How to Setup the Best Cache Plugin – Using the Free Version!

After spending most of my morning updating my WordPress cache plugin… the BEST cache plugin, I might add, as is claimed by Tom Dupuis in his blog post… I thought I would show you what happened when I used Tom’s suggestion.

Preferring to use “free” plugins whenever and wherever available, after much talk about the best cache plugin discussed on a membership site I’ve now joined, I went on a search of the internet and discovered the EXACT setup necessary for this plugin to work its magic.

You CAN sign up for a paid version, but all of my websites are being rated REAL high (according to GTmetrix) with using only the free version.

…and, this website uses an older FREE WordPress theme where I created a child theme and tweaked the stylesheet to make it my own.

If you need to know how to install a plugin, feel free to check this video tutorial out:

Anyway … next page … we’ll start with how to setup the WP Fastest Cache plugin … the free version (Tom’s video covers that paid version).

Be sure to checkmark ALL options within the plugin Settings tab that are available to the free version, as shown below.

In the Preload option window (first popup), I’ve been informed that if your website is on shared hosting (which, yes … we are on shared hosting here at WA) you should set your pages per minute from 4 to 6. You can leave the default setting at 4 or move it up to 6, you’re choice. Also, make sure to check mark the Homepage, Posts, Categories, and Pages BEFORE clicking on the OK button in this option window.

At the Delete Cache tab, you now need to click on the Delete Cache and Minified CSS/JS button as shown in the image below:

On the Cache Timeout tab, you need to set up a time for your cache to be deleted automatically … or suffer a very poor rating. The following screen prints show how to do that:

And then your timeout will look like the following screen print:

Voila!

Hope this helps you get the most of out of this awesome plugin.

NOTE: A favourite Thrive Theme I now use does NOT like having the Combine Css option selected in this cache plugin. When selected, my fonts were totally corrupted.

At first it was thought that the Minify options may be causing this … but alas, upon choosing ONE option AT A TIME to uncheck (and then deleting the cache) and refreshing my website view in between each option changed, it was found to be causes by the Combine Css option only … and only on this one theme. Using another Thrive Theme so far so good, this plugin’s caching options are ALL selected.

How to Manually Clear or Delete Cache

If you wish to manually delete the cache, the following screen prints will show you 2 different options available to you, in doing this.

Hope you have found this post helpful as that is my intention of sharing it here.