How To Add W3 Total Cache For WordPress Caching

W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular caching WordPress plugins that helps you improve the speed and performance of your website.

In this guide, we will show you how to install the extension and adjust its settings easily on your site to take advantage of its many features.

 

What is W3 Total Cache Add-on

It is a popular free plugin that has been installed and activated on more than a million WordPress sites!

As mentioned , W3 Total Cache plugin is one of the best WordPress caching plugins and improves the speed and performance of WordPress sites by reducing load times.

 

WordPress uses php by default to call your website pages when requested by users.

PHP is a server-side programming language.. This means that every time a user requests a page from your site, the load on your hosting server increases, which affects your site’s performance and user experience and thus improves search engines.

 

WordPress caching plugins help you reduce this by skipping PHP and showing a cached copy of your web page directly to the user.

 

W3 Total Cache also helps you easily connect your website with CDN services or content distribution networks to improve your site’s performance and speed in more advanced ways.

 

Installing W3 Total Cache Plugin

Before installing the extension, you must make sure to deactivate any caching add-ons on your site first to preserve server resources (hosting server)

And also to make sure that there are no problems or conflicts between the functions of the various add-ons.

 

After that, you can install and activate the W3 Total Cache plugin on your site by logging into the WordPress control panel and then go to 

Additions » Add New

Then search using the extension’s name in the search box.

 

After activating the extension on your site, a new tab will be added to the control panel under the name Performance

When pressed, the setup wizard will start working.

Just click on the Next button at the bottom of the page to continue.

 

The first step

At first, you will be prompted to activate the page cache option, press the test page cache button 

 

The extension will offer you a number of storage engines to choose from.

You should select the most suitable option for you which is usually ‘Disk: Enhanced’ for most shared hosts.

Then press the Next button to continue.

 

The second step

Now you have to configure the database caching settings.

 

We recommend that you choose None if your site is small to medium in size, as for most small and medium-sized sites MySQL will be able to fetch data more quickly from the database cache.

Then press the Next button to go to the next step.

 

The third step

Now you have to adjust the cache settings for the Object Cache section 

Caching here allows the W3 Total Cache extension to cache and reuse database queries for dynamic pages to improve performance.

 

After pressing the Test object cache button, if the test result shows a difference of barely a few milliseconds, you can choose None 

Then press the Next button to continue.

 

The fourth step

Now it will ask you to adjust your browser’s cache settings.

Here, click on the Test Browser Cache button and select the ‘Enabled’ option.

 

Enabling this option requires the user’s browsers to store a copy of the web page for a limited period of time.  

Loading a page from a user’s browser cache is much faster than loading it from a web server’s cache (hosting your site)

Now press the Next button to move to the next stage of the settings.

 

Fifth step

This is the last stage of the setup wizard, which enables you to activate the lazy loading images option.

 

The W3 Total Cache extension uses JavaScript to add the feature to slow loading images on a web page in parts that the user has not accessed while browsing.

It also increases web page speed and improves the performance of your website as a whole.

Now click the Next button to finish the setup wizard and go to the W3 Total Cache addon control panel

 

Advanced caching settings in W3 Total Cache

After adjusting the basic settings of the extension, which are often sufficient for most websites, the extension allows you to have some advanced settings that enable you to improve the speed and performance of your site in other ways.

Let’s get to know together the most important settings available.

 

Minify JavaScript and CSS files

Minify is the way to make website file sizes smaller.  

The extension does this by removing unnecessary whitespace, lines, and characters from the source code or otherwise known as code.

 

But be careful 

If this happens simply disable these options again.

 

The W3 Total Cache extension allows you to easily minify JavaScript, CSS and HTML files.  

But we only recommend minifying JavaScript and CSS files.

All you have to do is go to Then scroll down to the JS section.

Check the Enable box next to “JS minify settings” to enable it.

 

 Then scroll down to the CSS section and enable CSS minify settings in the same way.

Don’t forget to hit the Save button after you’re done.

 

CDN Activation Using W3 Total Cache Add-on

CDN, or Content Distribution Network, is used to improve the performance and speed of your site by calling static files such as images, CSS files, and JavaScript from a worldwide network of servers.

Thus, the load on the hosting is reduced and the page load speed is greatly improved. 

W3 Total Cache plugin supports connectivity with many popular content distribution networks such as Cloudflare and Bunny.net 

 

Most Famous W3 Total Cache Problems and How to Solve Them

If you set the plugin settings correctly as we explained in this tutorial, the plugin should start working normally.

But you may encounter a problem like the changes you made to your site are not happening, or the extension is not working properly.

In this case don’t worry just clear the cache by going to the buttonPerformancein the top bar of your site.

Then pressPurge all cachesThe extension will delete the cache from your site immediately.

 

If you still feel the same problem, you may also delete your browser cache.

 

We hope this article will help you to properly install and setup W3 Total Cache plugin on your WordPress site.

It is a unique and powerful free add-on that will help you significantly improve the performance and speed of your site.

If you don’t mind investing in improving the speed and performance of your website regardless of the cost, you can also consider WP Rocket