Warning: Version 0.9.5 Broken 🙁 36 people say it’s broken. (2016-09-27)
Plugin Author: BoldGrid WordPress profile: BoldGrid Contributors: <a href="">boldgrid</a>, <a href="">fredericktownes</a>, <a href="">maxicusc</a>, <a href="">gidomanders</a>, <a href="">bwmarkle</a>, <a href="">harryjackson1221</a>, <a href="">joemoto</a>, <a href="">vmarko</a>, <a href="">jacobd91</a>
Compatibility (latest version): Unknown (of votes)
Tested up to (WP version): WP 6.7.1 Download count: 0 Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Description
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices.
W3TC is the only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework for WordPress trusted by millions of publishers, web developers, and web hosts worldwide for more than a decade. It is the total performance solution for optimizing WordPress Websites.
BENEFITS
- Improvements in search engine result page rankings, especially for mobile-friendly websites and sites that use SSL
- At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in WebPagetest or significant Google PageSpeed improvements) when fully configured
- Improved conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com
- “Instant” repeat page views: browser caching
- Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly and can be interacted with more quickly
- Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages
- Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods
- Up to 80% bandwidth savings when you minify HTML, minify CSS and minify JS files.
KEY FEATURES
- Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters
- Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself
- Mobile support: respective caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents including theme switching for groups of referrers or user agents
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support
- Secure Socket Layer (SSL/TLS) support
- Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on (FSD) CDN (by user agent group)
- Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN
- Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN
- Caching of search results pages (i.e. URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk
- Caching of database objects in memory or on disk
- Caching of objects in memory or on disk
- Caching of fragments in memory or on disk
- Caching methods include local Disk, Redis, Memcached, APC, APCu, eAccelerator, XCache, and WinCache
- Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript and Minify HTML with granular control
- Minification of posts and pages and RSS feeds
- Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript with automated updates to assets
- Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS with automated updates to assets
- Defer non critical CSS and Javascript for rendering pages faster than ever before
- Defer offscreen images using Lazy Load to improve the user experience
- Browser caching using cache-control, future expire headers and entity tags (ETag) with “cache-busting”
- JavaScript grouping by template (home page, post page etc) with embed location control
- Non-blocking JavaScript embedding
- Import post attachments directly into the Media Library (and CDN)
- Leverage our multiple CDN integrations to optimize images
- WP-CLI support for cache purging, query string updating and more
- Various security features to help ensure website safety
- Caching statistics for performance insights of any enabled feature
- Extension framework for customization or extensibility for Cloudflare, WPML and much more
- Reverse proxy integration via Nginx or Varnish
- WebP Converter extension provides WebP image format conversion from common image formats (on upload and on demand)
W3 Total Cache Pro Features
With over a million active installs, W3 Total Cache is the most comprehensive WordPress caching plugin available and has robust premium features that help deliver an exceptional user experience.
- Full Site Delivery: Serve your entire site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN), ensuring faster load times worldwide.
- Fragment Cache: Optimize the caching of dynamic content while still improving performance.
- REST API Caching: Speed up your headless WordPress site by caching REST API calls.
- Eliminate Render-Blocking CSS: Ensure your CSS doesn’t hold up page loading, providing faster initial paint.
- Delay Scripts: Improve performance by delaying the loading of non-essential scripts until they are needed.
- Preload Requests: Boost page performance by preloading critical resources before they’re requested.
- Remove CSS/JS: Clean up unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files that slow down your pages.
- Lazy Load Google Maps: Load Google Maps only when it’s visible, reducing unnecessary requests.
- WPML Extension: Optimize performance on multilingual sites powered by WPML.
- Caching Statistics: Get detailed insights on cache usage and performance improvements.
- Purge Logs: Keep your site clean by automatically purging unnecessary cache logs.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Try W3 Total Cache Pro risk-free with our 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, we will refund your purchase.
PAGESPEED SCORE IMPROVEMENTS
To help you understand the impact of individual features on your website’s performance, we’ve tested each feature separately to see its effect on Google PageSpeed scores. While optimal results come from configuring several different caching tools together, the following individual features also show significant improvements on their own:
Remove Unused CSS/JS
This feature removes CSS and JavaScript files that are not needed for the current page, reducing the load time.
- Added over 27 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 57.2 / After: 86.7)
- Reduced the Potential Savings From Unused JavaScript from 127.5 KiB to 84 KiB
- View the test results
Full Site Delivery
Full Site Delivery optimizes the delivery of your entire site, enhancing the server response time.
- Added a 99% performance enhancement to the Average Server Response Time (Before: 3413 ms / After: 34 ms)
- View the test results
Eliminate Render Blocking CSS
This feature eliminates CSS that blocks the rendering of your page, speeding up the initial load time.
- Added over 17 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 53.75 / After: 71)
- Reduced the Potential Savings From Render-Blocking Resources by over 94% (Before: 2432.5 ms / After: 125 ms)
- Improved the Largest Contentful Paint time by over 56% (Before: 7s / After: 3.04s)
- View the test results
Delay Scripts
Delay Scripts postpones the loading of certain scripts until they are needed, reducing initial load times.
- Added 14 points to the Google PageSpeed Performance score (Before: 54.25 / After: 68.5)
- Reduced the Time Third-Party Code Blocked The Main Thread For by 62% (Before: 825 ms / After: 197.5 ms)
- View the test results
Rest API Caching
This feature caches API responses, reducing server load and speeding up API interactions.
- Reduced the Average Server Load by 40% (Before: 0.62 / After: 0.37)
- Sped up API Responses by 84.5% (Before: 968ms / After: 150ms)
- Reduced the Average Server Load by 24% under during a major traffic spike (Before: 34.55 / After: 26.19)
- View the test results
WebP Images
Converts images to the WebP format, which is more efficient and faster to load.
- Added over 9 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 84.67 / After: 93.83)
- View the test results
Lazy Load Google Maps
Delays the loading of Google Maps until the user interacts with them, reducing initial load time.
- Added 10 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 66 / After: 76)
- Reduced the Total Blocking Time Performance score by 72% (Before: 287.5 ms / After: 80 ms)
- View the test results
Speed up your site tremendously, improve core web vitals and the overall user experience for your visitors without having to change your WordPress host, theme, plugins or your content production workflow.
What users have to say:
- Read testimonials from W3TC users.
Who do I thank for all of this?
It’s quite difficult to recall all of the innovators that have shared their thoughts, code and experiences in the blogosphere over the years, but here are some names to get you started:
- Steve Souders
- Steve Clay
- Ryan Grove
- Nicholas Zakas
- Ryan Dean
- Andrei Zmievski
- George Schlossnagle
- Daniel Cowgill
- Rasmus Lerdorf
- Gopal Vijayaraghavan
- Bart Vanbraban
- mOo
Please reach out to all of these people and support their projects if you’re so inclined.
FAQ
Search engines like Google, measure and factor in the speed of web sites in their ranking algorithm. When they recommend a site they want to make sure users find what they’re looking for quickly. So in effect you and Google should have the same objective.
Speed is among the most significant success factors web sites face. In fact, your site’s speed directly affects your income (revenue) — it’s a fact. Some high traffic sites conducted research and uncovered the following:
- Google.com: +500 ms (speed decrease) -> -20% traffic loss [1]
- Yahoo.com: +400 ms (speed decrease) -> -5-9% full-page traffic loss (visitor left before the page finished loading) [2]
- Amazon.com: +100 ms (speed decrease) -> -1% sales loss [1]
A thousandth of a second is not a long time, yet the impact is quite significant. Even if you’re not a large company (or just hope to become one), a loss is still a loss. W3 Total Cache is your solution for faster websites, happier visitors and better results.
Many of the other consequences of poor performance were discovered more than a decade ago:
- Lower perceived credibility (Fogg et al. 2001)
- Lower perceived quality (Bouch, Kuchinsky, and Bhatti 2000)
- Increased user frustration (Ceaparu et al. 2004)
- Increased blood pressure (Scheirer et al. 2002)
- Reduced flow rates (Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 200)
- Reduced conversion rates (Akamai 2007)
- Increased exit rates (Nielsen 2000)
- Are perceived as less interesting (Ramsay, Barbesi, and Preece 1998)
- Are perceived as less attractive (Skadberg and Kimmel 2004)
There are a number of resources that have been documenting the role of performance in success on the web, W3 Total Cache exists to give you a framework to tune your application or site without having to do years of research.
It’s a complete framework. Most cache plugins available do a great job at achieving a couple of performance gains. Total Cache is different because it remedies numerous performance reducing aspects of any web site. It goes farther than the basics, beyond merely reducing CPU usage (load) or bandwidth consumption for HTML pages. Equally important, the plugin requires no theme modifications, modifications to your .htaccess (mod_rewrite rules) or programming compromises to get started. Most importantly, it’s the only plugin designed to optimize all practical hosting environments small or large. The options are many and setup is easy.
Rarely do readers take the time to complain. They typically just stop browsing earlier than you’d prefer and may not return altogether. This is the only plugin specifically designed to make sure that all aspects of your site are as fast as possible. Google is placing more emphasis on the speed of a site as a factor in rankings; this plugin helps with that too.
It’s in every web site owner’s best interest is to make sure that the performance of your site is not hindering its success.
To use all features in the suite, a minimum of version WordPress 5.3 with PHP 7.2.5 is required. Earlier versions will benefit from our Media Library Importer to get them back on the upgrade path and into a CDN of their choosing.
Great question. W3 Total Cache uses several open source tools to attempt to combine and optimize CSS, JavaScript and HTML etc. Unfortunately some trial and error is required on the part of developers is required to make sure that their code can be successfully minified with the various libraries W3 Total Cache supports. Even still, if developers do test their code thoroughly, they cannot be sure that interoperability with other code your site may have. This fault does not lie with any single party here, because there are thousands of plugins and theme combinations that a given site can have, there are millions of possible combinations of CSS, JavaScript etc.
A good rule of thumb is to try auto mode, work with a developer to identify the code that is not compatible and start with combine only mode (the safest optimization) and increase the optimization to the point just before functionality (JavaScript) or user interface / layout (CSS) breaks in your site.
We’re always working to make this more simple and straight forward in future releases, but this is not an undertaking we can realize on our own. When you find a plugin, theme or file that is not compatible with minification reach out to the developer and ask them either to provide a minified version with their distribution or otherwise make sure their code is minification-friendly.
On the contrary, as with any other action a user can perform on a site, faster performance will encourage more of it. The cache is so quickly rebuilt in memory that it’s no trouble to show visitors the most current version of a post that’s experiencing Digg, Slashdot, Drudge Report, Yahoo Buzz or Twitter effect.
No, on the contrary if you use the minify settings you will improve their performance by several times.
Indeed it does.
Yes.
Yes, indirectly – if you have a lot of bloggers working with you, you will find that it feels like you have a server dedicated only to WP Admin once this plugin is enabled; the result, increased productivity.
We are aware of no incompatibilities with apache 1.3+, nginx 0.7+, IIS 5+ or litespeed 4.0.2+. If there’s a web server you feel we should be actively testing (e.g. lighttpd), we’re interested in hearing.
Yes, built from the ground up with scale and current hosting paradigms in mind.
The media library import tool is for old or “messy” WordPress installations that have attachments (images etc in posts or pages) scattered about the web server or “hot linked” to 3rd party sites instead of properly using the media library.
The tool will scan your posts and pages for the cases above and copy them to your media library, update your posts to use the link addresses and produce a .htaccess file containing the list of of permanent redirects, so search engines can find the files in their new location.
You should backup your database before performing this operation.
Use the “Help” button available on the Minify settings tab. Once open, the tool will look for and populate the CSS and JS files used in each template of the site for the active theme. To then add a file to the minify settings, click the checkbox next to that file. The embed location of JS files can also be specified to improve page render performance. Minify settings for all installed themes can be managed from the tool as well by selecting the theme from the drop down menu. Once done configuring minify settings, click the apply and close button, then save settings in the Minify settings tab.
Technically no, a CDN is a high performance cache that stores static assets (your theme files, media library etc) in various locations throughout the world in order to provide low latency access to them by readers in those regions. Use Total Cache to accelerate your site by putting your content closer to your users with our many CDN integrations including Cloudflare, StackPath, AWS and more.
Login to your CDN providers control panel or account management area. Following any set up steps they provide, create a new “pull zone” or “bucket” for your site’s domain name. If there’s a set up wizard or any troubleshooting tips your provider offers, be sure to review them. In the CDN tab of the plugin, enter the hostname your CDN provider provided in the “replace site’s hostname with” field. You should always do a quick check by opening a test file from the CDN hostname, e.g. http://cdn.domain.com/favicon.ico. Troubleshoot with your CDN provider until this test is successful.
Now go to the General tab and click the checkbox and save the settings to enable CDN functionality and empty the cache for the changes to take effect.
First create an S3 account (unless using origin pull); it may take several hours for your account credentials to be functional. Next, you need to obtain your “Access key ID” and “Secret key” from the “Access Credentials” section of the “Security Credentials” page of “My Account.” Make sure the status is “active.” Next, make sure that “Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)” is the selected “CDN type” on the “General Settings” tab, then save the changes. Now on the “Content Delivery Network Settings” tab enter your “Access key,” “Secret key” and enter a name (avoid special characters and spaces) for your bucket in the “Create a bucket” field by clicking the button of the same name. If using an existing bucket simply specify the bucket name in the “Bucket” field. Click the “Test S3 Upload” button and make sure that the test is successful, if not check your settings and try again. Save your settings.
Unless you wish to use CloudFront, you’re almost done, skip to the next paragraph if you’re using CloudFront. Go to the “General Settings” tab and click the “Enable” checkbox and save the settings to enable CDN functionality. Empty the cache for the changes to take effect. If preview mode is active you will need to “deploy” your changes for them to take effect.
To use CloudFront, perform all of the steps above, except select the “Amazon CloudFront” “CDN type” in the “Content Delivery Network” section of the “General Settings” tab. When creating a new bucket, the distribution ID will automatically be populated. Otherwise, proceed to the AWS Management Console and create a new distribution: select the S3 Bucket you created earlier as the “Origin,” enter a CNAME if you wish to add one or more to your DNS Zone. Make sure that “Distribution Status” is enabled and “State” is deployed. Now on “Content Delivery Network” tab of the plugin, copy the subdomain found in the AWS Management Console and enter the CNAME used for the distribution in the “CNAME” field.
You may optionally, specify up to 10 hostnames to use rather than the default hostname, doing so will improve the render performance of your site’s pages. Additional hostnames should also be specified in the settings for the distribution you’re using in the AWS Management Console.
Now go to the General tab and click the “Enable” checkbox and save the settings to enable CDN functionality and empty the cache for the changes to take effect. If preview mode is active you will need to “deploy” your changes for them to take effect.
First create an account. Next, in the “Content Delivery Network” section of the “General Settings” tab, select Rackspace Cloud Files as the “CDN Type.” Now, in the “Configuration” section of the “Content Delivery Network” tab, enter the “Username” and “API key” associated with your account (found in the API Access section of the rackspace cloud control panel) in the respective fields. Next enter a name for the container to use (avoid special characters and spaces). If the operation is successful, the container’s ID will automatically appear in the “Replace site’s hostname with” field. You may optionally, specify the container name and container ID of an existing container if you wish. Click the “Test Cloud Files Upload” button and make sure that the test is successful, if not check your settings and try again. Save your settings. You’re now ready to export your media library, theme and any other files to the CDN.
You may optionally, specify up to 10 hostnames to use rather than the default hostname, doing so will improve the render performance of your site’s pages.
Now go to the General tab and click the “Enable” checkbox and save the settings to enable CDN functionality and empty the cache for the changes to take effect. If preview mode is active you will need to “deploy” your changes for them to take effect.
If the domain name of your site has changed, this tool is useful in updating your posts and pages to use the current addresses. For example, if your site used to be www.domain.com, and you decided to change it to domain.com, the result would either be many “broken” images or many unnecessary redirects (which slow down the visitor’s browsing experience). You can use this tool to correct this and similar cases. Correcting the URLs of your images also allows the plugin to do a better job of determining which images are actually hosted with the CDN.
As always, it never hurts to back up your database first.
Captcha and recaptcha will work fine, however you will need to prevent any pages with forms from being cached. Add the page’s URI to the “Never cache the following pages” box on the Page Cache Settings tab.
Yes. Follow these steps:
- Enable dynamic loading of ratings by checking GD Star Rating -> Settings -> Features “Cache support option”
- If Database cache enabled in W3 Total Cache add
wp_gdsr
to “Ignored query stems” field in the Database Cache settings tab, otherwise ratings will not updated after voting - Empty all caches
If a theme or it’s files use the call php_flush()
or function flush()
that will interfere with the plugins normal operation; making the plugin send cached files before essential operations have finished. The flush()
call is no longer necessary and should be removed.
Add /.+
to page cache “Never cache the following pages” option on the page cache settings tab.
First, make sure the plugin is not active (disabled) network-wide. Then make sure it’s deactivated network-wide. Now you should be able to successful upgrade without breaking your site.
The plugin uses WordPress FileSystem functionality to write to files. It checks if the file owner, file owner group of created files match process owner. If this is not the case it cannot write or modify files.
Typically, you should tell your web host about the permission issue and they should be able to resolve it.
You can however try adding define(‘FS_METHOD’, ‘direct’); to wp-config.php to circumvent the file and folder checks.
No. The WebP Converter extension converts common image file formats to the modern WebP format using our API services. The conversions occur on our API service, so that resource usage does not impact your website server.
Image data received by our API is destroyed after a converted image is generated. The converted iamges are destroyed once picked-up/downloaded to your website by the Total Cache plugin.
You will be able to see the results instantly on each page load, but for tangible metrics, you should consider using the following tools:
Yes! Please reach out to us and we’ll get you acclimated so you can “set it and forget it.”
Install the plugin to read the full FAQ on the plugins FAQ tab.
Latest Change log entry:
- Feature: Always Cached extension
- Feature: Purge caches on WP-Cron schedules
- Fix: Cloudflare: Some settings were not saved correctly
- Fix: Check and update file mode/permissions for cache files
- Fix: Issue prompting for credentials for some non-direct filesystem types
- Enhancement: Added an admin notice if WP-Cron is not functioning correctly
- Enhancement: Added Browser Cache filters
- Update: Upgraded JSMin library to 2.4.3
- Update: Added Premium Services tabs
Tags:
caching, cdn, Optimize, pagespeed, performance
+ Jason’s Comments
Warning: Version 0.9.5 is Broken 🙁 36 people say it’s broken. (2016-09-27)
W3 Total Cache plug-in has multiple caching & optimizing functions, including the specialized features several other plugins. For this reason it is incompatible with Falcon Engine by Wordfence, Hyper-cache plugin, Far Future Expiry Header plugin and Better WordPress Minify, which need to be disabled first.
An alternative plugin is WP Fastest Cache.
Combine with EWWW image optimizer, database cleanup using WP-Optimize plugin and backup with BackWPup plugin.
Website Optimization and MaintenanceThere are a few ways to optimize and speed up your website for viewers and search engines: database clean up, image optimization, page / script compression, CPU / server load optimization, server file caching and utilize browser caching.
I provide website tune ups on request and recommend a schedule for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Page Speed optimization.
Optimization is best applied together with website security and protection and backup and maintenance.