W3 Total Cache Optimial Settings

W3 Total Cache is my favorite WordPress Caching Plugin. The only downside is that it has a ton of settings! Here are the common settings I use on most of my sites.

From the WordPress admin area, go to  the Performance tab:

• General Settings > Page Cache
  • Page Cache – Enabled
  • Page cache method – Enhanced (if the server allows it. Basic works just as well, too)
• General Settings > Minify
  • Minify – Enabled
  • Minify Mode – Auto
  • Minify cache method – Disk
  • HTML minifier – Default
  • JS minifier – Deafult
  • CSS minifier – Default
• General Settings > Browser Cache
  • Browser Cache – Enabled
• Page Cache > General
  • Cache front page – Enabled (This is optional, might cause issues)
  • Cache feeds – Enabled
  • Cache SSL (https) requests – Enabled
  • Cache URIs with query string variables – Enabled (This is optional, might cause issues)
  •  Don’t cache pages for logged in users – Enabled
• Page Cache > Cache Preload
  • Automatically prime the page cache – Enabled
• Page Cache > Cache Preload
  • Specify the pages and feeds to purge when posts are created, edited, or comments posted – All boxes checked under this heading
• Minify > HTML & XML
  • HTML minify settings – Enabled
  • Inline CSS minification – Enabled
  • Inline JS minification – Enabled

• Minify > JS
  • JS minify settings:
• Minify > CSS (These settings are tricky if you’re using a child theme. You might need to play with them a bit.)
  • CSS minify settings – Enable
  • Remove unnecessary backslashes – Enable
  • Compress colors – Enable
  • Compress font-weight – Enable
  • Remove last ; – Enable
  • @import handling – Process (Could break a child theme… in some cases.)
  • Compression – Highest
• Browser Cache
  • Check ever box on this page!

With the above settings, on my demo site, I’ve improved my Google PageSpeed Insights score from ~45 to ~92!