How to set up wordpress W3 Total Cache Plugin:

First lets see what is W3 Total Cache…In one line it massively speeds up your site.

Important:

Step1:

Before you install W3 Total Cache, you have to  uninstall all other caching plugins like WP Super Cache. If you do not do this prior to installing, W3 Total Cache plugin will have conflict issues upon activation.

Step2:

Download plugin directly through your WordPress Admin Panel» Plugin» Add New, where you will search the name “W3 Total Cache”. Type the name in search, install and activate it OR

Use the WordPress.org repository and then upload it via FTP. If you choose to upload W3 Total Cache via FTP, first download the plugin and then upload it in to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory. Upon the activation of this plugin, a new menu option will be added in your WordPress admin panel called “Performance”.

Step3:

Go to WordPress admin panel»Performance »General Settings. Click the disable button which disables the preview mode and makes the plugin actually active. We can do this after we finish settings.

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In case of Errors after activation:[skip if no errors]

After activating plugin, if you get the following error..There are two way to solve it.

Solution A: Go to your FTP upload app such as Filezilla. Right-click ‘wp content’ folder and click over permissions(file attributes). You have to change the permissions on your wp-content folder from 755 to 777 .

Solution B: login into cPanel of your host» File Manager» choose document root: Go» Right- click ‘wp content’ folder and click over permissions. Change to 777

After you change the settings try activating it again.You should see plugin activated

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How to solve the W3 Total Cache warnings? [skip if no warnings]

Now Go to General Settings:

If you see some warnings at the top like these:

‘

The top warning mentions how your wp-content folder is “writeable” and needs to be chmod back to 755.’ Change the permission back to 755   by applying the Solution A  or Solution B that I have explained above  in “In case of Errors after activation:”.

‘The second will mention how you’re in “Preview Mode” and none of your settings or changes will become active until you either “Deploy” the system or disable the preview mode.’ Don’t pay attention to the second warning. We will deploy or activate after we have finished all settings.

Sometimes there can be .htaccess issues with the same permission:

You’ll have to chmod either your parent directly or the .htaccess file as per your message.Click “try again” button and see if it makes any difference.

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What’s the meaning of cache in simple language:

Do I wish to carry a bank with me, or go back again and again to withdraw money? We simply carry cash in a wallet or use a credit card. The bank is used as storage. browser cache, page cache…all these cache are nothing, but function more like a temporary storage or memory.

We don’t visit a bank everyday. We simply use a card to facilitate payments. The same way our sites use W3 Cache to withdraw stored information via cache when a visitor visits it.

When W3 Cache is on: User» visit’s site» page loaded via cache( cache is similar your wallet)
If you don’t use w3 cache  it’s a longer route, & affects the download speed:   User» PHP recognizes the call» goes to the MySQL Database»  page loaded via server

When a page is loaded for the first time, the cache file will be written to your application/cache folder. On subsequent page loads the cache file will be retrieved and sent to the requesting user’s browser. If it has expired, it will be deleted and refreshed before being sent to the browser.
The amount of dynamic information you display in your pages correlates directly to the server resources, memory, and processing cycles utilized, which affect the page load speeds. By caching your pages, since they are saved in their fully rendered state, you can achieve performance that nears that of static web pages.

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Configure your General Settings: You can see below how your W3 Total Cache menu appears:

step 1: In W3 Total Cache Menu> click General

step2:

choose Page Cache  (section)
Page Cache:  Enable

Page Cache method: choose Disk enhanced

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Minify  (section)
Minify:  Enable

Minify Cache method: Disk

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Database Cache  (section)
Database Cache:  Enable

Database Cache method: Disk

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Object Cache  (section)
Object Cache:  Enable

Object Cache method: Disk

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Browser Cache  (section)
Browser Cache:  Enable

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 choose CDN
CDN:  Enable

CDN SERVICES ARE NOT FREE, SO FOR THE MOMENT WE LEAVE IT. [CDN takes the load and bandwidth off your main server.]

I have enabled minify,database cache, and object cache. They work fine over my site as enabled.W3 Total Cache has many advanced settings and it’s up to us what is suitable to our site.

NOTE:

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IN MENU NOW  SEARCH FOR Page Cache Settings[It's the second choice]

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General:

Cache feeds: site, categories, tags, comments

Cache requests only for www.millenniumincome.com hostname

Don’t cache pages for logged in users
Enable the above only and save all settings.

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Advanced: (skip it)

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Cache Preload:

Automatically prime the page cache

Sitemap will have your url, what you are seeing is mine.

So it will be as http://www.your blog url/sitemap.xml

With Cache Preload, you can automatically “fill the cache”, using a XML sitemap.It Automatically loads pre-cached pages to all visitors, even if a page has not been visited recently. You can achieve better performance in an application by preloading caches.Keep it disabled if you run into performance problems when the preload activates, or lower the number of ‘Pages per interval’.

Save changes.

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Purge Policy: Maintain the default settings.The defaults are recommended because additional options may reduce server performance:

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W3 Total Cache Minify Settings – Click minify

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General settings:

Rewrite URL structure
If disabled, CSS and JS embeddings will use GET variables instead of “fancy” links.
Disable minify for logged in users (leave it)

Minify error notification: choose admin and email notification
Notify when minify cache creation errors occur.

Save changes.

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HTML & XML

HTML minify settings:

Enable
Inline CSS minification
Inline JS minification
Don’t minify feeds
Line break removal

Saves changes.

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JS

JS minify settings:

Enable
Combine only after <head>
Combine only after <body>
Combine only before </body>
Preserved comment removal (not applied when combine only is active)
Line break removal (not safe, not applied when combine only is active)

Saves changes.

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CSS

CSS minify settings:

Enable
Combine only
Preserved comment removal (not applied when combine only is active)
Line break removal (not applied when combine only is active)

By enabling all these you streamline your CSS files very well.

Well coded CSS will work without any problems. If you run into problems with badly coded CSS, try disabling the Comment- and Line break removal.

There are some features that simply do not function as they were intended in a minified state. Also, your WordPress Theme will interpret some of these requests in different ways so you might end up with a fully functional look with one theme while another one might completely break in style and form.

Save changes.

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Advanced:

Save changes.

Essentially what “minifying” does to the files on your site is combine them into one file and then strip out all the unnecessary code that increases the weight of the overall file.
In case minify creates problems and your host suggest you disable it, Go to General > Tick mark ‘ Disable minify for logged in users’

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SKIP Database Cache | Object Cache , SKIP Minify Cache AS WELL IF YOUR HOSTS SUGGEST IT.

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Browser Cache Settings:Click Browser

General:

Set expires header
Set the expires header to encourage browser caching of files.

Set cache control header
Set pragma and cache-control headers to encourage browser caching of files.

Set W3 Total Cache header
Set this header to assist in identifying optimized files.

Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
Reduce the download time for text-based files.

Save changes.
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CSS & JS

Set expires header
Set the expires header to encourage browser caching of files.

Expires header lifetime: seconds

Set W3 Total Cache header
Set this header to assist in identifying optimized files.

Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
Reduce the download time for text-based files.

leave the rest as they are and save settings.

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HTML & XML

Set expires header
Set the expires header to encourage browser caching of files.

 Set cache control header
Set pragma and cache-control headers to encourage browser caching of files.

 Set W3 Total Cache header
Set this header to assist in identifying optimized files.

 Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
Reduce the download time for text-based files.

leave the rest as they are and save settings.

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Media and Other Files

Set expires header
Set the expires header to encourage browser caching of files.

Expires header lifetime: seconds

Set cache control header
Set pragma and cache-control headers to encourage browser caching of files.

Set W3 Total Cache header
Set this header to assist in identifying optimized files.

Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
Reduce the download time for text-based files.

save settings
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menu:User Agent Groups (skip it)

This is where you’ll do tweaks for different agents, e.g. mobile users, but you can skip these for now.

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menu:Referrer Groups(skip it)

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 menu: CDN(skip it)

Content Delivery Network settings

This is where you’ll configure W3TC and the blog to use CDN ( skip it – It’s very good, but we need to pay)

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Go back to W3 Total Cache General Settings:

Now that you have everything setup, it is best to create a backup for your W3 Total Cache Configuration.
Go to W3 Total Cache’s General Settings Page> Import/Export Settings. Click to Download the settings file from your server. If your site crashes, or you reset the settings by mistake, you will have a file to backup.

Finally, one of the most useful features is the ability to import and export your settings for other installations and backup. In case you have more than one blog using this heavily customized set of settings it makes it very easy to transfer all work by exporting a ‘core’ setting and then importing this file into new blogs:

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Now you are done.

Go to General Settings page and hit ‘Deploy’ in case you haven’t already.You’ll see ‘Preview settings successfully deployed’

Hit ‘Disable’ to disable the preview mode and “go live”

Hit ‘Empty Page Cache’

Hit ‘Empty Minify Cache’

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This  post should give you an idea as to how powerful this plugin is, It’s a must for all blogs. Don’t ignore it – It’s free for non commercial purposes and small businesses. I know it will take sometime to set it up, but it’s worth the effort. You just need to keep my post page and your settings page open..Just follow the steps. Once it’s done the results are magic. We all want that, don’t we?

I hope you implement it. Do leave behind your very precious comments, anything you have on mind – Tell me what have you been doing to speed up your site!  I’d love to hear from you ! Share the word!

have a smiling day!

mickey

Why not head over to Tips for writing ebook  or  Design your Own ebook Cover for free in 3 steps . You will like it after working so hard over your settings -:). No other post demands it.

Some Evergreen Post:

» Keyword Domain Name – A king or Mere Jack?

» Passport to backlink

» Finally The Secret To writing good Content !

» build-ur-blog

W3TC  is Trusted by countless sites like: millenniumincome….yes!

• Mashable
• stevesouders.com
• mattcutts.com
• pearsonified.com
• Smashing Magazine
• Web Designer Depot
• MakeUseOf
• CSS-Tricks
• I Love Typography

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Tags: Settings for W3 Total Cache