I am a bit stubborn when it comes to changing old habits. The same is true for technologies I use, WordPress plugins included. As such I have been using WP Super Cache for as long as I can remember, and I always thought it was a great plugin.
Then around one year ago I started hearing about a new cache plugin, called W3 Total Cache. I didn’t bother to actually test it, as WP Super Cache was doing its homework.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and a couple of my sites started to open slowly due to the amount of traffic they were receiving. After exchanging some emails with the HostGator support folks they said I should try W3 Total Cache.
I did, and really surprised me. I still think WP Super Cache is a great plugin, but W3 Total Cache is even greater. The difference in loading times after I installed it was visible.
On top of that the plugins comes with more customization features, including the ability to cache database calls, to use server accelerator plugins, to integrate a CDN solution if you have one and so on.
I’ll be switching from WP Super Cache to W3 Total Cache on all my sites now, and I recommend you to do the same if you are not using it yet.
About Mark
Mark is an digital entrepreneur from New York City who recently acquired DBT. He started his ventures buying growing then selling several businesses and content blogs on Flippa. A perfect night for him constitutes pizza, wine, slow jazz and WordPress! He's an SEO expert and a growth strategist. When he's not working on his businesses he enjoys sharing his learned lessons with the DBT community.
Unfortunately i can see the actual improvement after installing the plugin, maybe the traffic of my blog is not heavy like yours. Finally i uninstalled this plugin…
Hey,
Thanks for the information. The cautionary note sounded by @Stratman is also interesting. So, one has to judge the performance and decide what is best for a given site. But, overall, as you rightly mentioned, WP Total Cache is a very good plugin.
I agree, I use this on my blog also
Thanks for weighing in on which caching plugin to use Daniel. I’ve used Super Cache for awhile but I’ll test this one out this week.
Hi everyone,
I am a huge fan of this plugin and have been using it contiguously in my all the blogs.
So, when do you suggest to implement this one over WP-Super-Cache? When the site has more than 1000 unique views per day? Or even sooner?
Hi,
Absolutely agree with you Daniel. I was a happy WP Super Cache user too but started using W3 Total cache on the recommendation of a few blogs last month. The difference is noticeable even on a small shared hosting site like mine.
Hi Daniel,
It is great to hear that. I also notice that your blog has been loading slow these few days. Today, it loads much faster.
W3TC is best used with APC to cache objects and pages in memory. I’ve had a pretty dramatic increase in speed since implementing memory caching, though I’m still trying to fine-tune some stuff under the hood, like my php-fpm and MySQL configurations.
I love W3TC. The only problem I have is the minify tool doesn’t work for my template ?
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ve been let down recently by WP Super Cache, this looks like a good replacement on my heavy traffic sites. Thanks much!
Gah. That’s what I get for typing while talking to a toddler. I meant I’ve been using W3 Total Cache too.
I’ve been using W3 Total Cache with you and I have to agree. It’s a good plugin. I found it when I was looking for ways to speed up my sites.
W3 Total Cache is the best plugin for speeding up your wordpress blogs