cache Clearing

Benecaster caches the compiled RSS feed for each tier on each show. When a subscriber’s podcast app polls their feed URL, Benecaster serves the cached version rather than rebuilding the RSS from scratch on every request. This keeps feed delivery fast regardless of how many subscribers you have.

In most cases the cache is invisible — it refreshes automatically when you publish or update an episode. Occasionally you’ll need to clear it manually.

---

When the Cache Refreshes Automatically

The feed cache is invalidated automatically when:

• You publish a new episode
• You update an episode’s title, audio URL, or availability dates
• A subscriber’s token changes (their feed is regenerated on the next poll)
• Tier mapping changes affect episode availability
• You add, rename, reorder, activate, deactivate, or delete a built-in membership tier — that show’s feeds refresh on the next poll (bridge-mapped tiers already refreshed this way)

In these cases you don’t need to do anything. The next time a subscriber’s podcast app polls, it gets a freshly compiled feed.

---

When You Need to Clear Manually

Manual clearing is occasionally needed when:

• You edited availability settings and the feed isn’t reflecting the change. Availability date changes trigger automatic invalidation for most cases, but if you’re testing and something looks wrong, a manual clear will rule out a stale cache.
• You changed a setting that affects feed output — like the feed slug, show artwork URL, or iTunes category — and want to confirm the new value is live.
• You reordered episodes manually and the feed is still returning the old order.
• Troubleshooting a subscriber complaint. If a subscriber reports stale content, clearing the cache for their show is the quickest first step.

---

Clearing the Cache

Go to Benecaster → Shows → [Your Show] → Details → Feed Cache.

Two buttons are available:

Clicking either button opens an inline confirmation prompt. Confirm to proceed. The result — success or error — is shown inline without a page reload.

Cache clearing is instant and has no effect on subscriber tokens, episode data, or any other stored records. It simply marks the existing cached feed as stale; Benecaster rebuilds it from your current episode and settings data on the next feed request.

---

Staging Sites

On a staging site, a Clear feed cache button is always visible at the top of every Benecaster admin screen — not just in Settings — and fires immediately without a confirmation dialog. Staging mode prioritizes the fast iteration workflow over the extra step. See Setting Up a Staging Site for Benecaster.

---

Cache Duration

Benecaster caches each feed in two layers, with a different lifetime on each:

In practice the number that matters to you is 1 hour. Cached feeds are at most 1 hour out of date for background changes (show artwork, iTunes category, and similar), and that ceiling holds regardless of how your host has configured its clocks. The 24-hour database layer sits behind it and is not a second window your listeners wait through — it only comes into play when the object cache is gone, and it is invalidated by the same events that clear the object cache.

Neither lifetime is configurable. Every expiry forces the next request to rebuild the feed from the database, so a shorter window buys fresher background metadata at the cost of rebuilding more often — a cost that lands hardest on shared hosting and on shows with a large back catalogue. One hour is the balance point, and the changes you actually want reflected immediately bypass the cache entirely — see below.

The “Scheduled episode check interval” setting does not change either lifetime. It is not a feed-cache control — it is found under Benecaster → Show Settings → Tools → Scheduled Episode Checks, its own section, and it sets how often the background job checks for newly-available scheduled episodes (options: every 5 minutes, 15 minutes, hour, or 6 hours; the default is every 15 minutes). Choosing a shorter interval there makes scheduled episodes go live closer to their scheduled minute; it does not make feeds refresh sooner.

On staging sites both layers drop to 45 seconds so content changes appear almost immediately during testing.

Plugin updates: the feed cache is flushed automatically whenever the plugin updates. Feed XML structure can change between versions, so Benecaster clears all cached feeds at update time to ensure subscribers receive correctly formatted output on their next poll.

Note that these lifetimes only govern background changes. Episode publishes, title or audio URL edits, and availability date changes all invalidate the affected feeds immediately — subscribers see those changes on their next poll regardless of the cache lifetimes above.