WordPress Caching Optimization and Performance
There are tons of good and bad reviews for Plugins that Optimize and increase Performance for WordPress. All of them leave out these useful bits of information that are probably of more interest to experts than novices. And that's not being mean to novicies, it's tempting them to become experts too by learning.
All of them do a good job in terms of speeding things up.
WP Optimize
Best Features;
- Shows Progress of Cache as it's being created, without refreshing page
- Cache and Minification can be turned on or off
Worst Issue(s);
- The cache contains a bunch of files with mobile and desktop and 'mystery' files all combined.
- For some odd reason, it does NOT generate cache files for desktop pages until they are visited. Even when 'pre-loading'.
- Appears to be Case Sensitive and will build two different caches if Camel Case (look it up) is used to make website names easier to read. This is one thing that I would love to know the origins on with Microsoft and their decision to have a case insensitive OS. Saves a LOT of trouble (sorry, just a side note there without being disparaging towards Linux, etc.).
WP Fastest Cache
Best Features;
- Simple Cache with single files for each page,
- Preaload just works, without having to visit a page one time (unlike WP Optimize)
Worst Issue(s);
- The progress of building the cache isn't updated live, but rather requires a refresh of the Admin Page
- Poor wording on some of the documentation (Example: "Restart Preload After Completed", OK, how about "Restart Preload after Completing", but that's just the beginning. What does that mean. What if means is "runs continuously to build cached pages" OR "starts over" OR "starts rebuilding cache as soon as it's finished" OR "repeats". Get it? Well, none of those descriptions are used in their documentation. That seems mean, because they did try and do documentation. However, the point of documentation is to help people understand, and if it doesn't achieve that goal, then it isn't very good documenation. But hey, it's better than a lot of other Plugins.
Best Features;
- S
Worst Issue(s);
- T
Best Features;
- S
Worst Issue(s);
- T
Bloat Items to Watch Out for
SkyBoot Icons (part of Elementor or addon for Elementor)