WordPress provides many easy to configure options for caching of various kind of elements of site which significantly improve user experience. Let us start with importance of WordPress caching.
Importance of speed
We all agree intuitively that speed is important.
Imagine a user visits your site and your competitors site.
Your site load much faster, whereas your competitors site keeps him waiting forever and then the requests times out.
If you were that user, where are you likely to go next time ?
Will you even bother to check the other site again even if someone tells you the other company is good ?
Now for the important question, do you know which amongst the two fits description for your site ?
If it is former, then congratulations ! Thank you for your time however you need not read the rest of article as it is written for the later.
If you are still here, let me prod bit further.
Have you considered the following:
- Where does your traffic come from ?
- What type of connection speed do they have ?
- How quickly does your site load ?
- How much has speed costs you so far ?
I don’t know about you however there are reports of Amazon losing 1.6B USD due to site load delay of 1s ! (just google “importance of speed amazon”)
Bonus questions:
- Do you spend time and efforts on SEO ?
- Do you know that low speed affects your ranking adversely ?
WordPress Caching options
Simplest option is to use plugins which we will briefly touch today.
There are advanced ways to cache i.e. using reverse proxy like Varnish, however that deserves another blog post for itself.
If you check WordPress plugins repository, two most popular plugins(1M+ downloads) are
- W3 Total Cache
- WP Super Cache
I have used both, and both do their job well. Instead of detail review, will just note the points which will help you make decision for yourself.
W3 Total Cache
What I liked
Lots of options for fine grained control.
What can be simplified
Too many option can easily overwhelm non-technical user as well as technical user new to caching. Some reasonable default to get started immediately after installation will boost its appeal to non-technical users.
WP Super Cache
What I liked
Easy to install and configure for non-technical users as well
What can be simplified
Nothing in particular
Now that you know how to choose a good WordPress hosting and good WordPress caching plugin, another thing you want to consider is WordPress security.
I intend to review these and some more plugins and about WordPress security in near future in more details.
Stay tuned .