Query Monitor vs W3 Total Cache

Query Monitor is the developer tools panel for WordPress and WooCommerce. It enables debugging of database queries, PHP errors, hooks and actions, block editor blocks, enqueued scripts and stylesheets, HTTP API calls, and more. It includes some advanced features such as debugging of Ajax calls, REST API calls, user capability checks, and full support for block themes and full site editing. It includes the ability to narrow down much of its output by plugin or theme, allowing you to quickly determine poorly performing plugins, themes, or functions. Query Monitor focuses heavily on presenting its information in a useful manner, for example by showing aggregate database queries grouped by the plugins, themes, or functions that are responsible for them. It adds an admin toolbar menu showing an overview of the current page, with complete debugging information shown in panels once you select a menu item. Query Monitor supports versions of WordPress up to three years old, and PHP version 7.4 or higher. For complete information, please see the Query Monitor website. Here’s an overview of what’s shown for each page load: Database queries, including notifications for slow, duplicate, or erroneous queries. Allows filtering by query type (SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, etc), responsible component (plugin, theme, WordPress core), and calling function, and provides separate aggregate views for each. The template filename, the complete template hierarchy, and names of all template parts that were loaded or not loaded (for block themes and classic themes). PHP errors presented nicely along with their responsible component and call stack, and a visible warning in the admin toolbar. Usage of “Doing it Wrong” or “Deprecated” functionality in the code on your site. Blocks and associated properties within post content and within full site editing (FSE). Matched rewrite rules, associated query strings, and query vars. Enqueued scripts and stylesheets, along with their dependencies, dependents, and alerts for broken dependencies. Language settings and loaded translation files (MO files and JSON files) for each text domain. HTTP API requests, with response code, responsible component, and time taken, with alerts for failed or erroneous requests. User capability checks, along with the result and any parameters passed to the capability check. Environment information, including detailed information about PHP, the database, WordPress, and the web server. The values of all WordPress conditional functions such as is_single(), is_home(), etc. Transients that were updated. Usage of switch_to_blog() and restore_current_blog() on Multisite installations. In addition: Whenever a redirect occurs, Query Monitor adds an HTTP header containing the call stack, so you can use your favourite HTTP inspector or browser developer tools to trace what triggered the redirect. The response from any jQuery-initiated Ajax request on the page will contain various debugging information in its headers. PHP errors also get output to the browser’s developer console. The response from an authenticated WordPress REST API request will contain an overview of performance information and PHP errors in its headers, as long as the authenticated user has permission to view Query Monitor’s output. An an enveloped REST API request will include even more debugging information in the qm property of the response. By default, Query Monitor’s output is only shown to Administrators on single-site installations, and Super Admins on Multisite installations. In addition to this, you can set an authentication cookie which allows you to view Query Monitor output when you’re not logged in (or if you’re logged in as a non-Administrator). See the Settings panel for details. Browser extension Query Monitor is also available as an optional browser dev tools extension. This is an alternative to using the in-page panel that gets output into the admin toolbar. Using the browser extension has some advantages over the in-page panel: The Query Monitor panel doesn’t take up space within the page you are inspecting The panel can be resized, undocked, and moved around like any other developer tools panel Information about the Query Monitor browser extension can be found here. Other Plugins I maintain several other plugins for developers. Check them out: User Switching provides instant switching between user accounts in WordPress. WP Crontrol lets you view and control what’s happening in the WP-Cron system Thanks The time that I spend maintaining this plugin and others is in part sponsored by: Automattic ServMask WP Staging All my kind sponsors on GitHub Privacy Statement Query Monitor is private by default and always will be. It does not persistently store any of the data that it collects. It does not send data to any third party, nor does it include any third party resources. Query Monitor’s full privacy statement can be found here. Accessibility Statement Query Monitor aims to be fully accessible to all of its users. Query Monitor’s full accessibility statement can be found here.

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices. W3TC is the only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework for WordPress trusted by millions of publishers, web developers, and web hosts worldwide for more than a decade. It is the total performance solution for optimizing WordPress Websites. BENEFITS Improvements in search engine result page rankings, especially for mobile-friendly websites and sites that use SSL At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in WebPagetest or significant Google PageSpeed improvements) when fully configured Improved conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com “Instant” repeat page views: browser caching Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly and can be interacted with more quickly Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods Up to 80% bandwidth savings when you minify HTML, minify CSS and minify JS files. KEY FEATURES Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management with Media Library, theme files and WordPress itself Mobile support: respective caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents including theme switching for groups of referrers or user agents Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support Secure Socket Layer (SSL/TLS) support Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on (FSD) CDN (by user agent group) Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN Caching of search results pages (i.e., URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk Caching of database objects in memory or on disk Caching of objects in memory or on disk Caching of fragments in memory or on disk Caching methods include local Disk, Redis, Memcached, APC, APCu, eAccelerator, XCache, and WinCache Minify CSS, Minify JavaScript and Minify HTML with granular control Minification of posts and pages and RSS feeds Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript with automated updates to assets Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS with automated updates to assets Defer non-critical CSS and JavaScript for rendering pages faster than ever before Defer offscreen images using Lazy Load to improve the user experience Browser caching using cache-control, future expire headers and entity tags (ETag) with “cache-busting” JavaScript grouping by template (home page, post page etc) with embed location control Non-blocking JavaScript embedding Import post attachments directly into the Media Library (and CDN) Leverage our multiple CDN integrations to optimize images WP-CLI support for cache purging, query string updating and more Various security features to help ensure website safety Caching statistics for performance insights of any enabled feature Extension framework for customization or extensibility for Cloudflare, WPML and much more Reverse proxy integration via Nginx or Varnish Image Converter extension provides modern image format conversion (e.g., WebP, AVIF) from common image formats (on upload and on demand) W3 Total Cache Pro Features With over a million active installs, W3 Total Cache is the most comprehensive WordPress caching plugin available and has robust premium features that help deliver an exceptional user experience. Full Site Delivery: Serve your entire site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN), ensuring faster load times worldwide. Fragment Cache: Optimize the caching of dynamic content while still improving performance. REST API Caching: Speed up your headless WordPress site by caching REST API calls. Eliminate Render-Blocking CSS: Ensure your CSS doesn’t hold up page loading, providing faster initial paint. Delay Scripts: Improve performance by delaying the loading of non-essential scripts until they are needed. Preload Requests: Boost page performance by preloading critical resources before they’re requested. Remove CSS/JS: Clean up unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files that slow down your pages. Lazy Load Google Maps: Load Google Maps only when it’s visible, reducing unnecessary requests. WPML Extension: Optimize performance on multilingual sites powered by WPML. Caching Statistics: Get detailed insights on cache usage and performance improvements. Purge Logs: Keep your site clean by automatically purging unnecessary cache logs. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee Try W3 Total Cache Pro risk-free with our 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, we will refund your purchase. PAGESPEED SCORE IMPROVEMENTS To help you understand the impact of individual features on your website’s performance, we’ve tested each feature separately to see its effect on Google PageSpeed scores. While optimal results come from configuring several different caching tools together, the following individual features also show significant improvements on their own: Remove Unused CSS/JS This feature removes CSS and JavaScript files that are not needed for the current page, reducing the load time. Added over 27 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 57.2 / After: 86.7) Reduced the Potential Savings From Unused JavaScript from 127.5 KiB to 84 KiB View the test results Full Site Delivery Full Site Delivery optimizes the delivery of your entire site, enhancing the server response time. Added a 99% performance enhancement to the Average Server Response Time (Before: 3413 ms / After: 34 ms) View the test results Eliminate Render Blocking CSS This feature eliminates CSS that blocks the rendering of your page, speeding up the initial load time. Added over 17 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 53.75 / After: 71) Reduced the Potential Savings From Render-Blocking Resources by over 94% (Before: 2432.5 ms / After: 125 ms) Improved the Largest Contentful Paint time by over 56% (Before: 7s / After: 3.04s) View the test results Delay Scripts Delay Scripts postpones the loading of certain scripts until they are needed, reducing initial load times. Added 14 points to the Google PageSpeed Performance score (Before: 54.25 / After: 68.5) Reduced the Time Third-Party Code Blocked The Main Thread For by 62% (Before: 825 ms / After: 197.5 ms) View the test results Rest API Caching This feature caches API responses, reducing server load and speeding up API interactions. Reduced the Average Server Load by 40% (Before: 0.62 / After: 0.37) Sped up API Responses by 84.5% (Before: 968ms / After: 150ms) Reduced the Average Server Load by 24% under during a major traffic spike (Before: 34.55 / After: 26.19) View the test results Modern Image Formats Converts images to modern formats like WebP or AVIF, which are more efficient and faster to load. Added over 9 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 84.67 / After: 93.83) View the test results Lazy Load Google Maps Delays the loading of Google Maps until the user interacts with them, reducing initial load time. Added 10 points to the Google PageSpeed score (Before: 66 / After: 76) Reduced the Total Blocking Time Performance score by 72% (Before: 287.5 ms / After: 80 ms) View the test results Speed up your site tremendously, improve core web vitals and the overall user experience for your visitors without having to change your WordPress host, theme, plugins or your content production workflow. What users have to say: Read testimonials from W3TC users. Who do I thank for all of this? It’s quite difficult to recall all of the innovators that have shared their thoughts, code and experiences in the blogosphere over the years, but here are some names to get you started: Steve Souders Steve Clay Ryan Grove Nicholas Zakas Ryan Dean Andrei Zmievski George Schlossnagle Daniel Cowgill Rasmus Lerdorf Gopal Vijayaraghavan Bart Vanbraban mOo [villu164] (https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/researchers/villu164) Please reach out to all of these people and support their projects if you’re so inclined.