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In the post about making your blog faster, I mentioned using Caching plugins for WordPress.
In this article, I will be explaining how a cache plugin usually works and how it makes your blog faster. Of course, I will also talk about caching plugins available for WordPress.
How A Cache Plugin Works
I will not go much technical here. Let's understand this through an example.
Let us asume that Mrs. A visits your WordPress blog. After all the DNS processing is done, WordPress takes control and decides what page is to be displayed. If Mrs. A is looking for 'yourdomain.com/abc-page', first WordPress will get the theme file for the page. All the PHP and Javascript code will then be processed and data from the SQL database will be retrieved. After all this, the output will be displayed to the visitor.
Now, if you have a caching plugin enabled, it will cache(store) some part of the output(depends upon what approach plugin uses). Let us assume that you are using WP Super Cache, a popular caching plugin. This plugin will save output as simple HTML file without much PHP/Javascript. Next time when any visitor asks for the same page, plugin displays the HTML file to reader instead of actual page. Since all PHP processing, DataBase calls are not there, it takes less time to display the page.
This makes your blog faster.
This was just a simple example. Different plugins may use different approaches.
Caching Plugin For WordPress
Here are top Caching plugins available for WordPress:
- WP Super Cache: Most popular caching plugin for WordPress. It saves your pages as static HTML files to reduce loading times. Plugin Download.
- DB Cache: This plugin uses a completely different approach and caches Database Queries instead. Plugin author claims that this plugin is faster than HTML caching based plugins. Plugin Download.
- Hyper Cache: This plugin is for you if your host has low specs. It can serve HTML pages without any DB queries. Plugin Download.
Besides making you blog faster, caching plugins can help even more. Read how Quick Online Tips Blog got 20,000 page views Despite Internal Server Errors all because of WP Super Cache Plugin.
Here on Blogging With Success, we use WP Super Cache and it has proved to be quite efficient.
Do you use a caching plugin?
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I was not aware of DB cache plugin. Thanks for informative post.
I am using WP Super Cache. It’s really good and very functional. I’ve seen the difference with and without this plugin, works great! Thanks for this post.
Your homepage doesn’t have too many images, etc but I see it’s fast:
– Dynamic page generated in 0.589 seconds. –
– Cached page generated by WP-Super-Cache on 2009-08-28 03:59:12 –
— super cache –
Do you have a blog? Thanks for sharing your experience.
I’ve installed Cache plugin for my wordpress but I don’t know how to set it up.
Mr. I has been unavailable so if you can hold on, he should be able to help you. If it’s already installed, why not go to dashboard, Plugins, installed, and look at ‘settings’ under that plugin’s name. Try ‘on’ and cache rebuild in addition to ‘don’t cache logged in users.’
Love this plugin. Not yet activate it for my new blog (not many post yet) but use it on my old blog. Works perfectly.
Oh my God. Yet another thing I have to install and learn. It never ends!
I’ll look into it, since I’d love it if my site loaded faster. But don’t be surprised if I’m back here asking a million questions about how to set it up.
That was a good one, I will use it on my blog, thanks for sharing.
I’ve used wp-super-cache before it works pretty good. One thing to remember is when making changes to your blog theme or sidebars you may need to delete the cache and turn off the plugin or else your changes will take a very long time to show up. This can make it very hard to debug.
Now I know why Mr. I has ours set to not cache for ‘logged in users’. You should be able to just change the settings?
Nice. And I use WP Super Cache. Its just plain awesome. Really!
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