If you are finding your current WordPress setup running slow even when it is running on a modernly fast server, you will need a caching plugin to serve your pages faster. W3 Total Cache is the tool for the job.
What is caching in general? It is designed to improve web server performance while keeping your websites up when it is under heavy load from the likes of Reddit, Hackers News, Digg, retweets links and many more.
Here is a quick(ish) guide to get this caching plugin up and running quickly. This configuration may not suit your shared hosting, VPS or dedicated servers. It is recommended to play around with it and see what ticks. After all, it is about delivering your content quicker!
After you have enabled and installed the plugin, go to the performance menu and on the general tab, select the following options:
Page Cache: Enabled – Cache Method Disk: Enhanced
Minify: Enabled – Mode: Auto – Cache Method: Disk
Database Cache: Enabled – Cache Method Disk: Enhanced
Browser Cache: Enabled
Page Cache tab:
In general, enable the following:
- Cache home page
- Cache feeds: site, categories, tags, comments
- Cache requests only for youwebsite.com hostname
- Don’t cache pages for logged in users
Minify tab:
In general, enable the following:
- Rewrite URL structure
HTML & XML:
HTML minify settings:
- Enable
- Inline CSS minification
- Inline JS minification
- Line break removal
JS and CSS: Enable only. This section can be a nightmare as it could break various files. You have been warned!
Database Cache: The default settings is best left alone.
Browser Cache:
In general, CSS & JS, HTML & XML and Media & Other Files:
- Set expires header
- Set entity tag (eTag)
- Set W3 Total Cache header
- Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
Test out your website and you should notice that the pages will load faster (subjected to your hosting). There are many various options available throughout this plugin like enabling CDN to use Amazon CloudFront, CloudFlare.
Now start speeding up your WordPress websites today!
