On our own agency site, Turksem.com, we have used just about every caching plugin there is, paid and free. You could say we are a little obsessive about speed on Turksem.com. We go as far as trying to stop the 300 KB of JS and CSS that Contact Form 7 loads on every page from loading anywhere except the pages that actually carry the contact form. We have been working on WordPress PageSpeed for a long time.
Türk SEM uses the WP Fastest Cache plugin.
The Ideal WP Fastest Cache Settings
We do not recommend combining JS or combining CSS in any caching plugin, as a rule. The basic reason is that it creates unnecessary extra load. If your server is on HTTP/1.1, combining may make sense. If your server is running on HTTP/2 or HTTP/3, do not combine.
An AMP Tip
If your site uses AMP pages and you want those AMP pages cached, use the common form “/amp/” rather than “?amp=1”. Use “/amp/” and WP Fastest Cache will cache your site.
Image Optimization
The free version of WP Fastest Cache does no image optimization, and the pro version resizes up to 1,000 images. Both of those will fall short. So use a separate plugin and optimize your images free of charge with EWWW Optimizer.
What to Do if Something Breaks
If the layout on your site breaks, go to Chrome > Developer > Inspect > Console and find out which JS or CSS file is throwing the error. Then open “WP Fastest Cache Options > Exclude” and exclude the files causing it.
Clearing the Cache
You may have noticed that the cache is not cleared when a new post is added or an existing one is edited. The pages where that new post appears you have to clear yourself.
- The home page
- The category page
- The tag page
If you would rather not deal with clearing them, tick the box and pick the home page and categories option, second in the list.
That is all there is to it.
If anything is unclear, ask us in the comments.
