We all know a fast loading website makes Google happy as well as your visitors. Caching is a crucial part of making your WordPress site’s load faster. There are a lot of different caching plugins in the WordPress repository, but none that are as easy to use as the free WordPress Cache Enabler.
The WordPress Cache Enabler plugin is developed and maintained by the web performance team at KeyCDN. They operate a global content delivery network, in which they they focus primarily on ways to speed up content delivery.
WordPress Cache Enabler Features
The WordPress Cache Enabler speeds up the delivery of your content by creating static HTML files and stores them on your server’s hard drives. It can create both a plain HTML file and a gzipped version if your server supports it. Your web server then delivers the static HTML file version to visitors. This avoids having to deal with exhaustive resources like WordPress core and plugins. The plugin features the following:
- Completely free
- Fast caching to disk
- The ability to automatically and manually clear cache
- Dashboard visual to see size of cache on disk
- Minification of your HTML and Javascript
- The plugin supports multisite as well as custom post types
- Supports 304 Not Modified
- Supports responsive images via srcset since WordPress 4.4
- HTTP/2 focused
One the most unique features of the WordPress Cache Enabler is the ability to also support WebP image files. Note: You must use Optimus Image Optimizer plugin to convert images to WebP first. What is so great about WebP? Google created the WebP format and lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to normal PNGs. The Cache Enabler plugins delivers WebP images if they are available and falls back to JPG and PNG for browsers that don’t support WebP, such as IE.
How to Install WordPress Cache Enabler
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The WordPress Cache Enabler plugin is super easy to install and you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Just follow the steps below. (This plugin requires PHP >=5.3 and WP >=4.1)
Step 1
Search for “Cache Enabler” under your WordPress dashboard and click on “Install Now.” Or you can download the plugin directly from the WordPress repository.
Step 2
Click on “Activate Plugin.”
Step 3
In the settings of your WordPress dashboard click into “Cache Enabler.”
Step 4
You then have the following options.
- Cache Expiry: You can see how long until the cache expires. By default it is set to 0 which means it will never expire until you manually clear the cache.
- You can then also set it to automatically clear the cache upon new post or a new comment./li>
- By default pre-compression is enabled.
- You can then also set it to deliver WebP images if they exist, combined with the Optimus plugin.
- The cache exclusions settings lets you define pages or posts that shouldn’t be cached.
- You can also set it to minify both your HTML and Inline JS, only HTML, or none.
It is also important to note that this plugin was built with the HTTP/2 protocol in mind. That is why you won’t see options to concatenate (combine) your files. This is a thing of the past and actually hurts your performance with the new protocol.
How to Verify Cache
You can verify that the cache is working by looking at your source code. In the footer it will show a comment, “Cache Enabler” along with a timestamp. It will also show you whether it is delivering the gzip html version and whether or not WebP is enabled.
How to Manually Clear Cache
You can easily manually clear your WordPress cache at anytime by pressing the “Clear Cache” button up in the top right hand side of your dashboard.
Speed Tests
Here is a quick comparison of running WordPress without Cache Enabler and with Cache Enabler.
Without Cache Enabler
With Cache Enabler
That is an increase in speed of 37% simply by enabling the plugin. Also, because of the WebP image formats the total page size decreased by 38%.
As you can see the WordPress Cache Enabler plugin is very easy to use and you have nothing but speed to gain! It was developed with speed and simplicity in mind. No more tweaking configuration files or reading long setup docs. Just install, enable, and you’re good to go.
Download the free WordPress Cache Enabler today!
One Response
Hi Brian,
I’m using the Cache Enabler plugin for some time now, and I really like it! Hosting my WordPress on Windows Server IIS, I tried to use my WP-Super-Cache Rewrite rules on it, and that works too!
My site now has statically generated index.html and index.html.gz files, that are nicely served through IIS and Cache Enabler! If interested, here’s the reference (not yet rewritten for Cache Enabler):
Thanks!