The vast majority of websites and blogs operate on shared hosting, which does not require specialized knowledge of website management, and this is undoubtedly a plus, especially for novice website builders. But there is also a negative side - strict restrictions on the load on the server, which affects the operation of the site. As the load increases, the site uses the entire allocated limit and most often begins to display a 500 error. This means that the site cannot cope with processing all requests. The cause of such an error may be exceeding the limit of I/O operations, or exceeding the specified amount of memory allocated for the account.

But these are all consequences, and there are two real reasons. This is high traffic and unoptimized work of scripts. There is a cure, and it is caching. The most popular caching plugin currently is the WP Super Cache plugin. The consequences of its work are a real reduction in the load on virtual hosting.

How to install the plugin? The wp-content folder must be writable (write permission 777).

The installation is standard, so let's move on to a description of the settings and operation of the plugin. After WP Super Cache is installed, you need to go to the “WP Super Cache Settings” section of the plugin and enable caching in the “Cache” tab. After caching is enabled, the wp-config.php file will be slightly modified - the plugin will write the necessary directives.

Next, go to “Settings” and check the “Use mod_rewrite for cache maintenance” checkbox. This will enable the file caching algorithm. You should also check the box "". This will allow the plugin to cache the most visited pages of the site, that is, provide faster access to them.

Here you need to be especially careful - if the site overloads the CPU, then applying compression will increase the load even more, because the server, in addition to executing script commands before caching, will also compress files after caching, and this requires more time and memory. In this case, it is better not to use cache compression. If the site has exceeded the limit of I/O operations, but the CPU load is normal, it would be advisable to enable cache compression; this function will increase performance due to the fact that the file upload time will decrease and their size will be reduced.

Next, check the “Mobile device support” and “Refresh page when a new comment is added” checkboxes. The first action will allow cached pages to work with mobile browsers, and the second means that the plugin will cache the page with the new comment again. This will allow visitors to always see the most recent version of the page in front of them.

Now click the "Update" button and save all the settings.

You also need to update the rules of the “mod_rewrite” module.

The WP Super Cache plugin will write new rules to the .htaccess file located in the root of the site. These new rules will be responsible for browser caching and the correct rendering of pages.

The plugin will write them to the .htaccess file - they are responsible for the correct return of cached pages and browser caching.

Set Cache Timeout to "0".

This point is very important in the plugin settings. Many novice webmasters, by installing the WP Super Cache plugin, hope to reduce the load on hosting, but often this does not happen due to the fact that the site is large and the lifetime of pages that are already cached is short. Due to this discrepancy, WordPress will constantly clear the cache and remove expired pages from it, which will lead to a significant increase in the load on the hosting.

The use of a cache is justified only for hosts with a small allocated volume - the WP Super Cache plugin will clear only the expired cache so that the space is not filled with unnecessary files. If your goal is to reduce the load, then you need free space for the cache, which should be the volume of all files plus 15-20%, and periodic checking for cache relevance should be disabled. The extra space allows WP Super Cache to cache all pages on the site, but not delete the cached version of the page. That is, returning a ready-made, cached page will speed up the operation of the site due to the fact that unnecessary I/O operations and database calls will not be needed and the extra load on the processor will disappear.

The form in which the names of search robots are entered must be left unchanged. In this case, the plugin will provide an already cached list of robots, which reduces the load that bots create when making a request.

Further. You should go to “Shared Cache” and set the update time for the shared cache. Automatic cache cleaning can be disabled, since a site with a large amount of free space does not need to clear its cache.

You can track the creation of a new cache in different ways - in the plugin settings according to the level of awareness or using e-mail messages that will indicate the start and end time of the operation. The “Shared Cache” option allows you to cache all pages of the site in one go, which makes the WP Super Cache plugin stand out among other similar plugins.

That is, visitors are given already cached, that is, pre-prepared, versions of the site pages. When rendering such pages, significantly fewer resources are used than when generating them dynamically. During the heaviest loads on your hosting (load times can be obtained from the hoster), a pre-prepared cache will significantly reduce the load and protect the site from errors.

And do not forget, after making all the plugin settings, make the wp-content folder of the CMOD 755 site, that is, writable only for you.

The settings turned out to be not exactly the same as what I found on the net. Reviews were also very different. There were also negative reviews. They said that it had to be turned off because it did not allow changes to be made in the design. Which was later confirmed. When changing the design, it is better to disable it, as it will not work, no matter how much you clear the history in the browser.

I didn't think this was too much of a price to pay for the opportunity to significantly reduce page load times. When setting up the plugin, I was guided by the recommendations of Sprithost.ru employees, who are no less interested in reducing the loading time of my site than I am. We managed to put this indicator within acceptable limits.

My cheat sheet for WP Super Cache plugin settings

Installing the WP Super Cache plugin and its settings became the final step in a series of methods for optimizing a site.

First, in a nutshell, why this indicator is so important - site loading speed.

At first, I myself noticed that my site began to take longer to load when opening. And when the article was published, in general, you could go and have some tea. Then letters began to arrive in the mail from regular visitors with whom we had developed friendly relations. They wrote that my website began to slow down.

When analyzing the top ten sites in the search results, it was discovered that sites with low weight and fast loading pages predominate there.

I had to worry about measuring the loading speed of my site. Different resources showed different times - from 3 seconds to 12 seconds. One analyzing resource actually gave me a figure of 3 minutes.

Completely stunned, I wrote to Sprinthost technical support. Excellent specialists work there. And, most importantly, they never say that the issue is not in their competence - they help and explain, without showing dissatisfaction with the questions of “dummies.”

The host's staff shared with me their method for measuring site loading speed:

The keyboard shortcut in the Google Chrome browser is Shift + Ctrl + i.

• or on the desired page, right-click and select the line View element code
• The webmaster panel will appear. In it, find the Network tab and reload the site page.

The table will show how long it takes to load a site page, each plugin and images on the page.

Everything was very sad for me. The site loading speed was almost 11 seconds.

I had to take action.

• I started by removing plugins that I could do without. Among the busiest was the plugin for social networking buttons.
• Then I had to do image optimization – but that’s a different story. Nightmare. More on this later.
• And now it’s the turn of the WP Super Cache plugin.

Why is it needed? The WP Super Cache plugin is used to create caches (temporary copies) of website pages.

In general, cache is garbage, unnecessary copies of our pages that only harm the site, but in our case it is a benefit.

For a certain time, which you set yourself, caches are saved and there are no unnecessary requests to the database on the host. Which significantly increases page loading time. After the time period you specified in the plugin settings, all caches are safely deleted.

All measures taken together helped reduce the critical indicator and now the loading time of my site is from one and a half to two and a half seconds. Q.E.D.

It was possible to reduce it further, but I chose the golden mean and kept some plugins that require access to the database on the host, more precisely to the folders where the images live. So as not to completely expose the site.

Installing and Configuring WP Super Cache

Installing the WP Super Cache plugin is easy. It is available in the WordPress plugin repository. Search for plugins in the admin panel, install, activate – everything as usual.

The first tab is where we simply enable the plugin.

The second tab is long. I had to break it into pieces.

The actual plugin settings

Here you need to pay attention to the time indicated in the fields. This is the time of seconds in a day.

There are types of technical problems on the site that can be resolved in a few minutes, but finding this solution can take weeks or even months. My problem could not be solved for almost a year, since a warning appeared in the site console that the plugins and WP Super Cache installed on the site began to conflict with each other. And that as a result of this conflict, the mobile version of the site is not displayed.

It should be noted that the solution to the problem could be found there, in the message, by following the link, but the translation of the instructions from English did not coincide with the actual state of the tabs and sections of the WP Super Cache plugin, I could not find a solution on the Internet, so this is an important matter it was left to chance and everything remained as it was.

How did it end?

I installed an earlier version of the WpTouch Mobile plugin, the mobile version worked, and worked without updates until recently, when I noticed that it became impossible to view my sites on a smartphone without a magnifying glass. I had to make the task urgent and important and connect the all-knowing Internet to the search again.

Salvation was found in discussions on one of the articles by Evgeniy Versus, where the author of the commentary explained in great detail, and most importantly, in Russian, what needed to be done. You won't believe it. An entire year of downtime for such an important plugin as WpTouch Mobile could have been prevented with just three simple steps.

If you have the same problem, you can solve it like this:

1. Go to the settings of the WP Super Cache plugin. In chapter "Plugins", at the very bottom of the page we check for the presence of the WPTouch plugin. If not, then turn it on.

2. On the plugin page, go to the tab "Advanced"(second tab). Check the box next to “Mobile device support” if it is not there.

3. Scroll down the page and find the section "Search and other bots". Let's copy this list:

iPhone
iPod
Android
BB10
BlackBerry
webOS
IEMobile/7.0
IEMobile/9.0
IEMobile/10.0
MSIE 10.0
iPad
PlayBook
Xoom
P160U
SCH-I800
Nexus 7
Touch

and add to the list that is already there. Press the magic button "Save settings"(just below), and we see that the warning about a plugin conflict has disappeared.

4. For your own peace of mind, you can follow the standard procedure for clearing the cache: section "Cache Status"— Update cache statistics — Delete the entire cache.

That's it, both plugins work without conflicts, and you can check this immediately on the mobile page verification pages in Google:

Search engines confirmed that everything is in order. We go into our smartphone and check how convenient the site looks for other users. In fact, my site is displayed on the smartphone the way Yandex sees it, not Google, next time I’ll need to figure it out and look for the reason. The main thing is that today Google has a long-awaited entry stating that the site is optimized for mobile devices.

It’s these little joys that make up a webmaster’s happiness 😀. Today is a good day.

[Science for the future]: learn English, make an adaptive version of the site 😀 😀.

Today we’ll talk about setting up the plugin W.P.SuperCache. Nowadays, when home Internet speeds are reaching cosmic speeds, page loading speed is becoming a very important indicator for a website. Well, it’s no secret that one of the indicators of a site’s ranking by search engines is the site’s page loading speed, which is also quite important for the user site loading speed to quickly get the information you need. In general, everyone loves fast websites.

The best way to speed up a WordPress site is caching. And the best caching plugin is W.P.SuperCache. In this article I will tell you in detail, how to install and configure caching website pages on WordPress using a plugin W.P.SuperCache.

What is website caching?

Site Caching- this is a way to speed up the loading of a site by storing the loaded page in the browser or server cache, so that during subsequent calls to this page, lighten the load on the server, using already downloaded or “cached” pages, this is especially critical for sites with high traffic.

How to install the WP Super Cache plugin?

Installing the plugin W.P.SuperCache It's no different than installing any other plugin, but I would recommend installing the plugin through the WordPress plugin installation console, it's very easy and simple.

Before installing the plugin, be sure to make a backup of the site! For example, using the plugin ""

Go to the site console => Plugins => Add new in the search and write W.P.SuperCache and press the Enter key. Then click the install button.

Setting up and activating the WP Super Cache plugin

Plugin activation W.P.SuperCache not entirely standard, in addition to the fact that you will need to activate the plugin, after installing it you will need to activate it directly in the plugin settings.

To activate, check “caching is enabled” and click the update button. If you get an error during activation, check the settings for access to files and folders on the hosting.

If you did not receive an error message, this means that the plugin started working, but with the default settings. If this suits you, then you don’t have to read further, the plugin is already working quite successfully.

Setting up the WP Super Cache plugin

Go to the “Settings” tab

• Caching status

If you decide to switch to mod_rewrite then mark this item and go down a little further on the page and click the update button. After which you will see a large yellow field on which you will need to click the “ Update rulesmod_rewrite" The first sign that the settings have been applied successfully will be a message in the green box. Well, if you, like me, like to see everything with your own eyes, then let's go to file.htacces and make sure that the settings are applied.

• Miscellaneous

In this paragraph, everything is very well described by the developers of the WP Super Cache plugin, read and make the decision that suits you best, I have it configured as in the screenshot.

• Settings

In this item you can leave everything as default, but I checked the option “Refresh the page when a new comment is added to it”

• Expired Pages & Junk Cleanup

This item configures the settings for clearing the cache. At this point I don’t see any reason to change anything and leave all the default settings.

I leave all other settings in this “Settings” tab as default; I see no reason to change anything.

Yes. One more thing, if you suddenly decide to return to the default settings, you can do this literally in one click by going to the end of the “Settings” tab and clicking the “Restore Default Settings” button.

CDN setup

Using a plugin W.P.SuperCache you can enable CDN support.

CDN (Content Delivery Network) is literally a means of delivering content. The word content refers to static resources that are used on the site, such as CSS styles, images, JavaScript, archives, flash files or any other documents.

WP Super Cache Cache States

In this tab, you can track your site's cache statistics, delete expired cache, or delete the entire cache.

Shared WP Super Cache

This is the main difference of this plugin and its main advantage. This function allows you to cache site pages and users will receive already cached pages. Loading such pages will require much less resources than when generating them dynamically. I advise everyone to create a general cache of the entire site at the time of the least load on the server.

To create a shared cache, you need to click the “Create shared cache now” button on this tab.

That's it for plugin setup W.P.SuperCache finished.

In conclusion, I want to say that the topic of caching and speeding up site loading is very relevant and, probably, I will be right if I say that it is an eternal topic for WordPress, since the WordPress CMS itself is a very heavy system and requires a lot of resources. But as far as I know, the developers are actively working to optimize this problem and soon we will not have to deal with this problem on our own.