sandywp / plugins / w3-total-cache
W3 Total Cache
Search Engine (SEO) & Performance Optimization (WPO) via caching. Integrated caching: CDN, Page, Minify, Object, Fragment, Database support.
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v2.10.5 900,000+ installs WP 6.0+ PHP 7.4+
About this plugin
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices.
W3TC is the only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework for WordPress trusted by millions of publishers, web developers, and web hosts worldwide for more than a decade. It is the total performance solution for optimizing WordPress Websites.
BENEFITS
- Improvements in search engine result page rankings, especially for mobile-friendly websites and sites that use SSL
- At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in WebPagetest or significant Google PageSpeed improvements) when fully configured
- Improved conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com
- “Instant” repeat page views: browser caching
- Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly and can be interacted with more quickly
- Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages
- Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods
- Up to 80% bandwidth savings when you minify HTML, minify CSS and minify JS files.
KEY FEATURES
- Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters
- Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself
- Mobile support: respective caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents including theme switching for groups of referrers or user agents
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support
- Secure Socket Layer (SSL/TLS) support
- Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on (FSD) CDN (by user agent group)
- Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN
- Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN
- Caching of search results pages (i.e., URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk
- Caching of database objects in memory or on disk
- Caching of objects in memory or on disk
- Caching of fragments in memory or on disk
- Caching methods include local Disk, Redis, Memcached, APC, APCu, eAccelerator, XCache, and WinCache
- Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript and Minify HTML with granular control
- Minification of posts and pages and RSS feeds
- Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript with automated updates to assets
- Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS with automated updates to assets
- Defer non-critical CSS and JavaScript for rendering pages faster than ever before
- Defer offscreen images using Lazy Load to improve the user experience
- Browser caching using cache-control, future expire headers and entity tags (ETag) with “cache-busting”
- JavaScript grouping by template (home page, post page etc) with embed location control
- Non-blocking JavaScript embedding
- Import post attachments directly into the Media Library (and CDN)
- Leverage our multiple CDN integrations to optimize images
- WP-CLI support for cache purging, query string updating and more
- Various security features to help ensure website safety
- Caching statistics for performance insights of any enabled feature
- Extension framework for customization or extensibility for Cloudflare, WPML and much more
- Reverse proxy integration via Nginx or Varnish
- Image Converter extension provides modern image format conversion (e.g., WebP, AVIF) from common image formats (on upload and on demand)
W3 Total Cache Pro Features
With over a million active installs, W3 Total Cache is the most comprehensive WordPress caching plugin available and has robust premium features that help deliver an exceptional user experience.
- Full Site Delivery: Serve your entire site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN), ensuring faster load times worldwide.
- Fragment Cache: Optimize the caching of dynamic content while still improving performance.
- REST API Caching: Speed up your headless WordPress site by caching REST API calls.
- Eliminate Render-Blocking CSS: Ensure your CSS doesn’t hold up page loading, providing faster initial paint.
- Delay Scripts: Improve performance by delaying the loading of non-essential scripts until they are needed.
- Preload Requests: Boost page performance by preloading critical resources before they’re requested.
- Remove CSS/JS: Clean up unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files that slow down your pages.
- Lazy Load Google Maps: Load Google Maps only when it’s visible, reducing unnecessary requests.
- WPML Extension: Optimize performance on multilingual sites powered by WPML.
- Caching Statistics: Get detailed insights on cache usage and performance improvements.
- Purge Logs: Keep your site clean by automatically purging unnecessary cache logs.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Try W3 Total Cache Pro risk-free with our 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, we will refund your purchase.
PAGESPEED SCORE IMPROVEMENTS
To help you understand the impact of individual features on your website’s performance, we’ve tested each feature separately to see its effect on Google PageSpeed scores. While optimal results come from configuring several different caching tools together, the following individual features also show significant improvements on their own:
Remove Unused CSS/JS
This feature removes CSS and JavaScript files that are not needed for the current page, reducing the load time.
- Added over 27 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 57.2 / After: 86.7)
- Reduced the Potential Savings From Unused JavaScript from 127.5 KiB to 84 KiB
- View the test results
Full Site Delivery
Full Site Delivery optimizes the delivery of your entire site, enhancing the server response time.
- Added a 99% performance enhancement to the Average Server Response Time (Before: 3413 ms / After: 34 ms)
- View the test results
Eliminate Render Blocking CSS
This feature eliminates CSS that blocks the rendering of your page, speeding up the initial load time.
- Added over 17 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 53.75 / After: 71)
- Reduced the Potential Savings From Render-Blocking Resources by over 94% (Before: 2432.5 ms / After: 125 ms)
- Improved the Largest Contentful Paint time by over 56% (Before: 7s / After: 3.04s)
- View the test results
Delay Scripts
Delay Scripts postpones the loading of certain scripts until they are needed, reducing initial load times.
- Added 14 points to the Google PageSpeed Performance score (Before: 54.25 / After: 68.5)
- Reduced the Time Third-Party Code Blocked The Main Thread For by 62% (Before: 825 ms / After: 197.5 ms)
- View the test results
Rest API Caching
This feature caches API responses, reducing server load and speeding up API interactions.
- Reduced the Average Server Load by 40% (Before: 0.62 / After: 0.37)
- Sped up API Responses by 84.5% (Before: 968ms / After: 150ms)
- Reduced the Average Server Load by 24% under during a major traffic spike (Before: 34.55 / After: 26.19)
- View the test results
Modern Image Formats
Converts images to modern formats like WebP or AVIF, which are more efficient and faster to load.
- Added over 9 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 84.67 / After: 93.83)
- View the test results
Lazy Load Google Maps
Delays the loading of Google Maps until the user interacts with them, reducing initial load time.
- Added 10 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 66 / After: 76)
- Reduced the Total Blocking Time Performance score by 72% (Before: 287.5 ms / After: 80 ms)
- View the test results
Speed up your site tremendously, improve core web vitals and the overall user experience for your visitors without having to change your WordPress host, theme, plugins or your content production workflow.
What users have to say:
- Read testimonials from W3TC users.
Who do I thank for all of this?
It’s quite difficult to recall all of the innovators that have shared their thoughts, code and experiences in the blogosphere over the years, but here are some names to get you started:
- Steve Souders
- Steve Clay
- Ryan Grove
- Nicholas Zakas
- Ryan Dean
- Andrei Zmievski
- George Schlossnagle
- Daniel Cowgill
- Rasmus Lerdorf
- Gopal Vijayaraghavan
- Bart Vanbraban
- mOo
- [villu164] (https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/researchers/villu164)
Please reach out to all of these people and support their projects if you’re so inclined.
Questions
- Why does speed matter?
Search engines like Google, measure and factor in the speed of web sites in their ranking algorithm. When they recommend a site they want to make sure users find what they’re looking for quickly. So in effect you and Google should have the same objective.
Speed is among the most significant success factors web sites face. In fact, your site’s speed directly affects your income (revenue) — it’s a fact. Some high traffic sites conducted research and uncovered the following:
- Google.com: +500 ms (speed decrease) -> -20% traffic loss [1]
- Yahoo.com: +400 ms (speed decrease) -> -5-9% full-page traffic loss (visitor left before the page finished loading) [2]
- Amazon.com: +100 ms (speed decrease) -> -1% sales loss [1]
A thousandth of a second is not a long time, yet the impact is quite significant. Even if you’re not a large company (or just hope to become one), a loss is still a loss. W3 Total Cache is your solution for faster websites, happier visitors and better results.
Many of the other consequences of poor performance were discovered more than a decade ago:
- Lower perceived credibility (Fogg et al. 2001)
- Lower perceived quality (Bouch, Kuchinsky, and Bhatti 2000)
- Increased user frustration (Ceaparu et al. 2004)
- Increased blood pressure (Scheirer et al. 2002)
- Reduced flow rates (Novak, Hoffman, and Yung 200)
- Reduced conversion rates (Akamai 2007)
- Increased exit rates (Nielsen 2000)
- Are perceived as less interesting (Ramsay, Barbesi, and Preece 1998)
- Are perceived as less attractive (Skadberg and Kimmel 2004)
There are a number of resources that have been documenting the role of performance in success on the web, W3 Total Cache exists to give you a framework to tune your application or site without having to do years of research.
- Why is W3 Total Cache better than other caching solutions?
It’s a complete framework. Most cache plugins available do a great job at achieving a couple of performance gains. Total Cache is different because it remedies numerous performance reducing aspects of any web site. It goes farther than the basics, beyond merely reducing CPU usage (load) or bandwidth consumption for HTML pages. Equally important, the plugin requires no theme modifications, modifications to your .htaccess (mod_rewrite rules) or programming compromises to get started. Most importantly, it’s the only plugin designed to optimize all practical hosting environments small or large. The options are many and setup is easy.
- I’ve never heard of any of this stuff; my site is fine, no one complains about the speed. Why should I install this?
Rarely do readers take the time to complain. They typically just stop browsing earlier than you’d prefer and may not return altogether. This is the only plugin specifically designed to make sure that all aspects of your site are as fast as possible. Google is placing more emphasis on the speed of a site as a factor in rankings; this plugin helps with that too.
It’s in every web site owner’s best interest is to make sure that the performance of your site is not hindering its success.
- Which WordPress versions are supported?
To use all features in the suite, WordPress 6.0 or higher with PHP 7.4 or higher is required.
- Why doesn’t minify work for me?
Great question. W3 Total Cache uses several open source tools to attempt to combine and optimize CSS, JavaScript and HTML etc. Unfortunately some trial and error is required on the part of developers is required to make sure that their code can be successfully minified with the various libraries W3 Total Cache supports. Even still, if developers do test their code thoroughly, they cannot be sure that interoperability with other code your site may have. This fault does not lie with any single party here, because there are thousands of plugins and theme combinations that a given site can have, there are millions of possible combinations of CSS, JavaScript etc.
A good rule of thumb is to try auto mode, work with a developer to identify the code that is not compatible and start with combine only mode (the safest optimization) and increase the optimization to the point just before functionality (JavaScript) or user interface / layout (CSS) breaks in your site.
We’re always working to make this more simple and straight forward in future releases, but this is not an undertaking we can realize on our own. When you find a plugin, theme or file that is not compatible with minification reach out to the developer and ask them either to provide a minified version with their distribution or otherwise make sure their code is minification-friendly.
- What about comments? Does the plugin slow down the rate at which comments appear?
On the contrary, as with any other action a user can perform on a site, faster performance will encourage more of it. The cache is so quickly rebuilt in memory that it’s no trouble to show visitors the most current version of a post that’s experiencing Digg, Slashdot, Drudge Report, Yahoo Buzz or Twitter effect.
- Will the plugin interfere with other plugins or widgets?
No, on the contrary if you use the minify settings you will improve their performance by several times.
- Does this plugin work with WordPress in network mode?
Indeed it does.
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