{"id":2239,"date":"2022-12-21T11:44:14","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T16:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inmotionhosting.com\/support\/2013\/02\/20\/clearing-cache-in-wordpress\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T11:23:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T16:23:25","slug":"w3-total-cache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inmotionhosting.com\/support\/edu\/wordpress\/plugins\/w3-total-cache\/","title":{"rendered":"W3 Total Cache – Guide to WordPress Caching"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"How<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With over 1 million active installations, W3 Total Cache<\/strong> is one of the most popular ways to optimize and manage your WordPress site\u2019s cache. This can result in faster load times and less strain on your server, which can also help your SEO<\/strong> (search engine optimization) efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Say goodbye to slow loading times and hello to high-performance websites with our WordPress VPS Hosting<\/a> plans. Experience 40x faster WordPress page load speeds on purpose-built servers that guarantee 99.99% uptime.<\/p>\r\n

\"checkHigh-Performance VPS \"checkPremier Care \"checkFree SSL & Dedicated IP \"checkAdvanced Server Caching<\/p>\r\n

Managed WordPress VPS<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

How to Use W3 Total Cache in InMotion Central<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you have an UltraStack ONE for WordPress server, W3 Total Cache is already pre-built into your website. All you have to do is enable it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. From your InMotion Central project dashboard, click Optimize <\/strong>> Page Speed<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Click Enable Page Caching<\/strong>.
    \"Enable<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. W3 Total Cache is now enabled. If you would like to explore more advanced options, you can click the Open Dashboard <\/strong>option.
    \"Accessing<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    How to Optimize WordPress with W3 Total Cache<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    By default, WordPress is a dynamic CMS<\/strong> (Content Management System). This means that for every visitor request that WordPress has to process, it must first connect to the database to see if the requested page even exists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In a lot of cases, this might not be problematic on a site that doesn\u2019t receive much traffic. However, a sudden surge in traffic caused by search engine bots, or just a general increase in normal traffic can quickly cause your WordPress site to use up a lot of CPU resources from the server while trying to fulfill needless duplicate requests again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You can counter this increase in CPU usage by implementing a caching plugin. What these do is cache the first visitor\u2019s request of a new page to a plain HTML file on the server. Then, when another visitor comes through and requests the same page, so long as the page wasn\u2019t updated in your administration section, or updated by a comment, the cached HTML page will be served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This can greatly reduce CPU usage of your WordPress site very easily. As an example, let\u2019s say you had 100 views of your front page. Without caching that would require the same database query to have to run 100 times, and every time it\u2019s just getting back the exact same data anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    With a caching plugin, only the first user would have the database query run to generate the cached HTML file. Then, the next 99 visitors would get that cached HTML served to them immediately, without waiting for any database activity to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is almost always a win-win situation because your visitors don\u2019t have to wait as long for your pages to load, and you\u2019re reducing the impact of WordPress\u2019s requests on the server\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Please note that database caching is not recommended for Shared Hosting, as this process is dependent on the server\u2019s disk speed. Due to the nature of shared system resources, disk speed may be limited, and as such, database caching may adversely affect your site\u2019s performance. We recommend experimenting with different caching techniques to see which works best for your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Install the W3 Total Cache plugin<\/a> by BoldGrid<\/em>.
      \"Installing<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. From the left-hand menu, you should now have a new\u00a0Performance<\/strong>\u00a0section. Hover over this and click on\u00a0General Settings<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Scroll down the general settings page, ensuring that the following section is enabled. Then, click the \u00a0Save all settings<\/strong> button.
      Page Cache:
      \"Enabling
      Minify:
      \"Enable
      NOTE<\/strong>: If you are using minify, make sure to enable the option, save it and then immediately look at your WordPress site to make sure that the site looks normal. If you see problems with formatting, then it\u2019s possible that a theme or plugin is causing issues due to the minification. You should then disable minification and not use this option with your website.<\/em>

      Opcode Cache (in this example, it was not available on my server):
      \"Enabling
      Database Cache:
      \"Turn
      Object Cache:
      \"Turn
      Browser Cache:
      \"Turn
      CDN (you must be subscribed to a 3rd party service):
      \"Enabling<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Hover over\u00a0Performance<\/strong>\u00a0again in the left-hand menu, and click on\u00a0Page Cache<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. Ensure that these options have a checkmark beside them, then click on\u00a0Save all settings<\/strong>:

      \u2022<\/strong> Cache front page
      \u2022<\/strong> Cache feeds: site, categories, tags, comments
      \u2022<\/strong> Cache SSL (HTTPS) requests
      \u2022<\/strong> Cache 404 (not found) pages
      \u2022<\/strong> Don\u2019t cache pages for logged in users
      \u2022<\/strong> Don\u2019t cache pages for following user roles (only use this if you want to disable cache for specific roles)
      \"Enable<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Finally to confirm that you\u2019ve set up everything correctly, in your web browser open up your site and hit\u00a0(Ctrl-U)<\/strong>, or go to\u00a0View -> Page source<\/strong>\u00a0to view the source of the page. Scroll to the very bottom of the page and you should see the W3 Total Cache banner letting you know the page has been optimized.
      \"W3<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
      <\/div>\n\n\n\n

      How to Clear WordPress Cache<\/h2>\n\n\n
      \n\t\t\t