Cloudflare Cache Rules - WooCommerce Setup

Background

After launching the WooCommerce store, a "coming soon" page was sticking around for visitors due to Cloudflare serving a cached version. The root cause was an aggressive "cache all" rule with no WooCommerce exceptions.

What Was Already in Place

A cache rule set to All incoming requests → Eligible for cache was in place to improve cache hit rate (previously 87% of traffic was uncached).

Problem

With a whole-site cache rule and no exceptions, Cloudflare was caching WooCommerce dynamic pages including:

Cart
Checkout
My Account
Pages tied to active shopping sessions

This caused stale content to be served to visitors, including the "coming soon" page after the store launched.

Solution

Created a new cache rule placed above the existing "cache all" rule with the following configuration:

Rule: WooCommerce Bypass

Order: First (runs before the cache all rule) Filter: Custom expression

(http.request.uri.path contains "/cart") or
(http.request.uri.path contains "/checkout") or
(http.request.uri.path contains "/my-account") or
(http.cookie contains "woocommerce")

Cache eligibility: Bypass cache TTL settings: None needed (bypass ignores TTL)

How It Works

Cloudflare cache rules use first match wins logic:

Rule 1 catches all WooCommerce pages and active shopping sessions → bypass cache
Rule 2 catches everything else → cache it

This means static content (recipes, homepage, product images) still gets cached for performance, while dynamic shopping pages always serve fresh content.

Key Decisions

Used http.cookie contains "woocommerce" instead of listing individual cookie names — broader match covers all current and future WooCommerce cookies
No browser TTL needed on the bypass rule — nothing is being stored
Left the existing "cache all" rule unchanged — exceptions-first approach is cleaner than listing every page to cache

Result

WooCommerce cart, checkout, and account pages now always serve fresh content
Rest of the site continues to benefit from Cloudflare caching
No stale page issues for customers during active shopping sessions

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