WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin How To

In this age of super-fast internet, a single second delay in the page loading speed can significantly decrease your website visitors. The performance of your website plays a large role in both the search engine ranking and overall popularity.

A clever way of increasing page loading speed is to use caching plugins. Among the numerous caching plugins for WordPress, WP Super Cache is a notable one. The plugin’s simple and easy user interface has made it a perfect choice for the beginners.

Let’s see how to use the plugin in a WordPress site.

Setting up the Basics

Download and install WP Super Cache from the WordPress plugin directory. Once you activate the plugin, it will create a new sub-menu under the ‘Settings’ menu.

Go to Settings > WP Super Cache to start configuring the plugin. Select ‘Caching On’ in the ‘Caching’ field and click ‘Update Status’.

Turning on the cache will add a new ‘Test Cache’ button. Click the button to check if the plugin is working properly. The plugin will try to fetch your site twice and compare their timestamps. If the timestamps match, your cache plugin is working properly.

Advanced Options

Besides the basic caching, WP Super Cache comes with lots of powerful options too. Go to the ‘Advanced’ tab to check out the advanced options. The page is divided into several sections.

The first option of the ‘Caching’ section will inform you that caching is enabled for your site. Then, you will find three caching choices – mod_rewrite, PHP and Legacy. By default, PHP is selected. However, this method is not ideal for shared hosting packages. Therefore, if your website is hosted on a shared server, select the first choice – mod_rewrite. Then, click ‘Update Status’.

In the next screen, you will be told that you need to update the rewrite rules. To do that, go to the section titled ‘Mod Rewrite Rules’ and click the ‘Update Mod_Rewrite Rules’ button.

Then, get back to the ‘Miscellaneous’ section. Check the first option titled ‘Compress pages so…’. By enabling this, you are allowing the plugin to serve cached pages as compressed files. The smaller size of the files will significantly improve the page loading speed.

Now, find the section titled ‘Expiry Time & Garbage Collection’. From this section, you will be able to set a schedule for automatically removing the old cached files. Besides selecting the cache timeout duration, you can select when to look for old cached files and set the checkup frequency.

The values of these options vary depending on the website type and size. You will find a useful explanation about them just below the section.

The other options of this page are intended for more advanced users. Since this article is for the beginners, I will skip them.

Using CDN

WP Super Cache also comes with a built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN). CDN lets you serve the static contents in a quick and easy way. Go to the ‘CDN’ tab to use the feature.

Here, you have to choose a ‘Pull Zone’ where your static contents will be saved. The plugin will automatically replace any link to those contents files to the new location. First of all, check the ‘Enable CDN Support’ box. Then, in the ‘Off-site URL’ box, provide the pull zone address.

‘Include directories’ field lets you choose which folders should be used in file matching. And if you want to exclude any specific file type, you can do that from the ‘Exclude if substring’ field.

After making all changes, click ‘Save Changes’.

Contents Information

In this tab, you will find details about your website’s cached content. You will also find separate buttons to delete the expired files and the cache.

Preload Content

Preload is an interesting feature of WP Super Cache. By using this feature, you can create ‘Supercache static files’ of your site’s posts and pages. This can provide a huge boost to your page loading speed and overall website performance.

However, preloading your content creates lots of new files, which could be problematic in shared hosting plans. In that case, you may choose to cache only the newer posts.

To enable content preloading, check the first two boxes. And if you want to receive email notification(s), check the last box too. Click ‘Update Settings’ to save the changes.

Final Words

If you are serious about your website performance, you have to use a caching plugin. In this regard, there is hardly a better choice than WP Super Cache. Besides the caching feature, you can also use the CDN and content preloading features to make your site super-fast.

So, what do you think about the plugin? Will you use it in your website? If you are already using a caching plugin in your WordPress site, please share your experience with us.