If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, 57 percent of visitors will choose to exit.
So, decreasing the time it takes for a visitor to load your page is crucial. Fortunately, optimizing your pictures and buying a CDN service are simple methods to speed up your WordPress site.
These measures may take longer and cost you more money. So instead, consider data caching if you want to speed up your WordPress website quickly and easily.
Before we look at plugins that may make caching easier for you, let’s talk about what caching is and why it’s essential.
It will fulfill the need to speed up your WordPress website through cache plugins. Here is a list of the best WordPress Cache Plugins to speed up your website.
What is Caching?
Storage and saving static backups of your website’s files is known as caching. It speeds up the generation and delivers a web page to a visitor’s browser quickly.
Let’s look at the normal process of how a web page loads to comprehend better the advantages of caching.
As soon as a user accesses a particular page on one of your sites, your hosting server is notified. Requests are sent to your hosting server to load various components of your site from your WordPress database. Your server must consume a significant number of resources to load the website.
Caching reduces the number of resources your server requires to load a web page, thus lowering the Time to First Byte (TTFB). If the browser requests something from the server and receives nothing back, it’s called Time to First Byte. As a result, your website’s overall performance will be enhanced.
Adding code to your cache.php file or writing a SQL query are the only two options for manually enabling caching on your WordPress site.
Adding code to your cache.php file or writing a SQL query are the only two options for manually enabling caching on your WordPress site.
Best WordPress Cache Plugins
Using the best WordPress cache plugins, you’ll be able to cache your pages and posts in no time. Here is a list of plugins, both paid and unpaid, that accomplish just that.
WP Fastest Cache
The official WordPress plugin directory lists WP Fastest Cache as their top-rated cache plugin. WP Fastest Cache’s free edition is packed with valuable extras. Site administrators can schedule the deletion of all cached and minified CSS and JS files with this plugin.
Mobile devices and logged-in users can have their cache options enabled or disabled by ticking a box on the settings page.
It not only minifies HTML and CSS files but also combines them to make your code clearer and your web pages leaner than other free WordPress cache plugins like W3 Total Cache.
There are even more features in the premium version, such as slow loading, removing render-blocking JavaScript resources, and minifying JavaScript files!
LiteSpeed Cache
Another top-rated WordPress caching plugin is LiteSpeed Cache. Additionally, you can minify lazily load pictures, auto-optimize photos, and more using this tool.
Server-level caching, as opposed to PHP-level caching, distinguishes LiteSpeed Cache from competitors. LiteSpeed Web Server’s built-in page cache capabilities must utilize the plugin, even though it is free.
PHP and database queries can be bypassed using page cache, and cookies can be used to deliver different versions of cached information based on the user’s device, location, and currency. To use this server, you must buy a license for a modest monthly cost.
WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize is a five-star cache plugin in the WordPress plugin directory with over a million active installations. The plugin settings can be configured such that client browsers are instructed to reuse cached resources.
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are compressed. In addition, CSS and JavaScript are minified and deferred to decrease the size and number of requests to your server.
Alternatively, you can enable the generation of mobile-specific files by checking a box. It will guarantee that mobile visitors get an optimized version of your website.
WP-Optimize, in contrast to the preceding plugins, is an all-in-one site optimization solution. Your database will be cleaned, and pictures will be compressed as well, making your site even quicker.
W3 Total Cache
Total Cache by W3C (W3TC) W3TC is a well-known WordPress cache plugin. A big part of the attraction is that it can be used with various hosting platforms, from shared to VPS to dedicated.
W3 Total Cache allows you to minify all of your website’s files, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It’s possible to lazy-load pictures, postpone CSS and JavaScript, and schedule automated database cleanups all at once. Even improved website speed can be achieved by integrating your CDN service provider.
All of these settings can be evaluated in preview mode right before going live with them on your website.
In addition to fragment caching, W3 Total Cache Pro includes sophisticated caching statistics, lazy load for Google Maps, and other valuable features.
WP Super Cache
Automattic’s WP Super Cache is a free caching plugin. It’s the most popular WordPress cache plugin, with over two million active installations. The fact that it has three caching options adds to its features set. Expert mode is the quickest, but it requires some .htaccess files tinkering on your part.
So, although it’s excellent for developers and experienced users who want greater control over the caching process, it’s not suitable for everyone, especially since a mistake in the .htaccess file can bring the whole website to a grinding halt.
As a result, WP Super Cache includes a Simple mode as well. Most visitors will be served static HTML pages if you use the plugin in this suggested setting. However, you can provide cached files customized for logged-in users or visitors who have commented or browsed a password-protected page using WP-Cache.
Hummingbird
Compared to the other WordPress cache plugins, Hummingbird provides a comparable set of capabilities, including browser caching, GZIP compression, CSS, and JavaScript minification and deferral, and the removal of render-blocking files.
When it comes to Hummingbird, nothing else is comparable. It scans your site for slow-loading files and offers suggestions on how to improve them. In certain situations, it can even offer one-click enhancements like a complete cache suite. As a result, optimizing your site is a cinch.
It’s great to get a premium version with even more features, such as automatic scanning, uptime monitoring, improved compression, and CDN-hosted compression.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a high-end caching plugin with an extensive feature set. Cache preloading and GZIP compression are a few of the features of WP Rocket. Users can also minify and merge CSS, JS files, lazily load images, remove render-blocking JavaScript resources, and set up automated database cleanups.
It’s also designed for e-commerce sites, so the “Cart,” “Checkout,” and “My Account” pages are automatically excluded from the cache to prevent interfering with the buying process.
When compared to other performance optimization plugins, WP Rocket starts functioning immediately after installation and activation.
Cache Enabler
Caching Enabler is a WordPress cache plugin that’s simple and quick. If the content on the page has changed, it will automatically delete the cache and pre-compress cached pages using GZIP before serving them. Multisite networks are also supported.
However, compared to the rest of the plugins on this list, its features are severely constrained. For Example, Clearing the cache is only possible if a certain kind of article, comment, or plugin has already been published/activated or updated/deleted.
More difficult is to exclude data from the cache. Rather than ticking a box, the user must manually put in the post ID or page URL to select which pages should skip the cache.
Comet Cache
Comet Cache is a straightforward WordPress plugin for caching your posts, pages, tags, categories, archives, and RSS feeds. Comet Cache’s settings page includes comprehensive descriptions of its capabilities, making it an ideal choice for those new to caching.
Comet Cache Pro is required to utilize several of the free plugins listed above, such as HTML compression and the ability to cache logged-in users.
Comet Cache does not directly handle GZIP compression, in contrast to other WordPress cache plugins. You can easily activate GZIP compression in your admin panel if your site runs on the Apache webserver.
If this isn’t the case, you’ll need to create or modify a .htaccess file in your WordPress installation directory. Unless you need GZIP compression, this plugin is probably not for you.
Borlabs Cache
Borlabs Cache is a highly rated premium cache plugin in the Code Canyon marketplace that immediately begins caching your site after the activation. Borlabs Cache goes above the usual capabilities other WordPress cache plugins offer, such as compressing and merging CSS and JavaScript files.
Fragment caching, for example, lets you include dynamic content in static files so that cached copies of your site can continue to show advertisements.
WordPress multisite also comes with cache presets, allowing you to customize the cache settings for each site.
Breeze – WordPress Cache Plugin
Breeze is a free WordPress caching plugin developed by the team from Cloudways. If you need to speed up your WordPress site and increase performance, Breeze may be a suitable alternative.
Breeze works with WordPress, WordPress multisite, and WooCommerce. The plugin offers several options to optimize the performance at various levels. But it also includes more features such as support for Varnish cache, file-level cache system, database cleanup, simplified CDN integration options, and more.
Installing and setting up Breeze is easy, and most of the recommended features work right out of the box. Breeze is created to be simple to use for everyone. Install and activate the plugin, and you should see results immediately.
Breeze supports Varnish. However, if Varnish is not installed on your hosting servers, Breeze will utilize its internal cache mechanism to boost your site’s performance.
Bonus Plugin: SG Optimizer
SG Optimizer – This plugin is suitable for WordPress websites primarily hosted with SiteGround. It optimizes your site by compressing images, combining files, minifying your HTML, CSS, and JS.
This plugin is easy to use and can be used by both beginners and advanced users.
Wrapping Up
WordPress cache plugins are mandatory for a better user experience and SEO in WordPress. In addition, they will speed up your WordPress website. If you have any other WordPress cache plugins experience for caching, share your views in the comments.
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