How does caching work?

[Jaxel]

I installed XF1.1 today and added to my config.php:

$config['cache']['enabled'] = true;
$config['cache']['frontend'] = 'Core';
$config['cache']['frontendOptions'] = array(
    'caching'                    => true,
    'lifetime'                    => 3600,
    'cache_id_prefix'            => 'xf_'
);
$config['cache']['cacheSessions'] = true;

I have eAccelerator installed on my server... is this all I need to do? I then enabled the two options 'Minify CSS' and 'Fetch public templates as files'. These options are supposed to make my website FASTER, is that correct?

Since doing all these changes, my website is running slower than ever. The number of queries per page is indeed lower, but timings are higher. Did I do something wrong?

 

[Deebs]

I just found that caching itself works fine. If I disable caching for user sessions, then the user quicker logout problem disappears. Does it really make a lot of difference to store user sessions in cache?

It will all depend on how many users you have active at one time. This clearly indicates that the size of your cache is too small and variables are being evicted/and or not being stored. You can leave just opcode caching running for now and see how it goes.

 

[DRE]

I need this. Looks like I got some studying to do.