When it comes to optimizing your website, setting up caching in WordPress is extremely important, because caching helps your site score well in search engines by speeding up the site.
Caching technology basically works to save a copy of static web pages in order to reduce the loading time of website pages and make it faster. In today’s article, we will explain to you in detail how to optimally set up the cache in WordPress.
We will first review the most important cache plugins that you can add to your WordPress site. We also help you know the most important criteria for choosing the appropriate cache for your site.
So, if you are interested in knowing how to speed up your WordPress site by setting cache, this article will be your best guide to perform this task easily.
The concept of caching
Caching memory, or what is known as website cache memory in the general sense, is a memory dedicated to saving fixed copies of your web pages on the client device or on the server with the aim of displaying these pages faster.
Therefore, the temporary storage, as you notice, may be on the client’s hard disk (called browser cache), and it may be on the server’s hard disk, as many hosting providers offer improved hosting that contains built-in capabilities for server-side caching.
On a WordPress website, when a visitor requests a specific web page, its PHP code is compiled in the background and the necessary data is retrieved from the database using MySQL queries. This data is then retrieved from the server in the form of HTML code and displayed to the visitor.
The caching feature can shorten this process if the previously generated HTML code is frequently requested by many users, as it is then stored in the client’s browser or server – depending on where the caching is being done – and reused to speed up future web page requests.
The importance of caching in WordPress
Temporary storage of all types offers several benefits, the most notable of which are:
- Loading query results from the cached database faster, which helps improve site speed better.
- Reducing the load on the hosting server, which helps increase the ability to download data without affecting the speed of the site. This feature is important for those who have limited hosting plans.
- Server-side caching is beneficial for sites that have a large number of visits. When a website is requested repeatedly by a large number of users, reusing site requests will contribute to speeding up new requests.
- Caching also helps in ranking in search engines, as SEO standards are not only limited to improving content quality and SEO settings, but the search engine also looks at site speed and considers it a prerequisite for obtaining a distinguished ranking in search results.
- You will get a better user experience by helping the user browse the site better and faster. If we assume that you open a website and find that its pages open slowly, then you will most likely leave the website and go to another site.
Note: Despite the above advantages, there are some disadvantages of caching. Perhaps the most notable is that if you update the content of a page on your site, the updated content may not be automatically reflected to users, as the page that the cache displays at the time of re-visiting is the same old page that was saved in the cache memory. That’s why you may have to clear your cache yourself to see the new content. We also explained how to clear your site’s cache in WordPress
Now you may be wondering, how can I enable and set up caching to improve the speed of my WordPress site? The best and easiest way is through plugins.
There are a variety of WordPress plugins that help you activate the cache on your site, and in the following paragraphs we will give you a comprehensive idea about them.
The most important cache plugins in WordPress
Among the most important plugins that help you enable and manage caching in WordPress:
1- WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is one of the best free WordPress caching plugins with over 2 million active installations.
This plugin creates static HTML files to display directly to users without the need to process relatively heavy PHP code. The plugin also improves JS and CSS files, which contributes to significantly speeding up your WordPress site.
2-Cache Enabler
What distinguishes the Cache Enabler plugin is that it has a simple, easy-to-use interface and is considered a relatively recent addition. This plugin helps cache your content and deliver consistent cached pages to visitors.
But if you are looking for a caching plugin that provides precise management of all aspects of caching, this plugin may not be the right choice for you as it does not have many customization options. Since it is a relatively recent addition, its current number of installations does not exceed 6,000 active installations.
3-WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a popular WordPress cache plugin that is suitable for beginners and experts alike. This add-on includes a wide range of options for caching and other site-enhancing features. This add-on is also available in several languages. It is fully compatible with most templates and other add-ons, but it comes paid and its price starts from $49 to $249.
The most important features provided by the add-on are the feature of removing unused CSS codes, and the lazy loading feature (LazyLoad), which is the feature of not downloading all the images on the page at once and only downloading the images that appear within the area shown to the visitor. When the visitor scrolls and approaches the next image, it begins to load so that it appears. right on time.
Criteria for choosing a caching plugin
After reviewing the previous add-ons, you may be confused about choosing the best one. There are some general criteria that you should look for in the appropriate cache to rely on for your site.
1- Ease of use
There are many free cache plugins out there, but make sure before you activate them that they are user-friendly and do not have a complex and difficult user interface.
2- Addition evaluations
Some users complain that some caching plugins crash their sites, so be sure to rate the plugin. This is often because scripts are stored in cache and this in turn makes the site worse, not better. Therefore, if a caching plugin does not provide an exception for scripts and formatting codes, it is best to avoid it.
3- Addition price
Depending on the features you are looking for, the free option may be suitable for you, and sometimes you may need a paid option. If you rely on a paid option, compare the prices of the available add-ons and choose what suits your budget.
4- Provides a code minimization feature .
Make sure this feature is present in the extension. This feature removes code comments and deletes white spaces from files, making them smaller. It is generally recommended that saved files be smaller so as not to load more data into the cache.
5- Exclude certain pages from the cache
This feature is important in any add-on as it works to protect customer data. If we assume that you have an online store using WooCommerce and you use one of the caching add-ons to make your store faster, here you have to exclude pages such as the payment pages and the shopping cart so that you are not exposed to the problem of displaying users’ private data.
In the following paragraphs, we will explain to you how to use the plugin (WP Super Cache), which is considered the most famous free plugin to manage cache on a WordPress website. In addition to being free, it is also easy to customize and works in conjunction with your CDN service. You can bet on it to improve the speed of your site because it is always under continuous development.
Use the WP Super Cache plugin
Before installing the plugin, first remove any other cache-related plugins from your site if they exist to prevent conflicts, and also edit the wp-cache-config.php file and remove the following definition from it if it exists.
Then follow these steps:
Go to the (WordPress Plugins) tab in your site’s control panel and click (Add New)
Search for the name of the add-on (Super Cache) and after you find the add-on, click on the Install Now icon next to its name to download the add-on and then activate it.
When you activate the add-on, you will see a notification from the WP Super Cache add-on that caching or caching is not possible on your website at the present time.
You can activate caching. Go to the WordPress control panel: go to the ( Settings ) tab, then click on the plugin name tab ( WP Super Cache ).
The following window will appear containing several tabs, as follows:
1.Easy
On this tab, you will find easy settings to activate the add-on. Just activate the Chasing On option by clicking next to it and then pressing the Update Status key as shown in the following image, and caching will be activated according to the default settings of the extension.
You will find the Delete Cache button located under the phrase (Delete Cached Pages) in the previous window, enabling you to delete any site-specific pages that were previously stored in the cache.
2. Advanced
This tab can provide the settings that enable caching by customizing advanced caching settings yourself. It also provides a lot of other options that will significantly improve your site’s performance.
To set up WP Super Cache according to these advanced options, go to the Advanced tab and put a checkmark next to Enable Caching.
– Then scroll down to the Cache Delivery Method options. And select the method of connecting the cache. (Leave the default option Simple if you are a beginner and not used to editing server files.)
Then scroll down and review the available options and customize them according to your needs. Here is an explanation of the most important of these options:
- The option (Compress pages, so they’re served more quickly to visitors) enables you to enable compression of cached files in the WP Super Cache plugin to reduce their size and improve the time they are loaded and displayed to visitors.
- The option (Enable Dynamic Caching) is used to enable dynamic caching, which is useful if you have pages that contain frequently changing content, such as pages that display advertising content.
- The Expiry Time & Garbage Collection section enables you to set a Cache Timeout and delete cached pages. The default value for expiring, removing pages, and caching them again is 1800 seconds as shown. You can change this value to suit your site visits, and you can schedule a specific time for the addition to check and remove unnecessary cached files.
- Finally, by default, the add-on stores all pages on your site in temporary storage, but in the (Accepted Filenames & Rejected URIs) section, you can specify pages that you do not want to be cached, such as pages that do not receive a lot of visits or pages that contain user-specific data. .
Also, through the CDN tab, you can set up a content delivery network ( CDN ), which is a feature of storing the site’s content on the server closest to the visitor, with the aim of reducing the delay in transferring data to him when the distance between him and the server is large.
CDN servers usually save the site’s static files (such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, and image files).
To enable this feature, go to the CDN tab, then check the option (Enable CDN Support), then enter the base URL of your site, and the Off-site URL, which represents the CDN address that stores your files and displays them to users. For example, you can enter the following:
, and in the Additional CNAMES field, enter other addresses if available, for example:
http://cdn1.yourdoamin.com and http://cdn2.yourdoamin.com.
Finally, click on the (Skip https URLs to avoid “mixed content” errors) option to skip HTTPS URLs and avoid the mixed content error that results from incorrect setting of the site’s SSL certificate.
Then save the changes to activate the feature. Now your website is ready to serve static content through CDN.
These were the most prominent add-on options. You can view the rest of the settings and other options yourself, but leaving them at the default is very convenient.
Conclusion
After you learned how to set up caching in WordPress and the role of this process in speeding up your site, improving its performance, and obtaining a good result in search engines, especially if your site has many visits and suffers from slow loading.
It’s time to choose the WordPress plugin that’s best for you and start seeing great results for your WordPress site. It’s very simple. All you have to do is choose the add-on that’s best for you according to the previous criteria, then activate it on your site and monitor its performance and its ability to improve your site as you desire.
