[This post is part of the Ultimate Guide to Launching a WordPress-Powered Blog series.]
One of the next things that you might want to consider, especially as you gain more traffic, is caching for your WordPress blog.
What is that you say? Well, most simply it’s this:
WordPress caching (or caching your WordPress blog) is a technique used to speed up your blog.
Now, you could spend the next year reading in-depth articles about the ins and the outs of the art and science of cacheing (and you’re more than welcome to!) but I want to provide some of the basics so that you can feel comfortable using a WordPress caching system and plugin.
Ready? Here’s a quick video overview to get you started and then feel free to jump into the content!
[tentblogger-vimeo 22757313]
Hope that video intro helps! Here’s some more info for you!
Two Types of Caching To Understand:
To start there are two areas of caching related to WordPress that you’ll want to generally understand, the first being browser caching and the second being server caching.
1. Browser Caching
Hah! Love this cartoon!
This essentially helps a server (and hosting provider) reduce the number of requests that each visitor makes when it visits your site.
For example, if you’ve set up the right settings on your some of your blog’s files, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript, they will be “saved” or cached on the user’s computer.
What this does is lets the users browser check to see if the files have changed before requesting them from the server.
If the files have changed then the visitor’s browser requests the new information. But, if the files have not changed, then the browser just served the content and files from their local machine. Obviously, the more files that are saved locally the better since it’ll provide a faster (and better) user experience!
In addition, since your server is not having to handle so many requests so that it can handle more users and traffic for you! This, of course, is a good thing.
2. Server Caching
Server caching is a bit more complex but the general idea is still very much the same. Essentially your WordPress blog is a “dynamic” piece of software instead of a “static” one and requires that information is requested and sent every time one of your visitors visits your blog.
Caching is awesome!
This requires resources from your server and your mySQL database and too many requests can slow down your blog, page load time, and even crash or stop requests altogether.
Server caching allows that information to be stored and retrieved much quicker for the end user putting less strain on the server as a whole. There are many ways to do this and many options and if you’re someone who needs to know the ins and outs you can certainly Google to your hearts content.
Essentially server caching changes a dynamic website, like your blog, into something more like a static website (just plain HTML for example).
WordPress Plugins to Use:
Although you might be personally interested in WordPress caching as an art and science I would imagine that most of you have little to no interest to know the exact details of what’s going on and instead finding a WordPress plugin or system that can help speed up your blog.
Right?
Again, WordPress caching will help in the following major ways:
- Faster load speed for your visitors.
- Better user experience for your visitors.
- Decreased resources for your server and hosting, which results in the two above!
- General increase of performance from nearly every angle as it relates to your blog.
Like I always do I counsel you to do your research when you start looking for caching plugins and systems to use for your blog. Here are some considerations that you’ll want to make sure you “check off” before you install something without thinking:
- Plugin impact to your server and end user experience.
- Server requirements for your hosting and service.
- Understanding what the plugin actually does specifically for your blog.
- Competing systems and/or plugins that you’re already using.
- Other secondary requirements necessary for optimal use, like a CDN system.
Generally you’ll want to take the time to do the research necessary so that you know what you’re installing and can have a reasonable expectation of what is actually going to happen to your blog. Make note that not paying attention could take down your site completely.
Yes, installing any old WordPress plugin, especially as it relates to caching, could literally “blow up” your blog. So be careful!
Here is a list of WordPress plugins that can help with caching:
- WP Super Cache
- W3 Total Cache
WP-Cache- Hyper Cache
- DB Cache
- DB Cache Reloaded
- WP Widget Cache
- Quick Cache
- WP File Cache
- 1 Blog Cache
There are, of course, more than just these 10 plugins but they are the most widely used ones. I have listed them in order of general popularity as well but you will want to study each one and see what the best one for your environment is!
Finally, you’ll also notice that I have bolded the first two options, WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache as I believe that these two plugins are, out of the box, the best to use for majority of bloggers!
And as a result I created two tutorials and guides for them! Check them out here and here!
If you have any questions you can typically ask your hosting provider for information, ask the plugin author, or even Google for some general results related to your specific question!
Let me know if you have any questions!
[This post is part of the Ultimate Guide to Launching a WordPress-Powered Blog series.]
Nice cache post John.
What caching technique or plugin do you use with this blog?
i’m going to share this today and tomorrow! stay tuned!
I am a believer in W3 Total Cache. All the others are behind in my eyes!
w3 total is great, but requires a lot of config to utlize it fully!
glad you addressed this John, I was always curious about it. How much traffic quantifies using a cache plugin though? Since I use Standard Theme, is this necessary? Thanks brother
if you’re doing 250 uniques a day i’d invest some time into looking into one.
I am so excited about this, and it is timely also, with the recent “crash” of Amazon’s CDN.
I tried installing the W3 Total Cache about two months back, and like you said, my blog “blew up.” It was down for two days while I rebuilt the whole thing. I’m so glad I backed it up before I installed the plugin. I’m still not sure what I did wrong.
Are you going to provide a installation guide for the caching plugin you use?
OR, better yet, how about a Tentblogger Caching Plugin?
haha! i’m going to share some tips on how to do it well shortly…
Wow! This made me scared. 2 Months after installing the plugin? Makes me think twice about pulling it out already.
I’m using Hyper Cache and W3 Total Cache combined.
Marco, no, it crashed right away when I installed it two months ago. It didn’t crash two months after I installed it. I was a bit unclear.
Are these all server caching plugins? How do I tell certain objects to take advantage of browser caching? Isn’t there a way to set the length of time to cache an image, etc.?
Thanks for all the grade articles on speeding up load times. I think that is something that need to work on for http://beachsidecc.org The load time doesn’t seem very good on that site. Could also be the slower hosting provider.
love it. i’ll give you some more info in a sec.
John, am I right in assuming that this post applies to users of WordPress.org and not WordPress.com?
That is, because I use WordPress.com, I don’t think I can’t take advantage of your caching suggestions – but maybe I just didn’t read far enough into your post.
Right, this is only for WordPress.org. WordPress.com has awesome caching built in by default.
and…. kevin already answered this…!
yes… but wordpress.com has some great systems already in place for caching.
Thanks for the post John… If there is one thing I’m still confused about after several months of posting it’s the whole cache thing. I have Wp super cache installed but I’m not quite sure if I’m utilizing it very well. I just installed it and turned it on.
did you see my new post on super cache?
http://tentblogger.com/wp-super-cache/
Caching is on my to-do list, or better yet, to-investigate list, this post came at the right time for me.
Thanks for making our lives easier…
This is the best description of caching I’ve ever heard. I’ll add it to my list. Later this year, I plan a huge redesign of my blog.
ah, thanks laurinda! appreciate the support!
I need to add at least one of those plugins to my own blog. I haven’t forgotten about this!
cool!
This was great! I have noticed that your sit4e is loading a lot faster for me (was taking about 20 sec or more sometimes…). Much better now!
I do have a question for ya- (you know I have wordpress.com). Do I need to do anything to my site for caching on a wordpress.com?
mine was taking 20 seconds?
oh, and no…….. you don’t need anything on wordpress.com
You’ve convinced me
I’m installing WP Super Cache now on my blog, I’ve actually never used a caching tool ever, hope it works
how’d it go?
Thanks John! Really helped with my load time!
sweet! well done! do you have a gravatar? http://tentblogger.com/gravatar/
So John, do you recommend bloggers using a WordPress DB caching plugin such as Hyper Cache, DB Cache or DB Cache Reloaded along with a browser plugin such as WP Super Cache or WP Total Cache?
Or are the effectively the same thing?
i try not to mix caching plugins if i can help it… especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. if you do know then mixing can be helpful, but for the most part just installing one should be a good starting place.
Thanks John. I will take your advice and stick with WP Super Cache as I am on shared hosting.
I will look into CDN as a solution though, but Amazon looks much cheaper than MaxCDN whose pricing pages confuse me – looks like they have one charge for bandwidth and then another one for storing your files on their servers.
Amazon’s stuff is great. Just be sure to use CloudFront with a custom origin and not S3 (it’s not a CDN) if you want a true CDN…
good reminder kevin.
Thanks John
I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 3.2 and noticed a huge increase in performance but still too slow.
Never used a caching plugin but I thought that I might try adding a few Expires Caching rules to my .htaccess file.
Seen a few tutorials showing what to add.
Any thoughts on that John?
have you seen my caching blog posts?
http://tentblogger.com/wp-super-cache/
http://tentblogger.com/w3-total-cache/
Thanks for links John
I’ll take a look and might go with wp-super-cache.
New to your site but you have some great WordPress info here.
Cheers
sure thing! good to go with super.
what is your hosting provider?
Thumbs up!
I like your video! – Keep them in this simple style..
thanks!
Awesome post, John!
I have recently just started using W3 Total Cache this weekend, and was seeking the best and simplest explanation to better understanding Caching.(Not sure if that’s even a word) However, to my delight, I ran across this post. Now I’m heading over to your post on how to set the dang thing up! Great job man, and thanks… you’re a lifesaver!
enjoy!
your whole website is fantastic
thank you for your complete tutorials
.. .
thanks!
John,
Amazing analogy in that video. You have an superb talent at making complex ideas simple.
Thanks for sharing.
sure thing matt!
Say for example I have a caching plugin in my wordpress blog, and if I make some changes to my blog , will it be reflected immediately when I load my site in the browser , or do I need to clear the cache?
Your website is completely different from other blogging sites
Great work John 