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!

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