{"id":61596,"date":"2021-05-17T06:34:59","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T12:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/blog\/?p=61596"},"modified":"2025-12-09T03:28:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:28:53","slug":"wordpress-site-caching-tips-and-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scalahosting.com\/blog\/wordpress-site-caching-tips-and-tricks\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress Site Caching \u2013 Tips and Tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you\u2019ve been facing the challenge of a slow-performing WordPress site, fear not – there may be a simple solution. Caching can help improve WordPress site performance<\/strong><\/a> by a long mile. By speeding up some page elements, you can easily improve your visitor’s experience and even your sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To learn how this works, we need to understand what caching is and how it works. At the same time, a few simple WordPress<\/strong> plugins<\/strong> can undertake the daunting task of page caching for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s see how all this works…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Importance of Caching in WordPress<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

WordPress is a web application that generates content pages dynamically<\/strong> for visitors. When a request is made,  WP communicates with a database to extract the necessary data for each page. This process understandably takes longer than it would with static content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where caching comes into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With caching, static web pages are pre-generated and stored<\/strong>. When a request is made through a website visitor\u2019s browser, the browser can load the cached content without going back and forth with the database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several advantages that WordPress caching brings to the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first and most apparent is an improvement to website loading speeds<\/strong>. Cached pages take less time to serve since there is no overhead for database queries. Even if only parts of a page are cached, your site performance will improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reducing page loading speeds today is vital for a better user experience<\/strong>. Search engines like Google also recognize this, leading to speed included as a key element in<\/strong> search ranking<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generating web pages in WordPress requires more web hosting resources<\/strong><\/a>. CPU time, I\/O operations, and memory are all needed to load a web page dynamically. Each time a request is made, the same resources need to be utilized – even when generating the same content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caching helps mitigate this since ready-cached content doesn\u2019t need to be generated each time a request is made. The result is an ability to serve more visitors with the same amount of system resources<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since caching reduces the amount of resources needed, the result can also be significant cost savings<\/strong> for web hosting<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Types of WordPress Caching<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Caching comes in many forms, but they fall broadly into two main categories – browser caching<\/strong> and server-side caching<\/strong>. The former makes use of some resources on visitor web browsers, while the latter utilizes the hosting server itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Browser caching<\/strong> helps reduce the server load by storing elements that seldom change on web browser caches. Examples of these are image files<\/strong>, JavaScript<\/strong>, and CSS<\/strong>. By setting file headers on those files, you can allow browsers to simply check if they have been updated since the previous visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Server-side caching<\/strong> offers a much wider variety of options compared to browser caching – Page caching<\/strong>, Object caching<\/strong>, CDN caching<\/strong>, to name a few. You can choose to implement one or more of these to improve the performance of your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some examples of caching methods that you can apply to your WordPress site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HTML Caching (or Page Caching)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"WordPress<\/a>
Standard code like this will simply appear as a single long line of code after minification.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most basic and straightforward form of caching for all websites (not just WordPress)<\/em> is HTML caching<\/strong>. Since this content doesn\u2019t change – it can be cached in its entirety and speed up your load times considerably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from that, HTML can also be minified, further saving on system resources. Code minification<\/strong> removes unnecessary elements from files – for example, empty spaces like blank lines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While minification may save some overhead, it\u2019s essential to understand that the process will result in the code being practically unreadable by humans. This may hinder your ability to modify the file in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OpCache (or PHP Opcode Caching)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

WordPress is built almost entirely in PHP, one of the most popular scripting languages. By nature, the site code needs compilation and execution to do something such as load a web page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This process takes time, which is where OpCache<\/strong> comes into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using OpCache, once a code set has been loaded and executed, the results are stored in the server cache memory<\/strong>. This process eliminates the need to recompile it the next time someone loads that piece of code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sites using OpCache have been proven to increase WordPress speed by up to three times<\/strong>. Still, this depends on various factors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n