How to Setup W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin

The most popular WordPress cache plugins are W3 Total Cache and W3 Super Cache, these are giants plugin which are millions of web developers using on their WordPress blog and website.These two plugins are very famous and used by many major websites like Yoast, Smashing Magazine, Mashable and others.

As I consider that W3 Total Cache is the great plugin for cache, but to get more from W3 Total Cache plugin you have to Configure appropriately, so we’re going to share this tutorial with our readers on How to Setup W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin.

Read Here the Best WordPress cache Plugin

How to Configure W3 total cache WordPress Plugin

These are some advanced settings options, so read carefully one wrong step can create a big problem related to your blog or website.Follow exacts steps we are sharing with you to avoid the mistakes.

Step 1.How to Install W3 total cache

The first step is how to install W3 Total Cache plugin on your WordPress website.If you’re a old blogger on WordPress then we hope you already know How to Install W3 total cache, but if you don’t know then you can directly install W3 total cache plugin from your WordPress Dashboard.

1.Open your WP dashboard.
2.Click on the Plugin option in the Left side menu panel.
3.Now click on the Add New button.
4.Enter the name of Plugin “W3 Total Cache”.

5.After the search result appear, click on the install button to install W3 Total Cache plugin and then activate the plugin.

Users can also install this plugin manually without searching the plugin.

You just have to download the W3 Total cache plugin from here.After downloading you have to upload this plugin on your server “plugin folder” which you’ll get here youdomain.com/wp_content/plugins after logged in your server.

Important Note: If you have already had installed other cache plugin like W3 super cache, then delete the previous one or do not install W3 total cache.It is hardly recommended that do not use 2 cache plugin at once unless it will create problems.

Step 2.Configuring General settings of W3 Total Cache

The second step is configuring general settings of W3 total cache.General settings can be found by following this path Performance >> General Settings.General settings has it’s own module and you can see the screenshots of these modules if some things wrong with your general settings.

1st Module: General

It’s not important to enable the general module because it is possible that some of the options which enable by General module may not support your hosting provider which affect your site speed and make your site loading slower.So ignore this setting and skip to the next module.

2nd Module: Page Cache

The second module is page cache.It has two options which depends upon your hosting type for example, if your website is running on shared hosting then you have to select the disk: Enhanced option, but if your website in running on VPN or dedicated hosting then select the remaining option which is categorised according to the server type.

3rd Module: Minify

The third and one of the important module is minify.The minify module reduces load time by decreasing the size and number of CSS and JS files. Automatically remove unncessary data from CSS, JS, feed, page and post HTML like comments and whitespaces.

Minify module also depends on your hosting type, if your website is running on shared hosting then select Minify cache method “Disk” from the drop down menu and if your website is running on dedicated or VPN hosting then you should select the respective option.

4th Module: DataBase Cache

The fourth module is Database cache and its enable database caching to reduce post, page and feed creation time.The same method is applying to configure Database module which was used to apply in page caching module and minify caching module.Selecting the DataBase cache method is depend on hosting type.

5th Module: Object Cache

The fifth module is Database cache and its enable object caching to further reduce execution time for common operations.The same method is applying to configure Database module which was used to apply in page caching module and minify caching module.Selecting the DataBase cache method is depend on hosting type.

Step 3.Page Cache Settings

The third and very important step  is Page Cache Settings.You can find the Page cache setting in the left menu panel Performance>>Page Cache.This setting is used to enable the front page cache because for some websites front page is the most visited page so it is important to enable the cache for front page.(See the Screenshot)

Step 4.Browser Cache Settings

Browser Cache Settings is the 4th and last step to configure the W3 total cache plugin.This setting option is used to serve static file such as CSS, JS and images from the visitors browser.Serving static file from browser increase the page loading speed because static files can be serve from browser.To enable browser cache settings you have to enable the all first 6 options.(See the screenshots)

Check the Changed Performance

After following all these step, your website is surely get optimized with the W3 total cache plugin.Now you just have to see the difference between the performance of the website before installing W3 Total cache plugin and after installing and setting up the W3 total cache plugin.

Open any Page loading speed checker website which you can find on the internet or you can open GtMetrix, Pingdom or Google page speed insight tool to check the website speed and its performance.

Final Words

If you’re looking to know that which caching plugin you should use to enable the caching on your WordPress blog then honestly if your website is running on shared hosting then W3 super cache is good and setting up W3 super cache is very easy, you just need to plug and play the w3 super cache.

You just read the tutorial on How to Setup W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin and If you perfectly understand that how to setup W3 total cache plugin on shared hosting and another type of hosting then you should use W3 total cache on WordPress website.

W3 total cache completely enables the caching on your WordPress blog so that’s why you should choose the W3 total cache, but if you’re still confused than you can choose the best cache plugin for WordPress blog here.

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HTP Team

HTP is a blog which provide free information and tips.HTP specially build to gives users to tutorials on how to use WordPress plugins.We also review WordPress plugin and show you exact ratings of WordPress plugins.

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