Right Cache Plugin and Right Configurations can Help Gain WordPress Site Speed

Cache plugins are widely used by most of the WordPress developers to gain speed on their wordpress sites, but the selection of right plugin is as important as configuring it properly in order to gain wordpress site speed. Unless and until, you do well on both the factors, you won’t see any positive results.

In this post, I talk about some of the quick cache plugins that can be used, configured and tweaked easily by anyone to gain super speed on their wordpress sites, but if you are more hungry for speed then you will need me, instead of cache plugins.

An important question that needs to be answered is How FAST is FAST ?

I took my own site www.markdescande.com as an example to experiment and test the results of some small tweaks and some cache plugins.

Frank Goossens (futtta) Cache Plugin – Autoptimize

Initially, I did not liked Autoptimize, but when I tweaked by site with this cache plugin autoptimize, the results were overwhelming. It gave me eight points jump on my GTMetrix Score and after the latest update on autoptimize, the plugin seems to be super fine, now,

I love it. Well done Frank.

Autoptimize cache plugin is one of the easiest and simplest cache plugins and it can be easily used and configured by anyone, even if you don’t have much knowledge about WordPress.

You can have a look at the screenshot of my autoptimize settings page

Autoptimize Options Mark de Scande WordPress.

A Super Quick Cache Plugin (Speed Without Compromise)

Quick Cache is a good plugin to speed up wordpress sites, although right configurations is the key behind its optimum performance.

For me, the trick was related about setting it up without messing any of my mobile visitors. I wanted to gain wordpress site speed super fast, but without compromising my mobile visitors performance at any cost.

Initially, we didn’t wanted to cache the mobile users, so we added all the mobile users to QC.

You can find a link to the list at http://pastebin.com/0BN5yKZA.

Set The Expiration Time On Quick Cache Files? 604800 seconds

Mutex File Lock ? Flock

Auto-Caching Turned On and set to 25 page every 5 minutes.

Let us hope that Joe, my Cool Host isn’t going to  jump up and down as this will take a beating on any server, but I have no other choice. I have to give the guys at QC a big up because their auto cache system is too fast, thus the load will be quick and painless on most of the hosts.

Now, how fast is fast for you !

I am saying that if your website loads between 1 sec and 5 sec then you are good to go, but for me, things are entirely different. Being a Website Optimization Specialist, I like to see the websites loading at 1 sec – 3 sec flat.

What do you think !

Does your website loads really fast ?

Reports of Some Tests Done on My Website www.markdescande.com

I did some configuration changes and tweaks with quick cache plugin at my own site. In order to analyse the wordpress site speed performance, I did some speed tests.

Web Page Test Speed Result

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130929_MN_PEC/

First View: First time Bite  0.882s Full Load 1.963s = Great Host
First View: First time Bite  0.248s Full Load 0.730s = Great Caching

GTMetrix Result

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.markdescande.com/mm2wVj4a

Page load time: 1.35s / Total page size: 405KB / Total number of requests: 42

Pingdom Website Speed Test Result

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eeuDGe/http://markdescande.wpengine.com/

Your website is faster than 89% of all tested websites  Load time 986ms

Load Impact Test Result

How great is your host under LOAD ?

http://loadimpact.com/load-test/www.markdescande.com-5d25b125a291b5ee9e07bcdd1be6a2bd

After going through all the above reports, you can yourself analyse how Quick Cache has improved speed of my site.

Now, you have to decide yourself, whether your site is fast according to you ! Although, the answer will be based on your own standards about how fast is fast !

Post super charged by Charissa de Scande Lotter

Author Mark de Scande

WordPress Site Speed Expert, Speeding up WordPress sites across the Globe

I am the fuel behind the high speed of innumerable fast running wordpress websites hosted either on a cheap server or a dedicated server.
Today, Speed is a matter of great concern, and I don't only optimize but re-energize. I am also a lifetime WPMU Dev member.

One of the largest free blogging websites BlogLines in South Africa is my baby. I not only conceived the idea of free blogging in South Africa, but also implemented it with an objective of adding a new dimension to the world of free blogging. Blogging helps us in enhancing the quality of our social life by transforming the ways in which we share our ideas and opinions with each other. South Africa blogging environment has never been so easy and user-friendly as it is today.

I have practised and learned all the technical aspects related to WordPress. In the past couple of years, I have developed a wide range of websites using WordPress, WordPress MU and now using the latest WordPress MultiSite.

I am the WordPress Speed Energizer Wiz, and I am always hunting around to find slow running websites. I know, these websites need me in order to live a long and healthy life.
Only the wordpress sites powered with speed, capable of running at full throttle are going to survive in this tough and competitive world of Internet.

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