How to Speed up WordPress Site by tuning WP Super Cache Settings – List of Steps and Tips

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Crunchify » Blogging Tips » How to Speed up WordPress Site by tuning WP Super Cache Settings – List of Steps and Tips

I’ve been using WP Super-Cache since last 8 years and there is no doubt it’s the best Caching plugin available for WordPress.

There are more than 38K Plugins available in WordPress Plugin repository. Isn’t that amazing some WordPress Plugins really help enhance your blog’s functionality without any cost to you?

Yeah and WP Super Cache is one of them. In this tutorial we will go over basic wp super cache settings on how to configure it correct way. Let’s checkout Page load time first.

WP Super Cache Caches your page for faster page load time

Now question is:

How to Configuring WP Super Cache Properly On High Traffic Site?

Here is a simple benefit. Consider this scenario:

Once you post an article on Social Media sites which have thousands of followers. There might be some possibility that – you may start getting more and more traffic for specific post within few minutes.

WordPress as a framework servers that HTTP request and builds HTML page with the combination of theme and DB data. Do you think you have to make ~1000 calls to DB in case of same post call? I believe, there is no need to generates thousands of requests on your server, rather just send request once to server and then serve the same Static page to all followers.

WP Super Cache plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated and available under /cache folder, your Web Server will serve that static file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

The static html files will be served to the vast majority of your users, but because a user’s details are displayed in the comment form after they leave a comment those requests are handled by the legacy caching engine. Static files are served to:

  1. Users who are not logged in.
  2. Users who have not left a comment on your blog.
  3. Or users who have not viewed a password protected post.

99% of your visitors will be served static html files. Those users who don’t see the static files will still benefit because they will see different cached files that aren’t quite as efficient but still better than uncached.

Each and every person may have different setting and observation but we are running Crunchify with this WP Super Cache settings & would like to share the same with my users.

Step-1

Enable WP Super Cache From Easy Tab

Enable WordPress Caching

Step-2

Go to Advanced Tab and set below options:

  • Cache hits to this website for quick access. (Recommended)
  • Use mod_rewrite to serve cache files. (Recommended)
  • Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors. (Recommended)
  • Cache rebuild. Serve a supercache file to anonymous users while a new file is being generated.(Recommended)
  • Mobile device support. (External plugin or theme required. See the FAQ for further details.)
WP Super Cache - Advanced Tab Settings - Crunchify Tips

Step-3

  • Click on Update Status
  • Click on Update Mod_Rewrite Rules

Step-4

  • No selection for below options
WP Super Cache - Advanced Tab Settings - Mobile Settings - Crunchify Tips

Step-5

  • Choose below Expiry Time & Garbage Collection
WP Super Cache - Exipary Time and Garbage Collection Settings - Crunchify Tips

Step-6

  • Crunchify uses MaxCDN service for Content Delivery Network. Provide below options if you are already using it OR just keep box unchecked.
  • I’m using 4 CNAMEs: cdn.crunchify.com, cdn1.crunchify.com, cdn2.crunchify.com and cdn3.crunchify.com
WP Super Cache - CDN settings - Crunchify Tips

Step-7

Go to Contents Tab and Click Delete Cache button. Keep Preload, Plugins, Debug tab untouched.


Is WP Super cache plugin creates these weird directories?

17 thoughts on “How to Speed up WordPress Site by tuning WP Super Cache Settings – List of Steps and Tips”

  1. What do you think of WP Fastest Cache? I have using it, seems alright, except it doesn’t full features (paid). How does Super Cache compared (to Fastest Cache)?

    Reply
    • Hi Liz – I haven’t tried it yet. But as per my information,

      WP Super Cache is very well supported and highly downloaded WordPress plugin out there. It’s without a doubt best plugin out there.

      Reply
  2. No matter what setting I use, Pingdom still gives me an F and says “The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one week in the future for the following resources:” Am I missing a setting? Thanks

    Reply
    • Hi Mike – did you try clearing your browser cache after making changes? Make sure you are also on decent hosting platform.

      Reply
    • Depending on what the resources are, you may not be able to “fix” the issue. Files not hosted on your domain, such as Google Fonts and advertising JavaScript are not under your control so you can’t do anything about those. If you’re using CloudFlare, you may see the same issue for your own files because CloudFlare sets the browser caching date.

      Reply
  3. I checked this checkbox like you said, “Make known users anonymous so they’re served supercached static files.” but that created a bug on my blog. I couldn’t access Appearance > Customize, I was getting the “Non-exiting UUID” message.

    Reply
    • Interesting Marie. Did you try updating your .htaccess file after that? Also, don’t forgot to clear Cache. Hope that helps.

      Reply
  4. Thank you so much for this. Just set up my 3 fairly popular websites with these exact settings, and I too, use MaxCDN. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Thank you for the information. I am going to uninstall w3 total cache and install this one. See which one makes my site faster. I will do a video about it.

    Reply
      • Hello,

        I have applied your settings and some extra’s. It made my site 4.6 sec. faster than with W3 Total cache. But i have a problem, the Admin bar does not appear fronted when i’m logged in backend. Sign In fronted is not working. Any solution for this?

        Reply
        • That’s probably because you enabled “Make known users anonymous so they’re served super cached static files” option.

          What that option does is, serves the cached files to all the logged in users as well. Therefore, you aren’t able to see that admin bar on the top.

          As far as what I believe, that option should be turned off so that when you update your articles, you’ll be able to see the changes, else, you’ll be served the old static cached files. And, it’s always good to not serve cached files to logged-in users.

          Reply

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