Time for action – configuring layers and layer groups for caching
By default, each layer you publish on GeoServer is added to GeoWebCache's configuration. If your layer contains data that is updated very often, caching may be a bad idea. You would waste space to store tiles that will soon become outdated. Let's see how to configure caching on a specific layer.
From the web interface, open the Tile layers section.
Scroll the list to find the NaturalEarth:10m_roads_north_america layer and click on the layer name.
The layer configuration page opens with a focus on the Tile Caching tab.
The very first section contains flags for inserting layers among the cached layers and for enabling caching. If you uncheck the first radio button, all the other settings become unavailable, and the caching configuration is lost. By default, unless you modified the Caching Defaults section, all layers added to GeoServer configuration are also configured as cached layers.
Metatiling factors, gutter size, and image...