# Drupal Caching Team Training

Drupal's caching system spans multiple layers. When any one of them is wrong, you pay for it — in stale content, missed invalidations, or performance that doesn't survive real traffic. This training gives your team a working mental model of the full stack, from render arrays to CDN edge.

## What the training covers

A 45 minute walkthrough of Drupal's caching architecture, followed by 15 minutes of open Q&A with your team.

**Cacheable metadata:** how cache tags, cache contexts, and max-age flow through the render pipeline and why getting them wrong cascades everywhere.

**Cache backends:** how Drupal stores and invalidates cache items, and how backend choice affects performance and correctness.

**Render caching:** how fragment caching works, how Variation Cache fits in, and how to avoid common render cache pitfalls.

**HTTP caching headers:** how Drupal generates `Cache-Control`, `Vary`, `ETag`, and related headers based on cacheable metadata, and what reverse proxies do with them.

**Reverse proxies and CDNs:** how Drupal exposes cache tags through headers, how the Purge module integrates with Varnish and CDNs, and how to configure Drupal to work correctly behind a proxy.

**Debugging:** practical tools and techniques for inspecting cache metadata, verifying cacheability, and diagnosing cache failures in development and production.

**Writing cacheable code:** patterns for custom modules: cacheable responses, cache context dependencies, lazy builders, cache stampede prevention, and testing cache metadata.

## Who this is for

Developer teams at agencies building or maintaining Drupal sites. The training assumes familiarity with Drupal development — it's not an introduction to Drupal, it's a deep dive into the caching layer most teams only partially understand.

## Format

**45 minute presentation + 15-minute Q&A**

Remote, via video call.

**$500 per session**

This training is based on my book, [Understanding Drupal: A Complete Guide to Caching Layers](https://leanpub.com/understanding-drupal-complete-guide-caching-layers). If your team wants to go deeper after the session, team discounts on the book are available directly on Leanpub.

## Book a session

[Contact me](/contact-matt) to check availability and get your team scheduled.

 

 

 Tuesday 17, March 2026