{"id":4949,"date":"2021-03-31T14:05:09","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T14:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dopinger.com\/blog\/?p=4949"},"modified":"2024-08-08T08:19:25","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T08:19:25","slug":"w3-total-cache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dopinger.com\/blog\/w3-total-cache","title":{"rendered":"W3 Total Cache"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you have a WordPress site, too long loading times can limit your traffic, lower your Google search rankings, and reduce your site’s overall potential. Apart from choosing quality hosting, there are several things that can help you deal with this problem. One of them is a free or low-cost caching plugin. This tool can easily prevent this lag and the problems that come with it. What’s more, they’re not difficult to set up, and they’ll make visitors more likely to visit and stay on your site. You also don’t need to worry because WordPress has several plugins that can help you optimize the loading time of your website. One of these plugins is W3 Total Cache<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>An Overview<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) is a cache plugin for WordPress created by Frederick Townes, CTO and Senior Technical Advisor of Mashable. This plugin is maintained and supported by Frederick’s agency, W3 Edge. W3 Total Cache is currently actively used by more than 1 million WordPress website users, making it one of the most used plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus, this plugin received a rating of 4.3 \/ 5 based on 3,000 user reviews, proving that it is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. This is not surprising. W3 Total Cache is a free plugin with 16 pages of configuration options so you can determine what caching solution you need and customize the plugin according to your needs. W3TC optimizes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript resources by minimizing, combining, and compressing them. Besides, W3TC creates and stores static website resources to reduce the load on servers and speed up website delivery. Not only that, W3TC is integrated with a content delivery network so that cached static resources are mirrored on the CDN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WordPress is a platform for creating dynamic websites. Do you know what a dynamic website looks like? Dynamic web pages do not exist in static HTML files. Instead, when a web page is requested, website software such as WordPress processes the request and generates a static file to fulfill the demand and build the web page. On the one hand, this is very helpful. This makes publishing and creating websites more straightforward and faster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, generating web pages dynamically takes more time than just shooting static files and requires the server to do more work to create each pageview. As a result, using software like WordPress will inevitably slow down a website’s performance compared to a website built entirely from static resources.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"effect<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

<\/span>Effect of Caching on Dynamic Website Operations<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When a server generates web pages dynamically, caching can potentially take a static web page file and store it on the webserver, send a copy to a content delivery network (CDN), and even store a copy in a website visitor’s browser. That way, when the web page is needed a second time, static resources can be delivered without requiring the website software to process the request on the server and generate the resource a second time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this process, these are things that are done in the caching process: Reduces the amount of code that has to be processed. The database requested to generate web pages, thereby significantly reducing the amount of work a web server has to do. Please increase the number of visitors a website can handle because it does less work to generate each pageview. In essence, W3TC can store website resources on servers, content delivery networks, and visitor browsers. However, for caching to be carried out as effectively as possible, cache resources must be optimized and minimized. W3TC does more than just store website resources, as this plugin also optimizes them for delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>How to Set Up W3 Total Cache<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

W3 Total Cache does not support apache 1.3+, [nginx 0.7 +] (Nginx 0.7+), IIS 5+ or LiteSpeed 4.0.2+. So, apart from using those settings on the server, it is most likely to use them. The PHP version that can be used is version 5.3+.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned earlier, setting up W3 Total Cache can look and feel complicated. This popular and powerful caching plugin has 16 menus to compete with and offers a wide range of configure options. However, if you go through all of them, a significant boost in website performance awaits you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

W3TC is in the WordPress Plugins Directory, so installation is straightforward. Access the plugin installation menu by going to Plugins> Add New in the WordPress admin panel. Then search for “W3 Total Cache,” find a plugin from the list of available options, then select Install Now. After installation, activate the plugin, and you will see performance added as a new top-level item in the admin menu. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"how<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

<\/span>How to Use W3 Total Cache<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The “General Settings” page contains all the brief settings of the W3 Total Cache feature. Advanced settings for each option can be made on another page.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"General\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

General<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

General tab – You can activate this feature to activate preview-mode. Its purpose is to test configuration scenarios before displaying them on the active website.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Page<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Page Cache<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Page Cache – This tab is used to enable caching-pages. Its purpose is to decrease the website response-time. The ” Page Cache Method” adapts to the server used (shared or dedicated).<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Minify\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Minify<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minify – Setting Minify, databases, and object cache has been adapted from the first plugin installed. Keep in mind that if you are already using Cloudflare, then there is no need to fill in the Minify checkbox because Cloudflare has already taken care of it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Opcode<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Opcode Cache<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Enabling this feature means that each file request will update the latest version’s cache. Opcode Cache is a PHP cache stored in server memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Database Cache – You can leave this setting disabled, especially if the server is shared hosting. It could not speed up. It can actually slow down the performance of the website.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Object<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Object Cache<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Object Cache – As with database-cache settings, one needs to be careful in determining whether object-cache should be enabled or not. It is recommended to keep the standard settings.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Browser<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Browser Cache<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Browser cache – When this feature is activated, the visitor will receive the website cache in the browser. Enabling this feature can lighten the server load and shorten file retrieval times.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"CDN\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

CDN<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

CDN – This section is used to display Content Delivery Network (CDN) settings. The use of a CDN can adapt to a website’s needs, such as MaxCDN or Cloudflare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reverse Proxy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Reverse Proxy – The use of a reverse-proxy is needed when you want to handle or scale to the server before WordPress takes it. The server offered is to use the Varnish Server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragment Cache<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fragment caching – Fragment caching takes the output from code blocks and stores it for a specified time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monitoring<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Monitoring – Relic is an application that can identify and solve performance problems on a website. Relic will monitor and collect business data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

License<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Licensing – Enter a license to use the W3 Total Cache<\/strong> Pro Version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miscellaneous<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Miscellaneous – This section does not need to be changed. Just use the configuration that was set from the beginning of the installation process.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"debug\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Debug<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Debug – Detailed information about each cache will be added to the HTML comment in the source code. Performance may not be optimal, so it needs to be disabled when it is not being used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Import or Export Settings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Import \/ Export Setting – If you already have a W3 Total Cache configuration file, use this feature to perform a restore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Page Cache<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Minify<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    We will not discuss Minify settings because it would be better to use the settings recommended when installing the plugin for the first time. Also, websites that use CDNs don’t need to do any more setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n