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While the headlines are dominated by how your site is ‘supposed’ to look, clued-up site owners know speed is the key. Visitors won’t be able to look at your design if your site doesn’t load and serve pages fast. However, if you leverage browser caching within WordPress, you have an excellent opportunity to keep users around.
There are many ways to leverage browser caching. Of course, as WordPress is the platform, plugins will be your first port of call. The good news is that there are many solutions to help you, although hard-coding a solution is also an option.
This post will show you how to leverage browser caching using plugins. First, let’s clear up the difference between server and browser caching.
The Difference Between Server Caching and Browser Caching
For the unaware, a ‘cache’ is a portion of memory that stores often-used data. The idea is that the cache recalls the data rather than loading it fresh every time. The result is an application that runs faster without compromising functionality.
As you might expect, a few types of caching can be implemented. The two broad categories are server caching and browser caching. There are similarities with both inherent to the caching process:
- The cache looks for data and information you use regularly.
- It stores the data away for when you need it next. In other words, when you access a website, the cache servers its files.
Of course, there are inherent differences in each, too:
- A server cache deals with the data under the hood of a website. This involves databases, PHP scripts, content, and more. It uses a separate server to store these elements for next time.
- A browser cache is called a ‘client-side cache’ because it stores files on your computer, and the website’s code determines how long they are kept there. It’s a way to serve front-end elements faster.
Caching, in general, can be a complex issue, and its efficiency depends on many factors. Your server type, specifications, software, design elements, coding structure, and more determine how well a site is cached and how pages are returned to you.
Why You’d Want to Leverage Browser Caching
You’d want to leverage browser caching mainly for the User Experience (UX). An end user won’t need to think about caching much. It’s more of a site owner’s responsibility but affects the UX directly.
It’s long been known that site loading times affect traffic figures, bounce rates, and income for almost all sites. Employing some form of caching will let you keep those loading times down.
However, speed isn’t the only benefit you can gain when you leverage browser caching. It’s a prominent reason to use it, but other positives exist. For example, you can use resources more efficiently because there’s less strain at each chain point.
There will be other minor benefits, but speed and resource optimization will be enough reasons to leverage browser caching for most sites. The following section will discuss the most straightforward way to do the job.
How to Leverage Browser Caching Within WordPress
Before we discuss the plugin approach, it’s worth discussing the manual method. This involves accessing your site’s server using Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and customizing your .htaccess file. From here, you’ll set a few different options using code.
It’s a solid approach and one we recommend you investigate. Even so, you’ll often have a caching plugin installed on your site, and it will include the functionality you need to leverage browser caching. Because of this, we’ll skip over the manual approach and show you how to do this through a plugin instead.
Browser Caching Plugins
Of course, you must also know which plugins have the proper functionality. It’s fantastic that almost all major players can leverage browser caching. For example, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, and more all have this functionality.
Unfortunately, solutions such as WP Super Cache and LiteSpeed Cache either don’t leverage browser caching (as per the former), or don’t guarantee support (as is the case with the latter). If you don’t want to give up one of these plugins, you could use another called Leverage Browser Caching:
This does what it says on the tin and works alongside any other solution you have. Regardless, the process to set this up is similar between solutions, and we’ll show you with W3 Total Cache.
First, make sure the plugin is installed and activated. When you’re ready, head to the Performance > General Settings screen to check whether you’ve enabled the Browser Cache:
Next, go to the Performance > Browser Cache screen within WordPress:
This is one section of many, but it’s all you need for this article. Here, check the following boxes:
- Set expires header
- Set cache control header
- Set entity tag (ETag)
- Set W3 Total Cache header
- Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
When you’re ready, save your changes, which should be enough. Note that you can also adjust the header lifetime further on down this page:
The default value should be good enough – at 31,536,000 seconds, this equates to a whole year. It’s best not to go under two weeks (604,000 seconds).
Wrapping Up
The user experience is paramount for any application. For a website, UX should be central to your global strategy. If a decision is not user-focused, you may want to reconsider it. Site speed is a massive factor when it comes to UX. Caching can help make your site more efficient and keep loading times high.
In this post, we‘ve examined how to leverage browser caching in WordPress. Depending on your server type and setup, you can take a manual approach, which is worthwhile. However, a WordPress plugin such as W3 Total Cache (among others) can do the job in a few clicks and let you get back to running your site.
Do you want to leverage browser caching in WordPress, and if so, what solution will you opt for? Let us know in the comments section below!
