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Why use the WordPress Litespeed Cache Plugin
Performance optimization should be a top priority for every website owner as it directly impacts your ranking in search engines. The higher your website loads the worse it can be for your viewers causing them not to stay too long and close the website.
This can prevent your business from growing and have a huge impact on traffic to your site.
There is a plugin however called Litespeed Caching Plugin that if configured well can optimize your website’s performance so that it ranks better and the performance and loading time of your website increases drastically.
We have tested this plugin on multiple sites and on every site we tested on it does better than other caching plugins , free or premium that we have used to compare it against. Note however for this plugin to work at its best a hosting provider must have a Litespeed optimized server like we do at Hostking. Litespeed Servers make websites load much faster than Apache optimized servers.
Before we start lets discuss with Litespeed Server is and what the Litespeed Cache plugin does.
What Is Litespeed?
LiteSpeed is web server software designed to improve website’s performance. It uses event-driven architecture, a LiteSpeed web server can handle more traffic with fewer processes in shorter time, reducing the amount of resources required and inturn improve website page speed.
The LiteSpeed server also has a built-in Apache replacement with .htaccess support, hence those websites hosted on Apache platform can easily use Litespeed with no fuss at all. We offer Directadmin and cPanel control panels however it works with many other platforms aswell.
Now let’s discuss what Litespeed Cache Plugin does and is?
LiteSpeed Cache is a product of LiteSpeedTech.com that improves dynamic content loading on web pages. It comes with its own advanced caching functionality and optimization features. LiteSpeed Cache is also available as a plugin on Prestashop, Joomla and WordPress.
More plugin lists can be found here: https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/cache-plugins
LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) works by storing a copy of website in your website root folder which makes loading of your site much faster.
The LiteSpeed Cache plugin has other features aswell:
- Integration with Memcache or Redis Object Caching
- CDN integration
- Page Optimization
- Image Optimization
- Minification options for CSS and JS
- plus much more
Let’s take a look at what our webpage had when using no caching plugin.
What Mobile score we had before using the plugin
Not bad for mobile but definitely room for improvement.
What Desktop Score we had before using the plugin
Now our desktop scores are not that bad but we certainly wanted an improvement.
Now our scores are not that bad but keep in mind we already optimized the following on our site:
- Defered Javascript
- Optimized Images with Imagify
- Always use as less plugins as we possibly can.
Hence performance is always on our mind when we review our website each month.
However for normal customers or business owners this is something you do not want to review that often.
Now let me show you how our website scores went up just using LiteSpeed Cache Plugin.
Results of Mobile Score after configuring the Litespeed Cache Plugin
Amazing results for mobile but lets check our score for desktop version too.
Results of Desktop Score after configuring the Litespeed Cache Plugin
This is what we hoped to achieved finally we can sit back and relax and enjoy a fast website.
So as you can see we achieved a wopping 100% on Desktop scores and just short of 1 percent for our Mobile Score at 99
This was an awesome feeling for the team. The day we did this we purchased many premium plugins all not providing us the same performance as the Litespeed Cache Plugin.
We tried the following plugins from highest performance to lowest:
- WP-Rocket ( Was good but still didnt give us what we wanted)
- FlyingPress (Easy to use, good performance but no where close)
- WP Total Cache
- WP Super Cache
- WP Fastest Cache
- Few others dont really want to mention.
Installing the Litespeed Cache Plugin
So let’s get to it and install and configure the Litespeed Cache plugin with the same settings we have so you can achieve a faster and more responsive website.
First ensure its installed.
Most of our customers would have the plugin installed automatically but if not you can find it under the following sections:
If you see a grey icon where it says Active. That means the plugin is already installed as per below. If it shows Install go ahead and Install the Activate.
You will the find the plugin on the left menu bar.
How to configure the Litespeed Caching Plugin
Let’s configure the plugin for optimal performance. Note use this as a guide as some themes may need some options turned off and others on.
Click Dashboard and lets configure the plugin.
On the Dashboard page you will find an overview of what caching is enabled and how much it is using. Don’t worry too much of this page at this moment.
The next page called the General is quite important so lets head to that page.
On this page there is a few things to do.
- Ensure Automatically Upgrade is on.
- If not already click the Request Key option and follow the steps to create a free account if necessary.
- Turn Guest Mode and Guest Optimization On.
- Ensure you fill in the IP address of your website or let it auto-detect which is will usually do after a few minutes. This is step is optional.
Head over to the Caching Page and set everything as per the image below:
The TTL, Purge, Excludes and ESI options are optional but you may customize those sections if you feel the need to.
The object tab is quite important and can make a huge difference especially if you using Directadmin panel with Redis Caching. At Hostking we provide this feature on all our Hosting plans for free using the Directadmin panel. For cPanel you could use memcached though we found that Redis on Directadmin provided us with better performance overall.
Object Caching is a technology where the most common Database queries get cached. This ensures that the more viewers you have on your website doing the same thing the faster it loads for them.
To get this setup firstly we need to enable the feature within the Directadmin Panel itself.
So login to your directadmin panel via the client area.
Then click on the Redis Icon and enable the Redis Caching option.
Now head back to Litespeed Caching plugin and go to the same page as Object under Caching tab and enable Redis Caching as per image below:
Note: If you are setting up Litespeed caching with Redis caching in one Directadmin Hosting account with multiple domains ensure you increment the Redis Database ID by one each time for each WordPress website you enable it on.
Lets move on to browser caching tab.
Here you can set whatever amount of hours you would like. However we recommend anything higher than 4 hours should be good. 8 hours is usually normal. But really depends on how long you want caching to be on. The longer the better but it really depends on how much changes you regularly on your website.
The next tab called the Advanced tab is optional but not really required.
Thats it for the litespeed caching plugin. Now to do a test on Pagespeed.web.dev and see your amazing results.
Extra Performance Tip
Extra Tip: Lastly to add a little extra performance on websites using live chat or some javascript banners etc. Trying using a plugin called: Flying Scripts by WP Speed Matters which can be installed via plugins section aswell. Just install and activate it and test your website.
We hope this helps. Feel free to contact our support if you need further assistance by clicking the bottom right corner chat bubble.
Gloria
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