How to make your WordPress site faster:

We at WPX Hosting offer superfast WordPress optimized hosting, but to take advantage of the full potential of our service, you would also need a proper caching plugin.  This is why we recommend W3 Total Cache to our customers.

 

In this article you will find a step-by-step guide to how to install and configure W3 Total Cache on your WordPress site.

What is W3 Total Cache and how does it work?

W3 Total Cache is one of the best caching plugins designed to improve website performance and user experience. Its features include Page Cache, Database Cache, Browser Cache, Object Cache, CDN integration and more.

 

It is very easy to install and to set up and this is one of the reasons it is probably the most popular caching plugin. It is trusted by countless companies like: AT&T, mashable.com, smashingmagazine.com, yoast.com, webdesignerdepot.com, css-tricks.com and tens of thousands of others.

How to install W3 Total Cache?

Before we start with the installation, please make sure you have disabled and uninstalled any other caching plugin in order to avoid additional problems upon W3 Total Cache activation.

W3 Total Cache can be found in the WordPress plugin directory and is quite easy to install.  You need go to Plugins > Add new on your WP admin panel and enter  “W3 Total Cache” in the search bar.

 

 

Click on “Install Now” and after that, click on “Activate Plugin”.  

 

Your W3 Total Cache is now installed. You now need to configure it.

 

We have a set of recommended settings that our customers can import automatically. You can download it from our website. To do that go to the Support > Knowledgebase and select the Downloads tab. 

 

After you have downloaded the file to your computer, go to the admin panel of your WordPress site and click on Performance > General Settings.

On the bottom of the page there is an Import/Export Settings section.  You should upload the file unzipped with the recommended settings that you have previously downloaded from our site.

 

IMPORTANT: These are the recommended settings but there is no guarantee that they will be the best for your website. This is why you should consider going through the settings yourself and tweaking them here and there.  

 

For example, the minify option can sometimes break your theme’s CSS. That is why we have disabled it in the recommended settings. It may slightly improve your websites performance however, so you can try enable it, clear the cache, and check if your websites frontend is working and looks normal. If everything is working and looks as it should then you can leave it enabled, otherwise just disable it

Some useful options and what they do:

Empty Cache - Whenever you make a change on your website and want to refresh the cache you can do that by going to Performace >  Empty All Cache.

 

 

This option is very useful and we are sure it will come in hand.   

Page Cache - This is one of the most important options that you should consider when using W3 Total Cache. Here is how it works:
The first time a page is hit, the content is generated and saved in almost full static html pages. The users that visit the site after that will access this file without going through all the PHP processing and MySQL queries needed for its generation. This decreases load time and makes your site faster for your users. It also saves our server a lot of calculations which makes the server even faster for all websites on it including yours.

 

 

Minify - This removes the extra lines and empty spaces from your .css and .js files and combine them into one file. It helps make your files smaller and faster to load because of reduced requests for a page load. However, if there are changes made on the website too often, the Minify's file will be constantly updated and this will slow the website in general. We usually do not recommend enabling this option.

 

Database Cache - This option caches the SQL queries. This option does not work as expected, not only on this plugin, but in all others and it should always be DISABLED!

Object Cache - This option does not work as expected; not only on this plugin but in all others and it should always be DISABLED! Never use Object cache on your website!

 

Browser Cache - When a visitor opens your website, the browser caches some of the content in a temporary folder in order to load it faster the next time the page is opened. The Browser Cache option on W3TC sets a time limit for the cached files after which they are downloaded again. We recommend that you have this option enabled.

 

CDN - A CDN is a Content Delivery Network service that allows your website's static files (.css .js and all images) to be cached on a network of servers across the world. This makes it faster for visitors from other countries to access your website. When they try to open your website, they connect to the closest server of the network which improves the loading speed.

W3 Total Cache can work with multiple CDN services like Amazon Cloud Front,  MaxCDN, Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud

This option here is intended only for sites that use CDN.

We hope this article proves useful. If you have any doubts or additional questions, feel free to contact our customer support team who are always happy to help.

If you have any questions or need of support, please submit a ticket: https://wpxhosting.com/tickets/new/