As you know W3 Total Cache is a caching plugin that helps speed up your WordPress website.
But unfortunately, it’s not the kind of plugin you need to simply install and speed up your site.
In other words, you need to know how to configure it to take full advantage of the power it gives your website speed.
Configuring W3 Total Cache is a bit complicated, but it’s also good.
Because it helps the plugin development team have more income from selling user support services. You need to know that it’s not easy to maintain a free plugin with over a million installs like W3 Total Cache.
After a while of searching, reading and researching various articles on Google, I finally found the best article about W3 Total Cache configuration. You can refer here .
Author Tom Dupuis’s tutorial is very intuitive and concise. More importantly, the article received many very positive comments. Many people have improved website speed when following Tom’s way.
This is the basis for me to start optimizing WordPress speed according to Tom’s suggestion
And here are my guinea pig results:
Compared to Tom’s results, it is not much less. While Tom does use MaxCDN, which he has not had the conditions to use.
In this article, I will explain in detail how the configuration of Tom Dupuis serves those who are new to WordPress.
But there is a point when it comes to speeding WordPress themes, every solution given is just an input suggestion. It is you who decide the optimal parameters or solutions.
Why?
There are simply too many different conditions between your environment and the article authors. That difference sometimes greatly affects the speed achieved when applying that author’s solution.
Some of the differences can be mentioned: quality of hosting, themes, number of plugins and the plugins themselves in use.
If there was a magic solution that would apply to all websites, freelancer programmers would starve to death.
I myself have to constantly edit parameters, code, clear cache and check again on GTMetrix. It takes a long time to get temporary acceptable results.
That said, if you’re willing to tinker with it, improving WordPress speed shouldn’t be too difficult a problem.
Without further ado, let’s jump right into the settings of Tom Dupuis
Contents
1. General Settings
At this screen, there are several important configuration points you need to note.
Page Cache : Enable Page with Page Cache Method as Disk Enhanced.
Minify : Minify you have 2 options. Do not Enable if you are using CloudFlare because CloudFlare will do the job of optimizing CSS, JS and HTML files. Enable if you are not using CloudFlare. I did not enable it, but let Cloudflare do Minify.
Opcode Cache : Leave as it is because this is for those who subscribe to W3 Total Cache Pro.
Database cache : here Tom does not enable this feature because he uses MaxCDN. If not, select database cache and keep the default settings.
Object Cache : According to the author, enabling the feature can slow down the website in many cases especially in the screen of the WordPress backend area. In my case, whether it’s turned on or not, I don’t see any change. Of course, my shared host package does not support this cache method, so I don’t expect to benefit from object cache.
Check the ” Optimize disk enhanced page and minify disk caching for NFS” option.
2. Page Cache
A few configurations you need to pay attention to:
Check the option Cache SSL(https) requests if you use SSL
Read more : How to install SSL for WordPress website
Uncheck ” Don’t cache pages for following user roles”
Enter the sitemap in the Sitemap URL. You can find it in Yoast SEO
Check the option in Compatiblity Mode. According to the footnote this is the plugin author’s suggestion.
3. Minify, Database and Object Cache
Keep it the same, no need to change anything. Because in the Install tab, the plugin author says that the presets in these sections are already optimized.
4. Browser Cache
A few configurations you need to watch out for:
You tick the first 6 options. Leave the rest of the settings as they are.
5. Extension
There are 2 extensions you should enable:
CloudFlare : activate and set up as below. How to connect W3 Total Cache with Cloudflare, refer to my previous post here .
WordPress SEO by Yoast : activated because most of us install the Yoast plugin.
6.Cloudflare
After activating Cloudflare in the Extension section, you configure Cloudflare as follows:
At Cache Level , choose Agresive for better performance.
Enable Hotlink Protection . This is a nice feature because it prevents websites from using images stored on your site. They do not upload images to their host but point directly to your images. Such situations can consume bandwidth and overload your website with CPU.
Next you need to install CloudFlare for your website. You can refer to this article of mine. Change Nameservers you need to wait a while to take effect. When successful, Cloudflare will send you an email to notify you.
After you successfully updated the Nameservers, we move on to configuring CloudFlare.
Go to Speed Settings. Enable 3 options as below
Page Rules settings section. Use 3 page rules as Tom suggested:
In the 3rd Page Rule you need to consider the time set in the Browser Cache TTL. A reasonable day for a blog site as there is no need to keep up with the day’s breaking news. I leave it alone for 4 hours. Since toolofblogger is a new blog, I have to add new posts regularly.
Talking about Page Rule, it is a way to help you customize how CloudFlare works for certain areas of your website. With a free account you can create up to 3 page rules.
When applying Cloudflare to my blog, Cloudflare conflicts with the Thrive Content Builder plugin. Thanks to the Page Rule, I adjusted the way Cloudflare works to suit the editing screen of Thrive Content Builder.
At this point, you have completed the W3 Total Cache configuration.
Now go back to your WordPress dashboard, click Purge All Caches to clear all caches and retest your site on GTMetrix.
7. Some Common Mistakes
There are a few common errors you may encounter while performing these configuration steps. You can refer to the original post.
In my opinion, the parts that are most likely to have errors are minify html, css, javascript, and RockerLoader. These all affect css and javascript, so they can affect the operation of other plugins.
In my own case, Tom’s configuration gave a smooth operation without any serious errors. There is only conflict between Cloudflare and Thrive Content Builder. But after a while of editing everything was OK.
Epilogue
Above are the sharing on how to optimally configure W3 Total Cache by Tom, an SEO expert on Onlinemediamasters.com.
I have tried many configuration parameters from many different authors, but Tom’s method works best. In particular, Tom constantly updates the article to match the latest version of W3 Total Cache.
In summary, Tom’s article is worth your reference and application.
If you have any other views on W3 Total Cache configuration, please leave a comment below .
