Smarty

[rr1024]

I've only done some reading about the smarty cache functionality and I can say I don't fully understand it yet, probably because I'm new to some of the terms being tossed around.

But I was thinking the whole problem with cache and PHP scripts in general is the dynamic content that has changed verses the dynamic content that Has NOT changed and how you implement this using smarty seems fairly complex?

Could it be possible to use AJAX for small snips of dynamic contact that always changes. Could smarty use say an AJAX plugin to do small dynamic content changes to a cached page?

Let's say I'm writing a script that requires everyone who visits a page to see if the users page who's being visited is Online, i.e. logged in to the script, this is seen quite often in scripts i.e. Online or Offline Member.

I'm just using this as an example:
No mater how Online Offline is handled it's fairly intensive for the server. Either using a dbquery, or a cron job it doesn't matter it's still a fairly heafty load when add it to all the other things your script does, because it's done every single time. It is also the piece of the page which needs to remain dynamic of course.

It seems AJAX plugin if it could be made to work with smarty can help resolve minor dynamic content changes like that above and even more by identifing dynamic content in your script which tells smarty to use AJAX to display dynamic parts.