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LEARN MOREHello my dear WordPress Tutorial readers! So here we meet again on the same series of WordPress Tutorial where all kinds of tips are provided! In the past weeks, we have discussed about such topics as WordPress admin area, tips for beginners, etc. Now we’re moving to a whole new area of WordPress, that is site speed! We all know how vital speed is to websites, not only WordPress ones, but basically all the websites on the Internet. In fact, it is so crucial that researches have pointed out that if a website’s loading time is longer than 3 minutes, visitors are likely to go away.
Dangerous, isn’t it?! Google also thinks so. That is why it lists site speed as one of the determining factors in deciding search engine raking! What is more, having a fast website also increases user experience and better conversion rates. Now as you know you should have a website that loads fast, the question is how to make that happen? Luckily, there is an easy path for all of us: Caching. Some go as far as claiming that caching is one of the most important aspects of a WordPress website.
Simply explained, a caching plugin functions to create a static version of your site and represent it to the visitor. In that way, your website seems to load much faster. However, there are so many aspects to WordPress caching that we should know about before implementing it. So, I decided to dig deep into this issue to give you some detailed view on it!
In this article, we will find out about:
Are we cool? Ok, let’s go!
When someone lands on your WordPress website, they unavoidably make a lot of requests to your host. These requests include such things as images, Javascript, and CSS. Not to mention the content from WordPress database! It works like a circle, which can be explained as follows:
This process means that there will be a new request of website information every time someone visits it. In addition to being unnecessary because you site doesn’t change often, it also makes your site load slower. So what to do? Well, this is where caching comes to your rescue!
Like I have said above, a WordPress caching plugin will create a static version of your website and deliver it to the user. So, if the same user comes to your website again, what they will see is the cached version. The whole idea behind this is to make your website load much faster.
I believe this WordPress tutorial has made you see why we should install WordPress caching. But now I will give you some more detailed explanation.
The first thing is Google. We need WordPress caching because Mr. Google loves fast websites! But, to be honest, who doesn’t love fast sites, right?! Like I said in the opening, Google even puts site speed in the Search Engine Results Page ranking factors. In this regard, response time matters as well.
The second thing is your website’s overall performance. See the process happening when someone visits your website? I think you must understand how time consuming it is for that. Although there are 3 ways to improve the amount of time it takes for the process, caching is the best way. Do you know that even the biggest brand in WordPress managed hosting, WPEngine, has their own caching technology called EverCache?! This combines all the key forms of caching, including page, database and object caching. That is to see how big the role of caching is even for huge WordPress names.
Almost every problem has two sides to it, and so does WordPress caching. While its proponents describe it as a miracle, others say it might break stuff! In its defense, I would like to say some fair words in this WordPress tutorial.
The things prone to breaking by caching is those not coded properly! The example is when you have a selling website and you have a cart feature which is supposed to display added items. However, if it is badly coded, then when you enable caching, your visitors may not see the updated cart. So, solutions?
Basically, there are two types of caching protocols, which are Client-side caching and Server-side caching. So what are those? And what you should know about them? Please keep on reading my WordPress tutorial!
Static data of a website includes images, CSS files, and JavaScript files. It doesn’t which browser you are using when it comes to client-side caching. All of them will not re-download those files every time you visit a website. Instead, they will send to you those files from the local cache stored on the hard drive of your computer. This is also to explain why it is advisable to clean your browser cache once in a while. Besides helping you to save a lot of space, it will also enhance your website’s performance.
You have just read what client-side caching is. Almost every, if not all, modern website use client-side caching. Thus, almost every, if not all, browser supports it.
Unlike client-side caching, there is not only one type of this caching. To be specific, it includes all of these following caching below, and what we are going to do next is to go through all of them!
If you care enough for a WordPress plugin, well, there are plenty of them for you to choose. Besides caching your WordPress websites, these plugins will do a little bit more than that. These additional features could be GZIP compression, HTML and JavaScript minification, CDNs, and so many more.
Before taking a look at what plugins we have here, I have a little reminder. That is you must remember to switch off the cache when you make changes to your themes. Doing that and your visitors will surely see the updated version of your website, not the cached one.
Now, let’s see what I have for you in this WordPress tutorial:
In addition to caching, there are a lot more things you can do to increase your WordPress website performance. Here are some suggestions:
Too spare? Well, to find out exactly what you should do for each point, visit my other article! WordPress Guide: 7 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Website will explain my points in more details!
Thank you for your attention! This is the end of our WordPress Tutorial on Caching for your WordPress websites. I believe we have at least provided you with some useful knowledge on WordPress caching, haven’t we? Now it is time for you to apply what you have read into your website! As a writer, I hope you enjoyed my article. As a fellow WordPress user, I hope you have learned something from our article, hence being able to make the most out of your it!
In case you have any questions concerning this WordPress tutorial or any suggestions you want to make to us, please let us know by commenting!