Configure Cache Plugins to Improve WordPress Site Speed

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About Mark de Scande

WordPress Speed Optimization Wiz - I don't just Optimize, but I Re-Energize WordPress Sites.

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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.