You are already well on your way!<\/p>
What is missing now is to take your business to the next level<\/strong>: the level where you can declare that your online activity is profitable and successful.<\/p> We at WP Rocket have teamed up with five other partners in the WordPress market to create a content hub to guide you on this path. All the tips you’ll receive in this content hub to grow your online business are based on WordPress because this is the environment we know best (and we have been successfully working on it for years!).<\/p> To grow a successful online business, you need to focus on these seven pillars:<\/p> In this article, we\u2019ll focus on why caching is an important foundation for a solid online business<\/strong> and how you can make the most of it, even if you are not a web performance expert.<\/p> Ready to dive in? Let\u2019s go!<\/p> Speed is everything in a competitive market like the web: this is one of the most important metrics that Google and other search engines measure to rank your site in the SERP. <\/p> You can have the most beautiful products and the most useful services, but if they end up in the cauldron of the SERP internal pages, they will hardly attract visits and sales. Furthermore, speed has a direct impact on user experience. According to a recent study commissioned by Google to Deloitte Ireland: <\/p> 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer, and in the US, latency is the number one reason why consumers decide to abandon mobile sites, with 10% blaming slow downloads as a reason for not purchasing.<\/p>Source: <\/em>Milliseconds make millions, Deloitte Ireland LLP, 2020<\/em><\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote> If you sell your products or services online, ensuring that your potential customers don’t have to wait long to view your pages or complete a purchase is critical to your business growth.<\/p> Caching plays an important role in the process that leads a website to rank in the highest SERP positions.<\/p> Why? Because a website that has a robust caching system behind it will run faster<\/strong>. This means that anyone who lands on its pages will promptly see their content, read and interact with them (and yes, buy<\/em>!).<\/p> Google itself gives us a quantitative idea of the impact that the speed of a web page has on its conversion rate:<\/p> Now that we have clarified the importance of a fast website let’s see how caching works and how you can make the most of it. As said in the beginning, we will mainly focus on caching applied to WordPress.<\/p> Technically speaking, this is what happens:<\/p> A visitor lands on your WordPress site; their browser talks to your web server, which loads up WordPress. This implies a series of behind-the-scenes actions:<\/p> This process can take several seconds \u2013 an eternity to our impatient readers and customers.<\/p> A caching system replaces this process with one simple, and much faster, action: it stores frequently-accessed data temporarily in a cache. Do you know how much is 5,489,146 divided by 43,204?<\/em><\/p> Hard math to calculate in your mind, isn’t it? Now, do you know how much is 5,489,146 divided by 43,204? The concept behind caching is just that. Speaking of a website, caching translates to delivering a web page with super-fast response time<\/strong>, without having to do all the time-consuming processing we explained above, every time the page loads.<\/p> The visitor landing on a page of your site is \u201casking the question,\u201d and your server provides the answer. The next time a visitor goes to the same page, i.e., \u201casks the same question,\u201d your server can provide the answer, i.e., the web page, a lot faster.<\/p> Caching is a vast topic and involves different levels of complexity, but it doesn’t have to be the prerogative of experts alone. Before explaining how you can cache your WordPress site, it\u2019s important to distinguish between the different types of caching protocols available. Although they all aim to speed up your website, they act on various aspects of its operation.<\/p> The first distinction we need to make is between client-side caching and server-side caching.<\/p> To use Cloudflare\u2019s definition:<\/p> ‘Client-side’<\/strong> refers to everything in a web application that is displayed or takes place on the client (end-user device). This includes what the user sees, such as text, images, and the rest of the UI, along with any actions that an application performs within the user’s browser.<\/p>Source: Cloudflare, “What Do Client-Side and Server-Side Mean?”<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote> Every website contains tons of static data, such as:<\/p> Today, modern browsers are all able to understand that once these files are downloaded to be served to a visitor, there is no need to download them again if another person visits the same web page. Browsers will serve those files from their local cache, which is located on the users\u2019 hard drive.<\/p> This is what is usually called browser caching<\/a>. <\/p> Anything that does not happen on the client-side occurs on the <\/strong>server-side. ?<\/p> When it comes to caching, this includes all the protocols that are used under WordPress caching:<\/p> Let\u2019s see them briefly one by one.<\/p> Page Caching <\/strong>is the system that we saw at the beginning of this article (and it\u2019s what our plugin WP Rocket does). Page caching stores the entire HTML<\/strong> of a page<\/strong> (web pages, images, and similar media content) when loaded for the first time. <\/strong>It is also called Site Caching or HTTP Caching.<\/p> Object Caching<\/strong> stores database query results<\/strong> once they are loaded for the first time. Then, it serves them up faster the next time they\u2019re requested, so the database doesn\u2019t have to be queried again. WordPress also has its built-in object caching system<\/a>, which only stores data for as long as the request to the database lasts (usually for no more than one-page load): if you need persistent object caching, you can use a solution like Redis<\/a>.<\/p> OPcode Caching<\/strong> transforms human-readable PHP code<\/strong> into code readable by your server, generating what is called opcode<\/em>. This process happens when the PHP file is loaded on a web page for the first time. After that, it is saved in the server’s memory for faster loading on each subsequent visit of the page. OPcache is a popular type of OPcode caching<\/a>.<\/p> CDN Caching<\/strong> takes advantage of the architecture of a Content Delivery Network (CDN)<\/a>, a cluster of servers geographically located worldwide. Content Delivery Networks cache content using the server that\u2019s closest to the end-user. In this way, people visiting a website will be served the content cached on the server, which is geographically closer to them. As a result, they will experience faster loading times.<\/p> The quickest and easiest way to make your website fast is to install a WordPress caching plugin. There are several good caching plugins in the market, both free and premium. <\/p> Free caching plugins are available in the WordPress repository, while for the premium ones, you can run a quick web search.<\/p> This is where we save you time and make your search easier because WP Rocket<\/a> is recognized as the most powerful caching plugin by WordPress experts. ?<\/strong><\/p> More than 1 million sites around the world are already using the WP Rocket caching system.<\/p> One of the things that scare first-time caching plugins users is the configuration.<\/p> In many plugins, cache settings are numerous. They may require some prior technical knowledge: not exactly ideal if most of your time is already taken up by managing your business and striving for its growth. ?<\/p> With WP Rocket, this problem does not arise. WP Rocket automatically caches your website without you lifting a finger. <\/p> One of the things people prefer about WP Rocket is its simplicity<\/strong>. You just have to activate the plugin and let it make your site faster, thanks to page caching and other automatic optimizations.<\/p> Here are some of the automated features WP Rocket applies upon its activation:<\/p> On the other hand, if you can\u2019t wait to play around and customize WP Rocket\u2019s options, there are plenty of things you can do<\/a>. <\/p> In this video, you will discover what the best WP Rocket settings to optimize your website are. Since each WordPress site is different because of the theme and plugins installed and its core business, there are endless possibilities for setting WP Rocket:<\/p>
Our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive tutorial created by some of the most successful online businesses within the WordPress ecosystem<\/strong>.
<\/p>The Seven Pillars of a Successful Online Business<\/h2>
Why Should You Care About Speed?<\/h2>
<\/p>![\"Recommendation](\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/1\/mobile-page-load-time-and-bounces.png\")
WordPress Caching in Simple Terms<\/h3>
![\"WordPress](\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/1\/how-caching-works.png\")
How WordPress caching works<\/figcaption><\/figure>
To understand why this makes the process faster, let\u2019s put it in another way.<\/p>
Ok, grab the calculator and do the math: the result is 127.<\/p>
Of course, you do, you remember because you just read the result in the previous line. ?<\/p>
You did the initial time-consuming process once<\/strong>, then after that, when we asked you the same question, you readily knew the answer, and replied much faster.
<\/p>How to Cache a WordPress Website?<\/h2>
Anyone who launches an activity on the web can hone sufficient skills to make their site faster with a caching system. <\/p>Different Types of Caching<\/h3>
Client-Side Caching<\/h4>
Server-Side Caching<\/h4>
How to Use WP Rocket to Cache Your Website<\/h2>
![\"WP](\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/1\/WP-Rocket-Homepage.png\")
<\/figure>A Caching System That Doesn\u2019t Need Configuration<\/h3>
As soon as you install and activate the plugin, you will see the following confirmation message: <\/p>![\"WP](\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/1\/wp-rocket-dashboard.png\")
What Is Automatically Activated?<\/h4>