WordPress caching plugins overview

WordPress caching is a great way for enhancing your website’s efficiency. If your site is receiving a lot of traffic, you can use WordPress caching plugins to improve the performance of your website.
WordPress caching is the process of reusing previously requested files or created data (or requests such as database queries) to speed up new requests when a website is requested frequently by various visitors.

So, with WordPress caching plugins your hosting server can have those files prepared and serve them to your users every time they visit your website. When delivered from the cache, files are served without calculations usually necessary for those files to be served – request -> serve from cache.

In this article, we will view some of the most used WordPress caching plugins that will help you in the mentioned above:

• LiteSpeed Cache
• W3 Total Cache
• WP Super Cache
• WP Rocket

LiteSpeed Cache

The plugin provides full-page caching, with the help of its exclusive server-level cache and other
optimization features. This simply means that the plugin saves static snapshots of your site’s
pages. It can do so because dynamically generated pages are mostly identical each time they
are created. Instead of having the visitors wait for WordPress and PHP to assemble the pages
for each request, a page cache will quickly serve the snapshots.

This plugin shows up in the first place when you type CACHE in the WordPress Add New plugin
section, and for a reason. You can not get wrong with this easy-to-use plugin.

Advantages:

• Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
• Lazyload images and iframes,
• CDN support,
• Database cleaner and optimizer,
• Image optimization,
• Free QUIC.cloud CDN cache,
• PageSpeed score optimization,
• And many more…

If you want to learn more about this plugin, check it out on the WordPress – Plugins page or check out their official website.
Check out this YouTube tutorial on how to speed up your WordPress website with the
LiteSpeed Cache.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) is a completely free and open-source plugin with 1+ million active installations and a 4,5+ star rating. It has the benefit of being able to integrate with a CDN, and it runs well on both mobile and desktop versions of the website. The plugin also claims to be a good companion for websites that use SSL certificates, making it an excellent speed solution for eCommerce websites. It is improving website performance and SEO.

This is an open-source plugin. Some things that the plugin offers are bandwidth saving with minifications, HTTP compression, and feed optimization.

Advantages:

• Search Engine (SEO) & Performance Optimization (WPO) via caching,
• Integrated caching: CDN, Page, Minify, Object, Fragment, Database support,
• Bandwidth savings through minification,
• HTTP compression,
• Feed optimization,
• Compatible with different hosting plans, like shared hosting, dedicated servers, etc.,
• Caching for both mobile and desktop versions of the website,
• Minification and compression
• And many more…

If you want to learn more about this plugin, check it out on the WordPress – Plugins page. Check out this YouTube tutorial on how to speed up your WordPress website with the W3 Total Cache.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is another free and open-source plugin with millions of downloads, with no upgrades needed after the installation. Instead of using big WordPress PHP scripts, it creates static HTML files and serves those files.

One of the advantages of using WP Super Cache is that it has different caching modes. Simple Mode is one of them, and it’s what the average WordPress user will want because it’s the safest. One of the modes, however, is called Expert Mode, and it allows you to super cache your data by making changes to the .htaccess file, but this mode is for experienced developers.

Advantages:

• With the Simple Mode, you will set up WP Super Cache with ease,
• Simple Mode is allowing simple caching, page compression, CDN support, and cache rebuilding,
• Collecting and removing garbage – when your cache directory fills up, you can easily delete those old files and keep your website optimized,
• For a better distribution of your data, WP Super Cache has been integrated with a special CDN configuration,
• The plugin has a feature called Cache Rebuilding, which prevents your blog’s cache from being cleared if a comment is posted. Instead, it rebuilds the cache and displays the stored, old page to the user,
• And many more…

If you want to learn more about this plugin, check it out on the WordPress – Plugins page. Check out this YouTube tutorial on how to speed up your WordPress website with the WP Super Cache.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a premium WordPress caching plugin and there are three pricing plans for this plugin. Basically, you only have to pay a one-time fee, but if you want to have continuous support and updates, you will have to keep paying every year.
While there are other free caching plugins available, these are quality prices for one of the most feature-rich caching plugins available. The plugin does not come with a free trial or version, but the developers do give a 14-day money-back guarantee.

WP Rocket is also designed to work well with eCommerce websites, which are often the types of sites that need the most caching speed.
The WP Rocket plugin has a simple user interface and fast setup, which is great for beginners. It’s a WordPress caching plugin that can make your site blazing quick, while it is easy to set up and maintain.

• Great for beginners.
• User-friendly dashboard which is easy to navigate.
• For cleaning up the WordPress database and reducing the number of resources used database optimization is included.
• WP Rocket allows you to lazyload your media. This ensures that photos on your website will not load until the user scrolls over them. So, the server doesn’t have to do any work if it isn’t needed.
• It is integrated with a lot of top multilingual plugins.
• Preload cache.
• And many more…

If you want to learn more about this plugin, check their official website documentation. Check out this YouTube tutorial on how to speed up your WordPress website with the WP Rocket.

Conclusion

WordPress is a powerful tool for content management and website deployment. With it’s scalability and complexity required for most website to function as designed, you should test all available caching options according to your use case. In some cases, some themes were known to malfunction with certain caching plugins but, work properly with others. The bottom line is – WordPress gives us large room for customisation and as such is prone to situations where one plugin “hates the other” so, make sure to test all available plugins for your own ecosystem.