WordPress on the fast track: W3 Total Cache

Working a lot with WordPress in projects you sometimes come across something that blows you away. This time it’s the W3 Total Cache plug-in.

There are quite a few caching plug-ins, which generally have the goal to speed up the larger, more sluggish WordPress sites. WP cache is often used, but there are more out there. This week someone showed me W3 total Cache and applied it to one of our sites that tends to load pretty sluggish. The results really knocked me back in my chair.

What makes this plug-in so nice? For one, it supports a wide range of caching possibilities. Instead of caching the page results, it can also cache database queries and gives you the option to minify css and JS files. For each of these options you can either choose disk cache, an existing memcached service (if available) or php caching mechanisms such as APC. For the heavy-traffic sites, which operate on a global level, the plug-in also has support for Content Delivery Networks (CDN).

The plug-in is almost overwhelming in the options it gives you; if you really know what you are doing you can configure just about everything to your hearts desire (and I really mean everything). For those folks, who are not really knowledgeable about caching (or are just plain lazy like me) there are default settings, which result in a performance boost that will blow your socks off.

To top it off, the plug-in comes with an extensive FAQ in the admin interface and a web form for asking support questions. This makes it probably one of the most complete plug-ins I have seen for WordPress. Period.

In short: you want to speed up your site using caching? Consider W3 Total Cache… Consider it really hard.