Setting up W3 Total Cache for WordPress
What is W3 Total Cache?
W3 Total Cache (W3TC for short) is a WordPress plugin that can help dramatically speed up your WordPress website, through a combination of optimisation techniques including:
1. Caching – Object and query caching, Page caching and Browser caching
2. Minification – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
3. Gzip compression
4. CDN support
Yes, one plugin really can do all that – it’s the reason we highly recommend anyone struggling with a sluggish WordPress site install it.
What settings should I use for W3 Total Cache?
W3TC can be quite daunting for a new user. It can be configured in a multitude of ways, because of this there is an almost endless number of options within W3TC’s settings.
What settings you deploy depends upon a number of factors including; are you on a shared, cloud or dedicated hosting platform, does your site’s content change regularly (blog, e-commerce store etc.) or not.
Overwhelmed by the sheer number of options, many users simply give up at this point. Whilst others will utilise a more automated solution such as WP Rocket, which comes at a cost and is not nearly as flexible.
With a little patience and trial and error the guide below should set you off on the right path…
W3 Total Cache Configuration
Warning
Before you complete any of the steps below you should backup your files and your database. You can either do this manually, or by using a plugin. I recommend either Duplicator or UpdraftPlus
Test your present load time using tools.pingdom.com and note it down somewhere
Install the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin. Not installed a WordPress plugin before? Follow this guide.
Click the General Settings link under the Performance tab in your WordPress admin dashboard.
Enable page cache and set the caching method.
If you are on a shared hosting package you should use Disk: Enhanced.
If you’re using a dedicated or virtual server and you have Memcache or any other PHP caching extension installed, you should select the relevant option.
Test your site is still working
We recommend you test your site is still working at this stage – click the “Save all settings” button then empty your cache – Click the “Dashboard” link under the performance tab and then click the “empty all caches” button
Enable minification and set mode to auto
If you are on a shared hosting package you should use Disk: Enhanced for minify cache method.
If you’re using a dedicated or virtual server and you have Memcache or any other PHP caching extension installed, you should select the relevant option.
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Enable browser cache
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Click the Page Cache link under the Performance tab in your WordPress admin dashboard
Scroll to the “General” section – Apply the settings as per the following image
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Scroll to the “Cache Preload” section – Apply the settings as per the following image
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Click the Browser Cache link under the Performance tab in your WordPress admin dashboard
Scroll to the “General” section – Apply the settings as per the following image
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Scroll to the “CSS & JS” section – Apply the settings as per the following image
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Scroll to the “HTML & XML” section – Apply the settings as per the following image
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Scroll to the “Media & other files” section – Apply the settings as per the following image
Test your site is still working
Save all settings, empty cache and test your site
Retest your load time using tools.pingdom.com and compare to your initial load time test completed in step 1. Let us know how the two numbers compared in the comments section below.
Here’s what we managed – did you do any better?
Summary
Thanks to W3TC, you hopefully now have a site that is as we say up north, pretty nippy (fast for everyone else!).
Further WordPress optimisations are discussed in our WordPress performance challenge and How to improve WordPress speed blog posts
For those that are seeking further improvements or if you would simply prefer us to handle everything, we’d be delighted to talk to you about our WordPress optimisations, which are available on both our managed cloud servers and managed dedicated servers
If you have any issues directly relating to W3 Total Cache, you can find their support forum here.
Any comments?
How did your W3TC install go? We’d love to know your page load time before and after implementing W3TC – let us know in the comments below.
Did you know…
At Clook, one of our specialisms is providing WordPress hosting, if you’d like to find out more, please get in touch with us.
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