9 ms·

Any similar caching plugin would you recommend instead?

spurgu 5y ago
Personally I always go with Cache Enabler (by KeyCDN) with nginx. Simple and rock solid. Creates static HTML. For optimum performance (bypassing PHP altogether) configure nginx to try_files (or equivalent in Apache) in the wp-content/cache directory. Edit: I've also used WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache quite extensively, both both of these have on some sites had a tendency to randomly clear the cache and I've never managed to figure out why. Cache Enabler has never done this.
BarryMilo 5y ago
I don't understand why people are trusting random WP contrib developers with cache anyhow? Is nginx no longer a thing?
- judge2020 5y ago
  Configurablity and ease of use. Many people run Wordpress on cheap, shared hosting and would only have the option of a cache plugin. A lot of WP admins likewise have no command-line experience and couldn’t install nginx without resorting to Google.
- innocenat 5y ago
  Caching plugin for wordpress still has benefit that nginx cannot provide like providing object caching, etc.
- chillfox 5y ago
  Because a lot of people who run successful WordPress sites have zero systems admin or developer skills at all. They are usually good writers instead.
- spurgu 5y ago
  WP admins don't have much control (granularity) over the nginx cache. The options I've seen simply have a single "Purge" button.
dazc 5y ago
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/automatic-platform-optimization/wordpress/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/automatic-platform-optimiza... The closest thing you'll get to serverless wordpress in one click. There is no wordpress caching plug-in I am aware of that will get you anywhere near.
dpacmittal 5y ago
WP Rocket is pretty nice but it's a paid plugin
- johnxie 5y ago
  Can vouch for WP Rocket. We've tried multiple plugins for our blog[1] and it is by far the most reliable. 1: https://www.taskade.com/blog https://www.taskade.com/blog
fogihujy 5y ago
W3 Total Cache if you're on shared hosting.
hannob 5y ago
My first recommendation would be to question whether you even need a caching plugin. I'd recommend a benchmark. PHP today is much faster than it used to be, and in many cases caching plugins have been written with old, slow PHP in mind. Pro tip: If you have trouble measuring the effect of your caching plugin, it probably means its effect is neglegible. If you really feel you need a caching plugin, WP Super Cache is written by the company that also writes Wordpress. I'd consider that the most trustworthy.
- spurgu 5y ago
  > My first recommendation would be to question whether you even need a caching plugin. My first question to you would be "Why wouldn't you bypass PHP and MySQL if you can?". For some really basic site sure, you can go without caching, but for any reasonable degree of complexity not using caching is a foolish waste of hardware and end-user patience since we can be talking TTFB of 100-200 ms vs up to seconds.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Yeah, if you're on cheap shared hosting (which many, many WordPress sites are), then you're going to hit various limits and have your site disabled the day Ahrefs and Majestic 12 both decide to crawl your site the same day. A properly set up caching plugin basically saves the pages as plain HTML and serve them with mod_rewrite instead of invoking PHP every time. The speed difference for an individual page load might not be that much for a properly optimized site, but the overall resource usage will be much lower.
  - hannob 5y ago
    > The speed difference for an individual page load might not be that much for a properly optimized site, but the overall resource usage will be much lower. Is that what you believe or do you have benchmark results?
    - fogihujy 5y ago
      I work helping people set up things like caching. On the three sites I looked at today, caching plugins had an immediate and positive effect. That serving static files use less resources than firing up PHP should hardly be surprising. Sure, mod_lsapi and FastCGI are fast, and opcache is a godsend, but static files are still going to be faster than doing multiple MySQL queries, triggering plugins, rendering the HTML, doing whatever post-processing the plugins do, and then serving the result.
prox 5y ago
Hummingbird
linedash 5y ago
wp-supercache - it's been taken over by automaticc themselves these days, which is an added bonus.

Personally I always go with Cache Enabler (by KeyCDN) with nginx. Simple and rock solid. Creates static HTML. For optimum performance (bypassing PHP altogether) configure nginx to try_files (or equivalent in Apache) in the wp-content/cache directory. Edit: I've also used WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache quite extensively, both both of these have on some sites had a tendency to randomly clear the cache and I've never managed to figure out why. Cache Enabler has never done this.

BarryMilo 5y ago

I don't understand why people are trusting random WP contrib developers with cache anyhow? Is nginx no longer a thing?

judge2020 5y ago
Configurablity and ease of use. Many people run Wordpress on cheap, shared hosting and would only have the option of a cache plugin. A lot of WP admins likewise have no command-line experience and couldn’t install nginx without resorting to Google.
innocenat 5y ago
Caching plugin for wordpress still has benefit that nginx cannot provide like providing object caching, etc.
chillfox 5y ago
Because a lot of people who run successful WordPress sites have zero systems admin or developer skills at all. They are usually good writers instead.
spurgu 5y ago
WP admins don't have much control (granularity) over the nginx cache. The options I've seen simply have a single "Purge" button.

dazc 5y ago

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/automatic-platform-optimization/wordpress/ https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/automatic-platform-optimiza... The closest thing you'll get to serverless wordpress in one click. There is no wordpress caching plug-in I am aware of that will get you anywhere near.

dpacmittal 5y ago

WP Rocket is pretty nice but it's a paid plugin

johnxie 5y ago
Can vouch for WP Rocket. We've tried multiple plugins for our blog[1] and it is by far the most reliable. 1: https://www.taskade.com/blog https://www.taskade.com/blog

fogihujy 5y ago

W3 Total Cache if you're on shared hosting.

hannob 5y ago

My first recommendation would be to question whether you even need a caching plugin. I'd recommend a benchmark. PHP today is much faster than it used to be, and in many cases caching plugins have been written with old, slow PHP in mind. Pro tip: If you have trouble measuring the effect of your caching plugin, it probably means its effect is neglegible. If you really feel you need a caching plugin, WP Super Cache is written by the company that also writes Wordpress. I'd consider that the most trustworthy.

spurgu 5y ago
> My first recommendation would be to question whether you even need a caching plugin. My first question to you would be "Why wouldn't you bypass PHP and MySQL if you can?". For some really basic site sure, you can go without caching, but for any reasonable degree of complexity not using caching is a foolish waste of hardware and end-user patience since we can be talking TTFB of 100-200 ms vs up to seconds.
fogihujy 5y ago
Yeah, if you're on cheap shared hosting (which many, many WordPress sites are), then you're going to hit various limits and have your site disabled the day Ahrefs and Majestic 12 both decide to crawl your site the same day. A properly set up caching plugin basically saves the pages as plain HTML and serve them with mod_rewrite instead of invoking PHP every time. The speed difference for an individual page load might not be that much for a properly optimized site, but the overall resource usage will be much lower.
- hannob 5y ago
  > The speed difference for an individual page load might not be that much for a properly optimized site, but the overall resource usage will be much lower. Is that what you believe or do you have benchmark results?
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    I work helping people set up things like caching. On the three sites I looked at today, caching plugins had an immediate and positive effect. That serving static files use less resources than firing up PHP should hardly be surprising. Sure, mod_lsapi and FastCGI are fast, and opcache is a godsend, but static files are still going to be faster than doing multiple MySQL queries, triggering plugins, rendering the HTML, doing whatever post-processing the plugins do, and then serving the result.

prox 5y ago

Hummingbird

linedash 5y ago

wp-supercache - it's been taken over by automaticc themselves these days, which is an added bonus.