Speed is one of the most important factors used by search engines like Google to determine search rankings. Slower sites rank low, and fast websites rank higher.
WordPress is written in PHP which is a server-side programming language. When a user requests a page from your website, WordPress runs PHP scripts to fetch the page and display it.
This resource-intensive process is slow and becomes even slower when you are on a shared hosting environment. This can significantly reduce your site’s performance and search rankings.
A caching plugin stores a version of your pages in the cache. When a user visits your website, they are served the cached version. This eliminates the need for WordPress to run PHP scripts. Your site becomes faster and your server becomes more responsive.
Having said that, let’s take a look at how W3 Total Cache improves your site’s speed.
Setting up W3 Total Cache Plugin for WordPress
W3 Total Cache is a powerhouse of a plugin. It comes loaded with many features to improve your site’s speed. The number of options makes it look quite intimidating to new users.
The most important option that you need to enable is page caching. Enabling it will allow W3 Total Cache to start storing and serving cached pages to your visitors.
Serve Compressed Pages to Your Users with W3 Total Cache
When you test your website’s speed using tools like Page Speed, you will notice that it recommends you to serve compressed pages.
Serving compressed pages means that when a user requests a page from your site, your site sends them a gzipped (compressed) version of your page. Compressing the page reduces its size and it loads faster. Once the gzipped page reaches the user, their browser automatically extracts and displays it.
W3 Total Cache allows you to turn on compression with just a click. Simply go to Performance » Browser Cache and check the box next to ‘Enable HTTP (gzip) compression’ option.
Using CDN with W3 Total Cache
CDN or content delivery networks allow you to serve your static content using servers from across the world. This allows users to download your static content like images, CSS, JavaScript much quickly.
See this guide on why you need a CDN for your WordPress blog for more information.
I recommend using MaxCDN which is one of the largest CDN services. I use it on all my websites and it helps me to boost page speed.
W3 Total Cache vs WP Super Cache
Comparisons between two popular plugins in the same niche are quite common in the WordPress community. Just like All in One SEO and Yoast SEO, users are comparing W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache for a long time.
Both plugins have a very large user base, both of them are available for free, and both of them are a great choice to speed up your WordPress site.
They are both very advanced plugins. They both appear intimidating due to a large number of settings and complicated setup instructions. The only real area where we can compare the two is performance.
W3 Total Cache’s performance is slightly better than WP Super Cache. It integrates beautifully with CDN and has object caching, minification, and other advanced features.
If you want any support to setup Cache Plugin you can connect with my agency Digitalastic.