WP Super Cache vs WPSpeed – WordPress Speed, Cache & Performance Optimization (Core Web Vitals, PageSpeed 100)

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. The static html files will be served to the vast majority of your users: Users who are not logged in. Users who have not left a comment on your blog. Or users who have not viewed a password protected post. 99% of your visitors will be served static html files. One cached file can be served thousands of times. Other visitors will be served custom cached files tailored to their visit. If they are logged in, or have left comments those details will be displayed and cached for them. The plugin serves cached files in 3 ways (ranked by speed): Expert. The fastest method is by using Apache mod_rewrite (or whatever similar module your web server supports) to serve “supercached” static html files. This completely bypasses PHP and is extremely quick. If your server is hit by a deluge of traffic it is more likely to cope as the requests are “lighter”. This does require the Apache mod_rewrite module (which is probably installed if you have custom permalinks) and a modification of your .htaccess file which is risky and may take down your site if modified incorrectly. Simple. Supercached static files can be served by PHP and this is the recommended way of using the plugin. The plugin will serve a “supercached” file if it exists and it’s almost as fast as the mod_rewrite method. It’s easier to configure as the .htaccess file doesn’t need to be changed. You still need a custom permalink. You can keep portions of your page dynamic in this caching mode. WP-Cache caching. This is mainly used to cache pages for known users, URLs with parameters and feeds. Known users are logged in users, visitors who leave comments or those who should be shown custom per-user data. It’s the most flexible caching method and slightly slower. WP-Cache caching will also cache visits by unknown users if supercaching is disabled. You can have dynamic parts to your page in this mode too. This mode is always enabled but you can disable caching for known users, URLs with parameters, or feeds separately. Set the constant “DISABLE_SUPERCACHE” to 1 in your wp-config.php if you want to only use WP-Cache caching. If you’re not comfortable with editing PHP files then use simple mode. It’s easy to set up and very fast. Recommended Settings Simple caching. Compress pages. Don’t cache pages for known users. Cache rebuild. CDN support. Extra homepage checks. Garbage collection is the act of cleaning up cache files that are out of date and stale. There’s no correct value for the expiry time but a good starting point is 1800 seconds. Consider deleting the contents of the “Rejected User Agents” text box and allow search engines to cache files for you. Preload as many posts as you can and enable “Preload Mode”. Garbage collection of old cached files will be disabled. If you don’t care about sidebar widgets updating often set the preload interval to 2880 minutes (2 days) so all your posts aren’t recached very often. When the preload occurs the cache files for the post being refreshed is deleted and then regenerated. Afterwards a garbage collection of all old files is performed to clean out stale cache files. Even with preload mode enabled cached files will still be deleted when posts are modified or comments made. Development Active development of this plugin is handled on GitHub. Translation of the plugin into different languages is on the translation page. Documentation If you need more information than the following, you can have a look at the wiki or the Developer documentation. Preloading You can generate cached files for the posts, categories and tags of your site by preloading. Preloading will visit each page of your site generating a cached page as it goes along, just like any other visitor to the site. Due to the sequential nature of this function, it can take some time to preload a complete site if there are many posts. To make preloading more effective it can be useful to disable garbage collection so that older cache files are not deleted. This is done by enabling “Preload Mode” in the settings. Be aware however, that pages will go out of date eventually but that updates by submitting comments or editing posts will clear portions of the cache. Garbage Collection Your cache directory fills up over time, which takes up space on your server. If space is limited or billed by capacity, or if you worry that the cached pages of your site will go stale then garbage collection has to be done. Garbage collection happens on a regular basis and deletes old files in the cache directory. On the advanced settings page you can specify: 1. Cache timeout. How long cache files are considered fresh for. After this time they are stale and can be deleted. 2. Scheduler. Setup how often garbage collection should be done. 3. Notification emails. You can be informed on garbage collection job progress. There’s no right or wrong settings for garbage collection. It depends on your own site. If your site gets regular updates, or comments then set the timeout to 1800 seconds, and set the timer to 600 seconds. If your site is mostly static you can disable garbage collection by entering 0 as the timeout, or use a really large timeout value. The cache directory, usually wp-content/cache/ is only for temporary files. Do not ever put important files or symlinks to important files or directories in that directory. They will be deleted if the plugin has write access to them. CDN A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is usually a network of computers situated around the world that will serve the content of your website faster by using servers close to you. Static files like images, Javascript and CSS files can be served through these networks to speed up how fast your site loads. You can also create a “poor man’s CDN” by using a sub domain of your domain to serve static files too. OSSDL CDN off-linker has been integrated into WP Super Cache to provide basic CDN support. It works by rewriting the URLs of files (excluding .php files) in wp-content and wp-includes on your server so they point at a different hostname. Many CDNs support origin pull. This means the CDN will download the file automatically from your server when it’s first requested, and will continue to serve it for a configurable length of time before downloading it again from your server. Configure this on the “CDN” tab of the plugin settings page. This is an advanced technique and requires a basic understanding of how your webserver or CDNs work. Please be sure to clear the file cache after you configure the CDN. REST API There are now REST API endpoints for accessing the settings of this plugin. You’ll need to be authenticated as an admin user with permission to view the settings page to use it. This has not been documented yet but you can find all the code that deals with this in the “rest” directory. Custom Caching It is now possible to hook into the caching process using the add_cacheaction() function. Three hooks are available: ‘wp_cache_get_cookies_values’ – modify the key used by WP Cache. ‘add_cacheaction’ – runs in phase2. Allows a plugin to add WordPress hooks. ‘cache_admin_page’ – runs in the admin page. Use it to modify that page, perhaps by adding new configuration options. There is one regular WordPress filter too. Use the “do_createsupercache” filter to customize the checks made before caching. The filter accepts one parameter. The output of WP-Cache’s wp_cache_get_cookies_values() function. WP Super Cache has its own plugin system, loaded before most of WordPress. Add your own plugin either by putting it in the wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache-plugins directory, or by calling wpsc_add_plugin( $name ) with the full path to the plugin. The cookies used to identify “known users” can be modified with wpsc_add_cookie( $name ) and wpsc_delete_cookie( $name ). See plugins/searchengine.php as an example. Troubleshooting If things don’t work when you installed the plugin here are a few things to check: Is wp-content writable by the web server? Is there a wp-content/wp-cache-config.php ? If not, copy the file wp-super-cache/wp-cache-config-sample.php to wp-content/wp-cache-config.php and make sure WPCACHEHOME points at the right place. Is there a wp-content/advanced-cache.php ? If not, then you must copy wp-super-cache/advanced-cache.php into wp-content/. You must edit the file and change the path so it points at the wp-super-cache folder. If pages are not cached at all, remove wp-content/advanced-cache.php and recreate it, following the advice above. Make sure the following line is in wp-config.php and it is ABOVE the “require_once(ABSPATH.’wp-settings.php’);” line: define( 'WP_CACHE', true ); Try the Settings->WP Super Cache page again and enable cache. Look in wp-content/cache/supercache/. Are there directories and files there? Anything in your php error_log? If your browser keeps asking you to save the file after the super cache is installed you must disable Super Cache compression. Go to the Settings->WP Super Cache page and disable it there. File locking errors such as “failed to acquire key 0x152b: Permission denied in…” or “Page not cached by WP Super Cache. Could not get mutex lock.” are a sign that you may have to use file locking. Edit wp-content/wp-cache-config.php and uncomment “$use_flock = true” or set $sem_id to a different value. You can also disable file locking from the Admin screen as a last resort. Make sure cache/wp_cache_mutex.lock is writable by the web server if using coarse file locking. The cache folder cannot be put on an NFS or Samba or NAS share. It has to be on a local disk. File locking and deleting expired files will not work properly unless the cache folder is on the local machine. Garbage collection of old cache files won’t work if WordPress can’t find wp-cron.php. Check your access_logs for wp-cron.php entries and that your hostname resolves to the external IP address other servers on the network/Internet use. If old pages are being served to your visitors via the supercache, you may be missing Apache modules (or their equivalents if you don’t use Apache). 3 modules are required: mod_mime, mod_headers and mod_expires. The last two are especially important for making sure browsers load new versions of existing pages on your site. The error message, “WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed!” appears at the end of every page. Open the file wp-content/advanced-cache.php in your favourite editor. Is the path to wp-cache-phase1.php correct? This file will normally be in wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/. If it is not correct the caching engine will not load. Caching doesn’t work. The timestamp on my blog keeps changing when I reload. Check that the path in your .htaccess rules matches where the supercache directory is. You may have to hardcode it. Try disabling supercache mode. If supercache cache files are generated but not served, check the permissions on all your wp-content/cache/supercache folders (and each of wp-content cache and supercache folders) and wp-content/cache/.htaccess. If your PHP runs as a different user to Apache and permissions are strict Apache may not be able to read the PHP generated cache files. To fix you must add the following line to your wp-config.php (Add it above the WP_CACHE define.) Then clear your cache. umask( 0022 ); If you see garbage in your browser after enabling compression in the plugin, compression may already be enabled in your web server. In Apache you must disable mod_deflate, or in PHP zlib compression may be enabled. You can disable that in three ways. If you have root access, edit your php.ini and find the zlib.output_compression setting and make sure it’s “Off” or add this line to your .htaccess: php_flag zlib.output_compression off If that doesn’t work, add this line to your wp-config.php: ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 0); After uninstalling, your permalinks may break if you remove the WordPress mod_rewrite rules too. Regenerate those rules by visiting the Settings->Permalink page and saving that form again. If your blog refuses to load make sure your wp-config.php is correct. Are you missing an opening or closing PHP tag? Your front page is ok but posts and pages give a 404? Go to Settings->permalinks and click “Save” once you’ve selected a custom permalink structure. You may need to manually update your .htaccess file. If certain characters do not appear correctly on your website your server may not be configured correctly. You need to tell visitors what character set is used. Go to Settings->Reading and copy the ‘Encoding for pages and feeds’ value. Edit the .htaccess file with all your Supercache and WordPress rewrite rules and add this at the top, replacing CHARSET with the copied value. (for example, ‘UTF-8’) AddDefaultCharset CHARSET The error message, “WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The constant WPCACHEHOME must be set in the file wp-config.php and point at the WP Super Cache plugin directory.” appears at the end of every page. You can delete wp-content/advanced-cache.php and reload the plugin settings page or edit wp-config.php and look for WPCACHEHOME and make sure it points at the wp-super-cache folder. This will normally be wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/ but you’ll likely need the full path to that file (so it’s easier to let the settings page fix it). If it is not correct the caching engine will not load. If your server is running into trouble because of the number of semaphores used by the plugin it’s because your users are using file locking which is not recommended (but is needed by a small number of users). You can globally disable file locking by defining the constant WPSC_DISABLE_LOCKING, or defining the constant WPSC_REMOVE_SEMAPHORE so that sem_remove() is called after every page is cached but that seems to cause problems for other processes requesting the same semaphore. Best to disable it. Set the variable $htaccess_path in wp-config.php or wp-cache-config.php to the path of your global .htaccess if the plugin is looking for that file in the wrong directory. This might happen if you have WordPress installed in an unusual way.

WPSpeed is a powerful and complete WordPress performance plugin, built to achieve the highest Google PageSpeed scores — including 100 on mobile — while improving Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) and dramatically reducing loading times. Using an innovative system that generates lightweight HTML copies of your pages and bypasses WordPress execution, WPSpeed delivers static, cached output for maximum speed. Combined with automatic optimization, image compression, lazy loading, minification, and advanced resource control, WPSpeed becomes an all-in-one solution that can fully replace multiple optimization plugins. 👉 Unlike traditional caching plugins, WPSpeed generates lightweight static HTML versions that bypass WordPress execution entirely reducing TTFB to near-zero. WPSpeed is the easiest plugin to speed up your WordPress website being capable to find the optimal configuration automatically and integrating the Google PageSpeed test. WPSpeed is ideal for users searching for: fast WordPress plugin to improve front-end and back-end performance improve TTFB WordPress (reduce Time To First Byte) reduce server load on shared hosting or high-traffic sites fix INP (Interaction to Next Paint) and other Core Web Vitals issues optimize Elementor performance and reduce heavy builder scripts WordPress performance optimization cache plugin with static HTML caching mobile speed optimization (reach 100/100 PageSpeed) image optimization with WebP/AVIF minify and combine JavaScript/CSS lazy load images, iframes and heavy HTML elements You can watch the impressive video and check the demo site: 🚀 Try WPSpeed Live on WordPress Playground 🚀 🚀 GET THE PRO VERSION 🚀 FREE vs PRO ⚠️ FREE version limitations: – Only the homepage is optimized – Only 1 page can use full optimization Upgrade to the PRO version to: Optimize all pages Enable static HTML caching (.htaccess caching) Boost TTFB dramatically Unlock full image optimization rules Remove all limitations Receive expert on-site support Purchase a PRO license: GET THE PRO VERSION VISIT PRODUCT PAGE Interested in our WordPress Speed Performance Service? Contact us now at [email protected] by providing an admin account to our expertise team for a free test installation on your website and performance optimization. 🚀 Key Features 🔥 Adaptive Contents™ Generate a lightweight version of your website that dramatically increases PageSpeed scores while preserving full functionality. ⚡ Instant Page™ Ultra-fast navigation using just-in-time preloading. Loads the next page before the user even clicks. 🧠 Auto Configuration + Integrated PageSpeed Test WPSpeed finds optimal settings automatically and integrates Google PageSpeed Insights directly in the plugin. 🏎 Static HTML Cache Serve pages as static HTML and bypass WordPress execution for maximum performance and extremely low TTFB. 🧹 Minify JS, CSS & HTML Reduce file size, remove whitespace, optimize delivery and combine multiple assets into fewer requests. 🎯 Above-the-Fold CSS Extraction Extract critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously to eliminate render-blocking resources. 📦 Defer / Async / Preload Advanced control of CSS, JS and Web Fonts to improve LCP and reduce blocking time. 🖼 Image Optimization (WebP / AVIF / Lossless) Resize, compress and optimize large images Convert images to next-gen formats (WebP + AVIF) Create srcset automatically Optimize background images 💤 Lazy Load (Images, Iframes, HTML Elements) Load heavy content only when necessary to fix LCP and improve scroll performance. 🗂 Resource Control Remove unused CSS, JS and fonts. Rewrite URLs to CDN automatically. 🔧 Htaccess Optimization Apply browser caching, compression and more via automatic rules. 🧱 DOM Reduction Remove unnecessary DOM elements and load heavy blocks asynchronously. 🌐 HTTP/2 Optimizations Support for server push and resource preload. 🛡 Conflict Management Full exclusions system for scripts and styles to resolve issues easily. WPSpeed functionalities include: •Scripts minification: Javascript can be minified to reduce the total scripts size and save bandwidth •Stylesheets minification: CSS can be minified to reduce the total CSS size, save bandwidth and extract the ‘Above-the-fold’ CSS •HTML minification: The HTML source code can be minified to reduce the total page size and save bandwidth •Combine multiple JS and CSS files: Javascript and CSS can be combined in single files to minimize the HTTP request overhead •Adaptive Contents™: this technology makes it possible to generate a lightweight version of the website to raise up the page speed score without losing website functionalities •Instant Page technology™: Instant Page uses just-in-time preloading. This feature, compatible with both desktop and mobile devices, preloads a page right before a user clicks on it •Auto configuration and integrated Google PageSpeed: WPSpeed is capable to find the optimal configuration automatically and integrates the Google PageSpeed test •Page cache: Integrated and optimized technology for page caching to avoid heavy requests to your server and database. The PRO version supports the .htaccess page caching so that pages are served up as static HTML completely bypassing the execution of WordPress and dramatically increases performance and reducing the TTFB •Defer and preload of assets: CSS, JS and Web Fonts can be loaded in defer, async or preload mode •Lazy-load images: Images and iframes that are out of view can be lazy-loaded only when the user scrolls down the page to display them •Lazy-load HTML elements: Heavy HTML elements that slow down the LCP can be easily lazy-loaded •Images optimization: Large images can be rescaled, resized and optimized on the fly to dramatically reduce the page size and bandwidth •Optimization of background images: WPSpeed is capable to optimize also images that are set as a background through HTML and CSS styles •Lossless optimization: Large images in PNG and JPG format can be optimized on the fly using a lossless algorithm •Srcset creation for images: WPSpeed is capable to automatically create an image srcset using up to 4 differently-sized images for various resolutions •Images conversion to WebP and AVIF: Images can be converted in realtime to the WebP and AVIF next generation format •Assets removal: It’s possible to remove CSS/JS files and Fonts to avoid the loading of unnecessary resources •Htaccess optimization: A series of optimizations can be applied to the htaccess file in order to leverage the browser caching •CSS extraction: WPSpeed is capable to extract basic CSS styles and load them above the fold to avoid render blocking resources •DOM tree reduction: Excessive DOM elements can be automatically removed and loaded asynchronously •Combine images: It’s possible to generate a single container image for multiple backgrounds applied through CSS •HTTP/2 optimizations: WPSpeed works with HTTP/2 compatible servers to enable server push •CDN support: Links for all assets can be automatically rewritten to point to your CDN domain •Fix conflicts easily: WPSpeed integrates a powerful exclusions system to fix conflicts due to minification of scripts Documentation Download and read the PDF documentation or visit our FAQ page on the main plugin site for more information on how the plugin works and how to configure it to improve your scores for Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix. If you have a license for the PRO version you can contact us for on site support at [email protected] Advanced Features and Premium Support If you need assistance on your website by our expertise team to find optmimal settings of WPSpeed and reach the maximum score, please purchase a license and contact us at [email protected] to get on site service.