You can do more elaborate grouping by setting up cache_id groups. This is accomplished by separating each sub-group with a vertical bar "|" in the cache_id value. You can have as many sub-groups as you like. caching = true; // clear all caches with "sports|basketball" as the first two cache_id groups $smarty->clear_cache(null,"sports|basketball"); // clear all caches with "sports" as the first cache_id group. This would // include "sports|basketball", or "sports|(anything)|(anything)|(anything)|..." $smarty->clear_cache(null,"sports"); $smarty->display('index.tpl',"sports|basketball"); ?> ]]> The cache grouping does NOT use the path to the template as any part of the cache_id. For example, if you have display('themes/blue/index.tpl'), you cannot clear the cache for everything under the "themes/blue" directory. If you want to do that, you must group them in the cache_id, such as display('themes/blue/index.tpl','themes|blue'); Then you can clear the caches for the blue theme with clear_cache(null,'themes|blue');