W3 Total Cache Plugin for WordPress Eats WP Super Cache’s Lunch!
I’m freaking loving this new caching plugin for WordPress: W3 Total Cache.
In fact, the thing pretty much annihilates WP Super Cache. I mean, there really is no comparison. After doing some significant A/B testing, W3 Total Cache ate WP Super’s lunch.
Although you can read pretty much everything about the plugin and it’s vast advantages on the plugin page, here’s one of the biggest ones for me: Amazon S3 integration.
I’ve essentially been able to trade 2 plugins for 1: Amazon S3 Plugin and WP Super Cache are now replaced by W3 Total Cache.
For me that’s huge because I want the fastest loading blogs ever created (plugins create “bloat” and can typically slow down a blog).
But it’s not just a 1-for-2 sale, W3 Total Cache ups the bar with Memcache use:
Love it.
So far I’m super impressed and I can honestly say that I’m not going back. Here are some other great reads if you’re interested in considering the switch. Please note that a lot of reviews have been posted early in the plugins life; it’s now a much more mature product.
- Yoast thinks it’s the bomb. I agree 100%. (See comments). Here’s another comment from him too.
- Interview with the CTO of Mashable on why they use it.
- Great explanation and overview.
- Expansive review with screenshots of benefits.
- A “tremendous improvement.”
- Good points if you run a Dedicated, VPS, etc (like me!).
But, don’t take my word for it. Give it a spin and see for yourself.
Just for clarification, the author of the plugin is the same person as the CTO of Mashable. That’s largely the reason it was developed in the first place, for mashable.com
Just wanted to clarify
I've tried them both, and I guess since I didn't notice much of a difference.
Was W3TC fully configured? How were you testing?
Fully configured? I just activated it. Is there anything else I need to do?
Of course!
There's no plugin that automatically makes your site perfect. Turn on disk enhanced page cache, configure minify settings and definitely set up a CDN.
Well, makes sense.. lol
When I figure out what minify is all about I guess I will learn how to configure it. Oh yeah, I guess I'll have to learn what CDN is too.
Read the FAQ tab in the plugin settings area.
It appears, as of today, that 2 put of the three are enabled out of the box. The CDN is not set up. Once I know what that is, then I will explore that. It sounds like some kind of secondary host.
I've since removed W3 Total Cache. I get much, much better results with DB Cache Reloaded, which caches database queries rather than pages. Since most queries are reused across lots of pages, you get much more acceleration.
Did you actually use the database caching in W3TC? The only database caching plugin with a more advanced algorithm is HyberDB (used by WordPress.com).
No, it wasn’t working at the time I was doing my testing.
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Give another go if you will. You should immediately see files being written to wp-content/w3tc/dbcache/ if permissions etc are ok. De-activating / Reactivating is a good test.
Is this appropriate for casual bloggers? For small biz sites? Just trying to get a feel for the complexity of setup. In reading some of the links you "quote" it seems that it is more for VPS and not shared hosting. Is that correct? As always, thanks for the great info. I always learn lots when I read your posts!
Yes. Shared hosting providers vary greatly, but I’ve seen users on godaddy.com to bluehost.com swear by it. In some cases your account will be so under powered (too many users, that you cannot use the DB Cache for example, but disk enhanced mode of the page cache + minify + CDN is what users really need anyway to “unlock” the speed with a shared hosting account.
Thanks for the info. Is there a guide or are there tips anywhere specific to proper config, or best practice config for those on shared hosting? I’ve got quite a few clients using shared hosting and I’d love to help them maximize their performance with this.
Thanks John, I appreciate the positive feedback. There are more goodies coming for AWS CDN functionality in the next release.
Meanwhile, I'm going to begin posting some tips on my blog with practical use cases for everyday bloggers to help them speed up their themes.
well then, I will have to use it
I mean if it is as awesome as you say
hmmm – and the fact that you mentioned Amazon S3, hmmm, something I need to seriously consider
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The W3 Total Cache plugin has continued to work well for me. I'm using Memcache for local caching, and Amazon S3 as the CDN for my static files. It definitely helps keep the load on my web server down, and Frederick continues to make improvements.
The biggest change for me using this plugin came from switching from Amazon’s basic S3 to using Amazon’s Cloud Front. It cut my page loads from around 2 seconds to 1 according to Pingdom.com.