Caching is a technology that captures and stores copies of pieces of your WordPress website.
When a visitor lands on your site, instead of loading fresh data from the server every time, which is a resource-intensive process, the website delivers the stored data, hence improving page load times dramatically.
In this article, we will cover important benefits of using a caching plugin on your WordPress website.
We will also cover some of the best WordPress caching plugins that can help in speeding up your website.
Let's get started.
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What are the Best WordPress Caching Plugins?
1. WP ROCKET
If you want to invest in a premium cache plugin which can supercharge your website to load very very fast, then I would recommend you to use WP Rocket.
WP Rocket is the most popular premium WordPress caching plugin. Over 995,000+ websites uses this plugin. This blog, Technicalwall.com is also powered by WP Rocket caching plugin that loads my site under 3 seconds.
Apart from having all the features as mentioned in respect of all the cache plugins mentioned above, it also boast of the following features-
- Database optimization
- Remove Query Strings from Static Resources
- Lazyload
- Defer JS Loading
- DNS Prefetching
It is very simple to use. Even if you are a novice blogger you just need to install the plugin and activate it once. WP Rocket will automatically start caching your pages without requiring you to tweak any code.
PRICING
- Single (1 website) - $49
- Plus (3 websites) - $99
- Infinite (unlimited websites) - $249
W3 Total Cache is one of the best and most popular WordPress caching plugins. It has over one million download and is regularly updated by its developer BoldGrid. It has tons of features which you can enable in the WordPress Dashboard to make your website faster.
When this caching plugin is activated in your site it improves the overall SEO and user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times.
Thus, it improves your search engine result page rankings, especially for mobile-friendly websites.
Important features of W3 Total Cache are Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript and Minify HTML, Minification of posts and pages and RSS feeds, Browser caching using cache-control, gzip compression, CDN support, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support and more.
It is another popular caching plugin with over a million active installs. The plugin is developed by Automattic, the same team which is behind WordPress.com.
How this plugin works?
This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. Your web server serve this static file to your users instead of processing the comparatively heavier WordPress PHP scripts.
The plugin serves cached files in 3 ways (ranked by speed):
- Simple: This is the most preferable method as it is simple to implement. To enable file caching by this method you don’t have to edit or configure any PHP files or the .htaccess file.
- Expert: This is the fastest caching method to serve super cached static HTML files to your users. It completely bypasses PHP modification but requires a little modification of your .htaccess files. If you have any earlier experience of modifying .htaccess file then only you should proceed with this method.
- WP Super Caching: This method is used to cache pages for known users who are logged in users or users who leave comments. It’s the most flexible caching method but slightly slower.
The third popular caching plugin is WP Fastest Cache which also has 1 million plus download.
It has many features such as Minify Html, Minify Css, Enable Gzip Compression, Leverage browser caching, Combine CSS, Combine JS, Disable Emoji and many more.
It also has premium version which has extra features such as Mobile Cache, Widget Cache, Minify HTML Plus, Minify CSS Plus, Minify JS, Combine JS Plus, Defer Javascript, Optimize Images, Convert WebP, Database Cleanup, Google Fonts Async, Lazy Load for super fast load times.
5. Built-in Cache Plugins Provided By Your Web Host
Many popular WordPress hosting companies now offer their own built-in caching solutions to their customers.
If you are hosting your websites in these companies then you won't be required to install any separate plugins as mentioned above.
You can use the built-in caching plugins of your web host to optimize your website to load faster.
A2 Optimized WP
A2 Hosting provided their own cache plugin called A2 Optimized WP.
You can install it from the plugin area in WordPress Dashboard or from the A2hosting website itself from the cPanel.
Under cPanel head over to SOFTACULOUS APPS INSTALLER section and select Categories. Under Top Scripts, click WordPress - A2 Optimized and install it.
The optimizations and security features the A2 Optimized WP are-
- Page caching
- Database caching
- HTML/CSS/JavaScript minification
- Image compression
- Page compression with Gzip
- CAPTCHAs on comment forms and login pages
- Randomized login page URLs
SuperCacher
If your website is hosted on SiteGround then you can use their built-in caching solution called SuperCacher.
You can enabled it from your hosting account’s cPanel dashboard under Site Improvement Tools.
Once you enabled it, you would be required to install and activate the SG Optimizer plugin.
After activation, you can manage SuperCacher settings directly from your WordPress admin area.
If you want to know more about SG Optimizer and how to manage it, visit this link - SG Optimizer Tutorial.
What Is Caching?
In computer terminology, cache is a temporary storage area. It is a type of temporary memory that is used to increase the speed of data access.
Normally, when you work on a computer, the data required for any process resides in the main memory i.e. hard disk. But when you use that same data frequently then it is transferred to the cache memory temporarily for speeding up the data access.
The process of storing and accessing data from a cache is known as caching.
WordPress websites works on the same concept. With the help of caching plugins it speed up your websites to load faster.
Normally, each time a user visits your WordPress website from a browser, the browser requests a web page and the server in which your website is hosted, has to fetch the required information from its databases and also performs several other complex and time consuming calculations before the web page is loaded in the users browser.
If there is no caching then each time a user request the same page the server will have to repeat all the process as mentioned above increasing the load time.
Here comes the role of caching to make the process simpler and faster.
How Caching Works?
When you enable caching plugin in your WordPress website the processing of fetching information from the databases and performing other steps are skipped.
Instead, caching plugin makes a copy of your website and serve your users that copy which makes your website load faster thereby, reducing load on your host server.
Why Use A Caching Plugin on Your Website?
Google likes faster websites. Yes it is true. If your website load faster than your competitor then your website will be given preference by ranking it higher on Google Search results.
Although there are many other factors which results in higher ranking in Google, speed of a website is one of the most important factor.
Thus, keeping in mind the SEO benefits a fast websites brings, you should start using a caching plugin in your site.
A caching plugin reduces load on your host server and makes your websites extremely fast, which leads to better SEO scores and increased user satisfaction.
Other benefit of using a caching plugin is increased conversion.
A faster website reduces bounce rate by encouraging your users to engage more with your websites thereby spending more time on your website by visiting multiple pages.
When your users are spending more time in your site it increases your chance of getting more sales and conversions. It can also help you grow your email list if you're using email subscription forms on your site to collect leads.
Now let's look at the best WordPress caching plugins that you can use on your website to make it extremely fast to load.
Wrapping Up
I hope this article helped you find the best WordPress caching plugin to speed up your website.
If you have any questions or suggestions please comment below.
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