Excessive load time can harm your site in many ways. There are several ways to improve your site's speed but the caching has the greatest impact. With this in mind, in this article, we will evaluate the performance of the top six caching solutions for WordPress. We will also look at the features that each person offers to help you identify one of the 6 Best WordPress Caching Plugins that really are the best feature (not just the fastest).
Here are the product lines: WP Rocket; W3 Total Cache ; WP Super Cache; WP Fastest Cache; Comet Cache and Cache Enabler.
Put all this in context before we start.
What is Caching?
A cache is a region in memory of a computer that stores information recently used. When a site is hosted, it means the pages, images, files, and Web objects of the page are stored on the user's local hard disk. This means that when a user opens a file that is accessed frequently, the browser will have the most (if not all) of its files cached.
When the browser does not have to retrieve new information every time the site is visited, it will lead to faster page load times. Caching plugins work the same way. Save cached HTML files and serve them the next time a request is made, instead of reloading all PHP scripts from WordPress.
Install Stage
To test how these plugin plugins actually work, we installed each plugin on a test page and ran the tests with both Pingdom and GTmetrix.
Before installing any plugin, we have read our test site fundamentally without installing any caching plugins.
Here's how it is done on GTmetrix:
Here's how it works on Pingdom:
For reference, our test site:
- Running GeneratePress
- There is a custom home page built with Divi Builder
- Jetpack has been installed and activated yet
Other than that - nothing special happened. We also do not make any performance enhancements in the cached plugins we're testing.
For the caching plugin, we will use the default settings for each plugin as much as possible. We know there are some limitations to this approach. But not really a "fair" way to do it the other way and we need some consistent basis for comparison.
By default, we mean we will not make any more specialized edits than say, turn on caching (and minimize if available).
At the end of this post, we will have an excellent table summarizing all the test results for each plugin so that you can easily compare all of them.
Compare 6 Best WordPress Caching Plugins
1 / WP Rocket
WP Rocket is one of the best caching solutions for WordPress and the only high-end plugin in our list. It is very user friendly and a buoy for webmasters to find technical jargon and web programming to confusing.
The plugin will work correctly after activation; As a result, you will not be rooted in the wall trying to configure it. Those of you with the technology know-how can go deep into advanced options and custom configuration settings.
Features, characteristics
WP Rocket is a feature-rich caching plugin that provides preloading of cache, browser caching, GZIP compression and options for shortening and merging HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Its lazy loading feature puts it apart from other popular caching solutions. Those of you not yet aware, this feature makes it so that the images you have placed on your page are only loaded when the user scrolls down the page. This non-priority approach significantly improves load time.
Here are some other features you'll find on every caching plugin's license:
- Simple, fast and intuitive setup.
- page caching is activated immediately.
- Google's font optimization minimizes HTTP requests.
- JavaScript files are delayed until the page is displayed.
- Integrates seamlessly with CloudFlare.
Speed test
After installing WP Rocket, we turned on the shortcut but did not change any of the defaults.
GT Metrix:
Pingdom:
2 / Total W3 cache
W3 Total Cache is a unique WordPress performance optimization framework designed to enhance the user experience and improve page load time. This caching solution is suggested by some industry leading hosting providers including Page.ly, Flywheel and SiteGround.
The first thing you need to know about this plugin is that its Settings area is divided into 16 pages. Whoa! This can be quite overwhelming (even for some developers), but it's important to remember that you do not have to manually configure the settings to make the plugin work - its default setting works pretty well. .
W3 Total Cache has a dedicated Installation Page for all types of caching - page caching; object caching; caching of the database; browser caching, etc. The level of customization you get with W3 Total Cache is hard to find elsewhere.
Features, characteristics
- GZIP compression for optimized web browser display.
- Compact and concatenate HTML, CSS and JavaScript files.
- Support for content distribution networks (CDNs).
- Compatible with CloudFlare.
Speed test
W3 Total Cache is known for its large installation options. This is all we have done for this test, though:
- page caching turned on
- Auto-Reduction enabled
GT Metrix:
Pingdom:
3 / WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a free caching solution available for WordPress. Its caching mechanism is fairly straightforward. This plugin basically creates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog and stores it instead of the PHP WordPress script.
It provides three options to reduce load time:
1 - Use mod_rewrite to distribute static pages
2- Serves static pages using PHP
3 - Use legacy cache mode to store pages for logged in users
Features, characteristics
- Page compression and dynamic caching.
- Support for content distribution networks (CDNs).
- Caching to visitors using mobile devices.
- Scheduler to manage the deletion and re-cache to certain time periods.
Speed test
With WP Super Cache, that means all we have to do is turn on the cache.
GT Metrix:
Pingdom:
4 / WP Fastest Cache
According to the developers, the WP Fastest Cache plugin is the "fastest and simplest WP Cache System". Similar to WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache creates static HTML files based on your dynamic WordPress blog and saves it to the cache.
WP Fastest Cache boasts an easy-to-install plugin - and it offers. You do not even have to modify the file configure .htaccess .
The plugin uses mod_rewrite to create static HTML files on your site. It also offers GZIP compression, browser caching, and the option to combine JavaScript and CSS files together to reduce requests from your server.
Features, characteristics
- Mod_Rewrite is the fastest method used in this plugin
- All cache files will be deleted when a post or page is published
- CDN and SSL support
- Enable / disable the cache option for mobile devices and signed-in users
- Block the cache for a specific page or post with a Short Code
Speed test
With WP Fastest Cache, we have enabled System Cache and enable shortening for HTML and CSS.
GT Metrix:
Pingdom:
5 / Comet Cache
Comet Cache, formerly known as ZenCache and Quick Cache, quickly became popular under its new name. It takes a real-time snapshot of each article, page, genre, and link and stores them intuitively. This simple but effective way of saving your initial processing time increases the page load time of your website.
The plugin uses advanced techniques to determine when it will send a cached version and when it should not. By default, users who are logged in to the system and visitors commented on the site have not been cached in the past. You can edit these configuration settings from the Settings page .
Features, characteristics
- Options to control automatic cache removal behavior for Home and Post Pages, Authors Page, Categories, Tags and Custom Archive, Archive Post Types, RSS / RDF / ATOM Feeds, and XML. Sitemaps.
- Ability to cache or ignore URLs containing GET Requests.
- User Agent and HTTP Referrer Exclusion Patterns.
- Set auto-expiration for cache files.
Speed test
We have followed the plugin's instructions and just select Yes, turn on the Comet Cache box and call it a day.
GT Metrix:
Pingdom:
6 / Enabler cache
Cache Enabler is a lightweight caching solution for WordPress, which has two things to reduce your website's page load time - create static HTML files and provide WebP support. Static HTML files are stored on the server's hard disk.
This plugin is the first of its kind to allow users to serve WebP images without JavaScript. Those of you who do not know, WebP is a new image format that quickly became popular as a web-optimized image that provides data loss and loss of data.
When a file is accessed or requested, the web server provides a static HTML file while avoiding all auxiliary processes that may be resource intensive. This caching strategy significantly increases the speed of your site, resulting in lower page load time and improved performance of your WordPress installation.
Features, characteristics
- Efficient and fast disk caching engine for faster caching
- Displays the actual cache size in your dashboard
- Minimize inline HTML and JavaScript
- WebP support (when combined with Optimus)
- HTTP / 2 focus
Speed test
We generally recommend tagging Auto-Tagging with Cache Enrollment. But to maintain the test fair, all we have to do is enable the built-in minimization of the cache enabler.
GT Metrix:
Pingdom:
Comparison table
This is a table that compares the page load time of all six caching plugins. Page load times are recorded in seconds for both GT Metrix and Pingdom tests.
| Before caching | WP Rocket | General W3 cache | WP Super Cache | WP Memory Fastest Cache | Comet Cache | Cache trigger | |
| GT Metrix | 1.9 seconds | 1.1 seconds | 1.5 seconds | 1.0 seconds | 1.3 seconds | 2.1 seconds | 0.9 seconds |
| Pingdom | 1.79 seconds | 1.38 seconds | 1.43 seconds | 0.98 seconds | 0.91 seconds | 1.55 seconds | 0.93 seconds |
There is only one plugin cache that has our test site load time under 1 second in both tests and that's the Enabler cache. For that reason, combined with the fact that it's free and extremely simple to set up, we feel comfortable calling Cache Enabler as the best plugin plugin, at least based on our testing.
Post a Comment
Post a Comment