how to configure w3 cache plugin

Setting Up W3 Total Cache:

So you’re set on trying it out? Great! Here’s how to go about doing it. Of course, if you have any questions please feel free to ask me via the comments!

1. Download It

Naturally the first thing you’ll want to do is download it directly via your WordPress plugin interface or via the WordPress.org repository and then upload it via FTP:

Just put in "W3 Total Cache" and it should find it.

Then, install it:

Go for it...!

Or if you have to upload manually make sure to put it in your wp-content/plugins folder:

I like to do things manually - I'm more in control.

One you’ve uploaded it it’s time to get into setting it up!

2. Activate It

Once you activate it you may run into a number of issues right out of the gate, just like WP Super Cache. For starters you might have to chmod 777 again because of this “fatal error”:

Fatal error? Sad! CHMOD 777!

You’ll have to change the permissions on your wp-content folder to 777 to get it installed. To do that just jump into your FTP app and change the permissions or use your hosting provider’s web-based interface:

Set it to 777!

Here’s what it might look like in a web-based interface:

Not too pretty but gets the job done!

After you change the settings you should be good to go – go ahead and try activating it again.

You should just see this:

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Great! Next step…

3. Customizing the Setup

The next step is to head over to the management section of the plugin itself and begin to turn things on and off for your blog.

This will be the largest portion of your time spent and you may want to dedicate some time to configuring this plugin (and understanding it) before actually deploying it.

The menu item will be near the bottom of your WordPress dashboard on the left:

Lots of menu items in there...!

Go ahead and hit General Settings to get started. You might see some warnings at the top like these:

Warning messages at the top of W3 Total Cache.

One of them will mention how your wp-content folder is “writeable” and needs to be chmod’d back to 755. That’s easy enough. The second will mention how you’re in “Preview Mode” and none of your settings or changes will become active until you either “Deploy” the system or disable the preview mode. Good enough as you won’t want to deploy anything quite yet!

Some of you might see some .htaccess issues with the same permission challenges:

You’ll have to chmod either your parent directly or the .htaccess file directly. Go ahead and try clicking the “try again” button and see if it clears after you’ve made the right adjustments.

Finally, don’t forget to get your permalink structure updated to something better than just the post id values. Check this post for more information.

The first section you’ll see is General Settings and here you’ll be able to turn on and off the many features of W3TC.

Page Cache

Reduce response time and increase your blog's scalability!

I’ve already covered page caching in this post here so go ahead and read some of the obvious benefits of using this option.

This simply makes those “dynamic” pages more “static” so that your site loads faster as it doesn’t require the user to request information from the database again and again.

For most people on shared blog hosting solutions you won’t have many options other than “Disk (basic)” and “Disk (advanced)” as seen below:

Disk (enhanced) or Disk (basic)?

At this point if this is all you see then I immediately recommend most bloggers to un-install this plugin and go install and use WP Super Cache instead since you won’t see very much difference between the two as a result.

I firmly believe that the value of this plugin lies in your ability to choose the specific Opcode features that match the custom configurations of your server. If you do not have APC, eAccelerator, XCache, or Memcached as options this plugin won’t really provide the “punch” that you were looking for.

Some would argue otherwise but I generally suggest that you can stop here and safely use WP Super Cache as a healthy alternative.

For those interested in continuing I have found great results with both Memcache and APC and have experimented heavily with both:

Memcache and APC are activated via my server environment.

If I were to choose one I’d say that APC is far and away better than Memcache but that’s only because I’m using a heavily customized non-Apache-based system and instead opted for Litespeed which is an additional IT cost.

If you head deeper into the settings you’ll find more specific options. Here’s what I have:

Turn them on!

And then at the end I’ve preloaded the system using my XML sitemap:

Make sure you have one!

A few of you might have the technical chops to add a Varnish system to your server and if you do then awesome! Just make sure that you get rid of cookies via your system since there won’t be any point of having Varnish with cookies enabled.

What’s been proven a couple of times though is that Apache + Varnish caching is actually slower than a simple Litespeed caching solution. Thus, I don’t actually need Varnish. Some have eeked out some crazy results with heavy customization with NGINX + Varnish less the database caching options but now you might simply be confused.

Finally, I use the default settings from for the Purge Policy:

Yum.

Alright? Let’s jump in farther!

Minify Settings

Minify!

Note, the above screenshot was the older view. New screenshot below with updated notes:

Delicious.

Essentially what “minifying” does to the files on your site is combine them into one file and then strip out all the unnecessary code that increases the weight of the overall file.

You should do your research on each HTML/JS/CSS minifier and find out which one works the best considering your unique hosting setup.

Again, I’m personally using Opcode: Alternative PHP Cache (APC) in my configurations and if all you have is “Disk” option available then I’d probably consider using another plugin.

Too bad...!

Of course, it’s up to you!

If you jump into some of the advanced settings you’ll find a bit more options for your minified files. Here is a look at my settings:

General

Make sure to check what your users see!

Make sure that you test what your end-users see so as to not miss out on an error!

Below is the “old” version of this screen so if you have an older version you’ll see this:

General settings

I like getting both admin and email notifications if something breaks.

HTML

HTML settings

I have found that minifying the feeds can cause instabilities for some RSS readers so I choose not to minify them.

JavaScript

This is a newer panel that you might see.

I’ve opted not to do line break removals since the variety of my JS calls.

This screen below is an older version of the plugin’s look:

JavaScript settings

You can choose to combine only after a certain area on your theme’s code but typically you’ll want to capture all of them so just leave those un-checked.

CSS

Newer admin look here.

I do, in fact, combine my CSS into one file via the CDN.

This is an older screen for those still using older versions.

CSS settings

By enabling all these you streamline your CSS files to the max! This always looks so neat.

Please note that minification is one of the areas that you may spend a lot of time on because, depending on your setup, you might have to play around with some of the files and settings to get your blog to show properly.

There are some features and scripts that simply do not function as they were intended in a minified-state. Also, your WordPress Theme will interpret some of these requests in different ways so you might end up with a fully functional look with one theme while another one might completely break in style and form.

Of course, don’t forget the nice Help Wizard that’s available to you to find those files (although it’s not always comprehensive, so you may have to add files manually):

Give it a go!

This will give you an overlay screen to choose the right files to minify:

Look at all those files!

Then save and then refresh the cache and you should be set.

Database and Object Cache

Database caching for the win.

Both the Database Cache settings and Object Cache settings (above and below) are pretty straight-forward. Both of them essentially speed up the creation and distribution of data to and from your blog to your readers.

Object caching

You can simply enable both of these and then use the default settings for both:

Database general settings

Object caching general settings

That should be good enough.

Browser Cache Settings

Browser cache settings

I talked already about the basics of browser caching so you should already been aware of the benefits. Enable this and then head over into the advanced settings.

I pretty much have all of the settings checked:

General settings

CSS and JavaScript settings

HTML settings

Media and Other files

That should do it.

Content Delivery Network

Content Delivery Network settings

Your CDN or Content Delivery Network settings are very important, especially if you want to provide as fast as an experience as possible for your readers.

Make sure you choose the right “pull” or “push” depending on the CDN system that you’re using.

Types of CDN pull and push.

Head over to the advanced tab to customize it further as well as to add your selected CDN config:

CDN general settings

You’ll notice that I don’t have the last box checked and that’s because I try my best to never use a piece of content (images especially) that is not directly hosted and/or saved onto my own domain. This is to provide the most consistent and sustainable user experience!

If you need to you can import the attachments and files by using the buttons above but after that I’d refrain from adding more!

Finally, the actual settings for your CDN should be inputed:

CDN hostname

As you can see I’m using cdn.tentblogger.com as my hostname. There are some things that you’ll have to do on your web hosting provider to enable this feature (like creating a new CNAME record in your DNS) but that shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, right?

In fact, I’ve created a tutorial specifically outlining how to get a CDN up and running on your WordPress blog using W3 Total Cache! Check it out here!

Great! You’ve pretty much tweaked and modified your W3TC settings for optimal usage! All you have to do now is turn the system on by heading back to the General Settings tab and choosing the top option!

Turn it on!

Of course the next things you need to immediately do is test it on different browsers to see if it’s actually working.

If it is then you should see a considerable increase of speed as well as a little notice on the bottom of your pages like this when you do “View Source”:

Yup.

Awesome!

A Few Final Options

Finally there are a few options and features in this robust plugin that’s worth noting, the first being the Debug mode that can help you figure out what’s broken or what’s not working:

Newer version of interface.

If you have an older version you might see this:

Any debugging needs?

This system works really well but you’ll typically want to do any debugging on a low traffic day or in the beginning stages of a new blog so that user experience isn’t being impacted.

The second is some Miscellaneous settings that I typically don’t activate, especially the “Enable file locking” option:

New look with Google Page Speed.

The new Google Page Speed widget for the front dash of your blog is neat. I’ve enabled it. Here’s what it looks like in the dashboard:

I'll make it better soon... I promise!

And then if you see “View All Results” you can see a breakdown of what’s really going on:

Getting an API is quite easy. Just go here and click this box:

Get an API Key!

Then copy and paste the Simple Key that they give you:

That's all you'll need!

If you have an older version you’ll just see this lame looking miscellaneous widget:

Miscellaneous settings

Finally, one of the most useful features is the ability to import and export your settings for other installations and backup. Since I have more than one blog using this heavily customized set of settings it makes it super easy to duplicate my work by exporting a “core” setting and then importing this file into new blogs:

Import and Export settings

Love that!

Whew! And with that we’re about done. This 3,000 word post should help give you at least an idea of what this plugin can not only do but some of the many options available to you.

I’d love to hear from you though! What is your current setup? What’s your server configuration? What have you found that does and does not work? What do you think can be improved?

And of course if you have any questions just shoot them in the comments!