Adding Renderings and Sublayouts in Sitecore can be done in two ways.
- Dynamically - Renderings/Sublayouts are added via the page designer or layout details dialog.
- Statically - Renderings/Sublayouts are added in-line in the HTML code for a Sublayout/Layout.
When adding Sublayouts/Renderings dynamically the caching attributes can be assigned to either the Sublayout/Rendering definition item (in /sitecore/layouts/…) - this sets the default caching for this rendering - or it can be set directly on the layout configuration for an item. This is all described in great detail in the documentation.
There is one pitfall though. When statically adding Sublayouts/Renderings (ex. Sublayout path=… />) they do not pickup the global cache settings defined on the Sublayout/Rendering definition item. You will have to specify the cache settings directly on your tag. Here is an example:
<sc:Sublayout path="/layouts/cache.ascx" runat="server" cacheable="true" varybydata="true" />
There is a hint in the Presentation Component Reference saying that Sitecore copies caching options from the rendering definition item to the control when you bind a rendering statically to a layout or sublayout using the Developer Center or the Grid Designer. That's fine if you have setup your caching parameters before you add it and that you are aware that modifying the Sublayout/Rendering definition cache settings will not affect statically added Renderings/Sublayouts already in place.
As it stands the sc:Sublayout tag seems completely detached from Sitecore once added. Perhaps it would have been nice if you could point it to a Sublayout/Rendering definition where it could pick up path, cache settings etc.
