CentrioHost Blog

WordPress caching can be complicated and some might even call it boring. Trying to explain the details of such a complex technology might take a full book. However, we can break down the idea of caching by comparing it to a simple math problem. What’s 10 times 2? Most people can immediately tell you the answer is 20. Why is that? They’ve memorized the answer. In fact, there’s probably a minimal amount of calculation going on their head. This type of memorization comparison is definitely simplifying website caching, but it helps us visualize how the process works and why you might need a WordPress caching plugin.

Your website may be viewed dozens of times each month. Maybe you see even higher numbers, in the hundreds, thousands, or millions. Seeing as how your website is most likely serving up the same, or similar, content on a regular basis, wouldn’t it be nice if the server could remember those files to serve up your website every time?

• Caching Explained
• When Do You Need a WordPress Caching Plugin?
• No Caching vs With Caching
• The Best WordPress Caching Plugins

Caching Explained

In short, every webpage visited on your site requires a request to the server, processing by that server (including database queries), then a final result sent from the server to the user’s browser. The result is your website, complete with all of the files and elements that make it look the way it does. For instance, you might have a header, images, a menu, and a blog. Since the server has to process all of those requests, it takes some time for the complete webpage to be delivered to the user–especially with clunky or larger websites.

That’s where a WordPress caching plugin comes into play! The caching plugin instructs the server to store some files to disk or RAM, depending on the configuration. Therefore, it can remember and duplicate the same content it’s been serving in the past. As a result, your web pages load much faster, directly from cache. Basically, caching reduces the amount of work required to generate a pageview.

When Do You Need a WordPress Caching Plugin?

We talked a bit about speed, but do you always need a WordPress caching plugin? And what are some of the other benefits of caching?

Those are some excellent questions, and for those of you managing your own servers or are on shared hosting, a caching plugin usually makes perfect sense.

Disadvantages of Caching Plugins

However, sometimes you don’t need a caching plugin at all. If you decide on a managed WordPress host like Host SEO, we take care of caching for you. Caching is done at the server-level, and in most cases, in a much faster manner. Compared to a plugin, the server-level caching requires no expertise, no tweaking dozens of settings trying to achieve the fastest speeds; it’s simply fast all the time! ?

We don’t allow most caching plugins on our platform as they deteriorate performance. There are a lot of things that can simply go wrong with caching plugins unless you know what you’re doing.

You Always Need Some Type of Caching

Regardless of whether you have server-level caching or go with a plugin, you’ll always need caching in some form. So, what are some of the other benefits of caching?

• You speed up your website for users – We already covered this, but it’s nice to mention again since it’s the primary advantage.
• You improve your overall user-experience – Since the website moves faster for users they are now more likely to browse around. Faster websites are known for decreasing bounce rates, since people are not interested in waiting around for a page to load for 10 seconds.
• Your server uses fewer resources – This ties into speed, since the fewer resources make for a faster site. However, it also puts less of a strain on your server. This is very important when it comes to highly dynamic sites, such as membership sites, and determining what you can and cannot serve from cache.
• You may see a boost in search engine optimization – Once again, this relates to the speed and user experience, but with all of those areas improving you’re able to show Google and other search engines that your website is worth indexing at a higher ranking. Basically, a fast website + a great UX = SEO improvement.
• You’ll see lower TTFB – Caching is one of the easiest ways to lower your TTFB. In fact, in our tests caching typically reduces TTFB by up to 90%! ?

No Caching vs With Caching

We ran a few speed tests with Host SEO’s server-level caching so you can see the difference it makes, both in terms of overall speed and TTFB.

No Caching Speed Test

We first ran 5 tests on Pingdom without caching enabled and took the average.

With Caching Speed Test

We then enabled server-level caching and ran 5 tests on Pingdom and took the average.

As you can see server-level caching decreased our page load time by 23.04%! And that’s without any extra work involved. This site we tested is also fairly optimized, so larger unoptimized sites are bound to see even greater differences.

No Caching TTFB

As we mentioned earlier, it’s also important to note the difference in TTFB without and with caching. TTFB in Pingdom is represented by the yellow “waiting” bar. As you can see the TTFB with no caching is over 200 ms.

With Caching TTFB

Now if we take a look at the TTFB with caching enabled we can see that it is under 40 ms.

The Best WordPress Caching Plugins

If you intend on managing your own server or are using shared hosting, these are the caching plugins to try out. Some of them are more intuitive than others, but all of them have great reviews. Many online posts will try to compare the speeds of caching plugins and sell you on the best one. However, this is almost impossible because these plugins are going to perform differently based on your own server, configuration, resources, and even physical location.

We love speed tests just as much as the next person, but deeming a plugin as “the fastest” is also unfair to the plugin’s author, as what works best for one user, might not for another. Not to mention there are hundreds of different settings that could be enabled or disabled. Therefore, you should always test WordPress caching plugins yourself.

Here’s a short list of the top WordPress caching plugins for you to quickly browse through. If you’re interested in learning about the details from each one, keep reading below.

1. WP Rocket (premium)
2. Cache Enabler (free)
3. Comet Cache (free + premium)
4. W3 Total Cache (free)
5. WP Super Cache (free)
6. WP Fastest Cache (free + premium)
7. Hyper Cache (free)

In our experience, you should try at least two or three WordPress caching plugins and make a decision based on your experience. For instance, you might like the user interfaces from some caching plugins far better than others. Some caching plugins are also stronger when it comes to ease of use.

We suggest running a speed test with a website speed test tool such as Pingdom or GTMetrix after implementing each plugin. Or one of the many other