HOW TO MAKE YOUR WORDPRESS SITE FASTER
W3tc Cloudflare
At WPX, we recommend W3 Total Cache for the best performance on our hosting platform.
In this article, we will guide you through the process of installing and configuring W3 Total Cache step by step.
- Nov 21, 2020 If you check it, you can see that W3 Total Cache (a.k.a W3TC) is the plugin that topped the table. See also: Top Caching Plugins for WordPress Not just in speed, W3TC is ahead of others in terms of features too. With that amount of functionalities available for free, W3TC almost nullifies the need for a premium caching plugin.
- W3 Total Cache is a speed optimization plugin which can improve your visitor’s experience by increasing the speed of your WordPress site. It is among the most famous and widely used cache plugins for WordPress sites.
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WHAT IS W3 TOTAL CACHE AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
This caching plugin is one of the best of its kind and is designed to improve website performance and user experience. It comes with an array of features, including Page Cache, Database Cache, Browser Cache, Object cache, CDN integration and more.
Essentially, caching is the fast, temporary storage of recently or frequently used information. Storing this information in the cache allows for much faster data retrieval.
HOW DO I INSTALL W3 TOTAL CACHE?
Before we start the installation, please make sure you have disabled and uninstalled any other caching plugin in order to avoid any potential errors or problems after activating W3TC.
W3 Total Cache can be found in the WordPress directory and can be installed simply.
W3tc-config
Or, inside WP Admin, you can go to Plugins → Add New and enter “W3 Total Cache” into the search bar, as seen below:
Click on Install Now, wait one moment, and then click Activate Plugin.
Your W3 Total Cache plugin is now installed. The next step is to configure it.
We have a set of recommended settings that you can import automatically, which you can download from our website.
To download these recommended settings, firstly log in to your WPX account, go to Support → Knowledgebase and at the top of the screen you will see the Downloadstab:
After you have downloaded the recommended settings file to your computer, return to your WordPress dashboard.
From there, hover over the Performance (1) tab at the top of your screen and select General Settings.
On the menu below, you will see the Import and Export settings section. Upload the unzipped file (with the recommended settings that you downloaded from WPX) into the Import (2) section:
W3 Total Cache should now be enabled.
While these are the settings that we recommend, there is no guarantee that they will be the best settings for your particular website. For this reason, we suggest examining the settings yourself and tweaking them as you see fit.
For example, the ‘minify’ option can sometimes break your theme’s CSS (code). This is why we have disabled the ‘minify’ option in our recommended settings. There is a chance that the ‘minify’ option may improve your website’s performance slightly, so you can experiment and enable it, then clear the cache (press F5), and check if your website looks (and works) as normal. If everything works fine, then you can leave ‘minify’ enabled. Otherwise, disable it as we have done.
WHAT CAN I DO WITH W3 TOTAL CACHE NOW?
There are a number of things you can do with W3TC now, including:
Empty Cache – Whenever you make any changes on your website and want to refresh the cache, you can do so by going to Performance → Empty All Caches:
This option is very useful and it is sure to come in handy.
Page Cache – This is one of the most important features in W3TC.
Here is how it works:
When a visitor arrives on your page, the content is generated and saved as full static HTML pages. These visitors access this HTML file withoutgoing throught all the PHP processing and MySQL queries needed to generate the content.
Accessing this file decreases load time and makes your site faster for your visitors. It also saves our server a lot of calculating, speeding up the server even more.
Minify – This removes the extra lines and empty spaces from your CSS and Javascript files and combines them into one file! It effectively ‘shrinks’ your site, causing it to load faster by reducing the number of requests for loading a page. The downside is that, if changes are made to your site too often, the Minify file will be updating constantly, slowing down the website overall. We usually do not recommend enabling this option.
Database Cache – This option caches the SQL queries specifically however, the Database cache option doesn’t work properly for not only this plugin but many all others to and should always be DISABLED!
Object Cache – Never use this option on your website, it does not work properly! Disable this option.
Browser Cache – When a visitor opens your website, the web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc) caches some of the content in a temporary folder in order to speed up loading it a second time. The Browser Cache option here sets a time limit for the cached files, after which time they are downloaded again. We recommend having this option enabled!
CDN – A Content Delivery Network is essentially a server that is located in a more geographically convenient location to benefit your website’s visitors. Using a CDN makes it easier (and faster) for your visitors to load your website by connecting to the closest local server – our own custom CDN is included free for all WPX customers.
Apart from our own, W3 Total Cache can also work with multiple CDN services, like Amazon CloudFront, MaxCDN, Amazon S3, and Rackspace Cloud too.
This option is only intended for websites that use a CDN.
If you get stuck with any function discussed here, please contact WPX Support via live chat (use the bottom right hand widget!) and they will usually respond and help within 30 seconds or less.
What is “W3 Total Cache”
W3 Total Cache is a speed optimization plugin which can improve your visitor’s experience by increasing the speed of your WordPress site. It is among the most famous and widely used cache plugins for WordPress sites. This post covers all aspects related to w3 total cache regarding the importance of cache plugins, alternatives, properly configuring W3 Total Cache settings for maximum web page optimization. By the end of the post, your site will be much faster than earlier.
Why Do I Need A Cache Plugin & Why Website Speed Is So Important?
You need a cache plugin to increase your website speed. The speed of the website is essential for a better experience for visitors and SERP. Search Engines like Google measure the website’s speed in ranking it in search results. A faster website is more likely to rank above the slow site. Although site speed is not the only factor for the ranking but surely it is among the important ones. Here
What are other alternatives to W3TC?
If you want to try the other cache plugins before using W3TC, here are some real alternatives:
See More: Test Your New WordPress Theme Without Activating It
Why W3TC is best among all cache plugins?
- As stated by W3TC team, w3 total cache plugin can increase your site speed up to ten times.
- Used by many big companies like mashable.com, makeuseof.com, kiss925.com.
- Recommended by many hosting companies including Host Gator, Media Temple.
- Offers so many features in a single window like page cache, browser cache, minify which others plugins do not provide.
- Most importantly, when I personally used both WP super cache & w3 total cache, my site’s speed was much faster with w3 total cache.
Here is a performance report generated of this site from gtmetrix
Installing W3 Total Cache
(Uninstall other cache plugin if you have one installed earlier)
Install w3 total cache the same way as you install other WordPress plugins. Download the plugin, upload it and activate it. Anyhow if you do not know, here are the quick steps:
1). Download the plugin
2). Upload it through : Plugins -> Add New -> Upload -> Choose File -> Install.
3). Activate the plugin : Plugins -> Installed Plugins -> Activate (w3 total cache).
1). Download the plugin
2). Upload it through : Plugins -> Add New -> Upload -> Choose File -> Install.
3). Activate the plugin : Plugins -> Installed Plugins -> Activate (w3 total cache).
Configuring W3 Total Cache Settings?
W3 total cache configuration could be a bit confusing if you are a WordPress beginner or using this plugin for the first time. To make things easier for you, I have included the XML/PHP File containing all the w3 total cache settings.
You can simply import all the settings by uploading the file via Performance -> General Settings -> Import / Export Settings (at the bottom). Still, here are all the settings step by step:
1. W3TC General Settings
- Page Cache – Enabled
- Page Cache Method – Disk Enhanced
- Minify – Enable
- Minify Mode – Auto
- Database Cache – Enabled
- Database Cache Method – Disk
- Object Cache – Enable
- Object Cache Method – Disk
- Browser Cache – Enable
- CDN – Enable if you are using a CDN service else Disable
- Enable varnish cache purging – Disable
- New Relic – Enable if you use New Relic else Disable
- License – Fill your license key if you are using a premium account
- Enable Google Page Speed – Disable else enable with verified key
- Verify rewrite rules – Enable
- Enable File Locking – Disable
- Optimize disk enhanced page – Disable
- Debug – No Changes
2. Page Cache Settings
Page Cache – General
- Cache Front page – Check
- Cache feeds: site, categories, tags, comments – Check (Blogs running Feedburner – Uncheck)
- Cache SSL (https) requests – Check
- Cache URLs with query string variables – Uncheck
- Cache 404 (not found) pages – Uncheck
- Cache requests only for yoursite.com hostname – Check
- Don’t cache pages for logged in users – Check
- Don’t cache pages for following user roles – As per your choice
Page Cache – Cache Preload
- Automatically Prime the Page Cache – Checked
- Update Interval – 900
- Pages per interval -10
- Sitemap URL – URL of your blog’s xml sitemap. E.g. http://example.com/sitemap.xml
- Preload the post cache upon publish events.
Page Cache – Purge Policy
No changes
Page Cache – Advanced
No Changes
3. W3TC Minify Settings
Minify can increase your site speed by removing the unnecessary comments and spaces from your Html source files. Please keep in mind that this function may cause a crash of your site sometimes. I would recommend you to consult your hosting provider before using this function.
Minify Settings – General, HTML & XML
- Rewrite URL structure – Check
- Disable minify for logged in users
Minify Settings – HTML and XML
- Enable – Check
- Inline CSS minification – Check
- Inline JS minification – Check
- Don’t minify feeds – Check
- Line break removal – Uncheck
Minify Settings – JS & CSS
- JS minify settings – Check
- Operation in area – Minify
- Embed Type – Non-blocking using defer
- All other options – Uncheck
- CSS minify settings – Enable
- Combine only – Disable
- Preserved comment removal – Disable
- Line break removal – Enable
- @import Handling – Process
Minify Settings – Advanced
No change
4. W3TC Database Cache
- General – Don’t cache queries for logged in users – Enable
- Advanced – No Changes
5. W3TC Object Cache
No changes
6. W3TC Browser Cache
Browser Cache – General Settings
- Set Last-Modified header – Check
- Set expires header – Check
- Set cache control header – Check
- Set entity tag (eTag) – Check
- Set W3 Total Cache header – Check
- Enable HTTP (Gzip) compression – Check
- Prevent caching of objects after settings change – Uncheck
- Don’t cache cookies for static files – Uncheck
- Do not process 404 errors – Uncheck
Browser Cache – CSS & JS
- Set Last-Modified header – Check
- Set expires header – Check
- Expires header lifetime – 3153600 seconds
- Set cache control header – Check
- Cache Control Policy: cache with max-age and validation
- Set entity tag (eTag) – Uncheck
- Set W3 Total Cache header – Check
- Enable HTTP (Gzip) compression – Check
- Prevent caching of objects after settings change – Disable
- Disable cookies for static files – Check
Browser Cache – HTML and XML
- Set Last-Modified header – Check
- Set expires header – Check
- Expires header lifetime – 3600 seconds
- Set cache control header – Check
- Cache Control Policy: cache with max-age and validation
- Set entity tag (eTag) – Check
- Set W3 Total Cache header – Check
- Enable HTTP (Gzip) compression – Check
Browser Cache – Media and other files
- Set Last-Modified header – Check
- Set expires header – Enable
- Expires header lifetime – 31536000 seconds
- Set cache control header – Enable
- Cache Control Policy – cache with max-age and validation
- Set the entity tag (eTag) – Check
- Set W3 Total Cache header – Enable
- Enable HTTP (gzip) compression – Enable
- Prevent caching of objects after settings change – Disable
- Disable cookies for static files – Check
7. W3TC User Agents Group & Referer Groups
No changes
8. W3TC CDN (For CDN users only)
These settings are only for the users who use CDN services like MaxCdn or Cloudflare on their website. If you do not want to spend money on CDN services, you can also try some free CDN available for WordPress blogs.
- Host attachments – Check
- Host wp-includes/ files – Check
- Host theme files – Check
- Host minified CSS and JS files – Check
- Host custom files – Check
- Import external media library attachments – Uncheck
- Add canonical header – Uncheck
W3tc Plugin
After configuring all the settings, Go back to General Settings & Hit Empty all Cache. Finally, you are done and have successfully configured w3 total cache optimal settings on your blog.
SEE ALSO: Important Settings After Installing WordPress Deezer premium code.
Check if the plugin is configured and optimized correctly?
If you have followed all the above steps, the plugin will be configured correctly.
To check if the plugin is working correctly, open the Html source code of any web page of your website (Right Click -> View Source) and look for this line:
to confirm its proper working. To confirm the speed optimization of your website after installing this plugin; Go to Pingdom Tools and check the speed of your website once again. My website’s speed jumped to 91% from 39% earlier. I am sure that it will be increased for yours too.
What Else
Sometimes a wrong host can also contribute towards slow speed of your site. So it is crucial that you also choose some best WordPress based hosting along with cache plugin.
Do let me know what increase you got to your website. If you face any issues, feel free to reach me anytime.