Skip to content

WP Rocket Tutorial, the cache plugin that will make your WordPress faster

wp engine wp rocket

In this tutorial I’m going to explain you how to configure WP Rocket in WordPress, one of the best cache plugins.

Perfect to optimize WordPress without complicating your life.

I admit that I’m a bit heavy on the subject of WordPress optimization.

But seeing as the picture goes, most visitors come from mobile devices.

That users do not have to wait when a web load slow.

And that the speed of the web is a SEO factor that seriously affects us.

Having a well optimized website is essential today.

wp rocket promo code 2020

WP Rocket, the best cache plugin for me today

WP Rocket is a wonderful premium cache plugin that I have been using on my websites for years and also install for free to my customers when I optimize the web.

It has a cost of $49 a year, but that is a tiny price for what it offers.

Let me make it clear: with the optimization that this plugin allows you save installing several to do the same thing.

It doesn’t matter if you have a website, blog or WooCommerce store.

Configure WP Rocket

Then we go to our WordPress plugins section – add new and we give you to upload.

We install it, activate it and another advantage of this plugin is that the license key is activated automatically.

We should already appear the option in the settings menu called WP Rocket.

Desktop

In the dashboard of the plugin WP Rocket we will be able to see the tabs in which it is divided: Basic, Static Files, CDN, Advanced, Preload, Varnish, Tools and Support.

As you can see, they are simple things.

In the last tab you will find some of the most frequently asked questions and you will be able to access technical support.

In this section you will be able to contact support without having to leave your website.

You put a summary title, description of your problem, send it and ready.

What more could you ask for?

Basic

LazyLoad

The Lazy Load feature means that images, iframes, and videos are not loaded until the user gets to where they are and they have to be displayed on the screen.

This significantly reduces the number of requests.

It is a good tool to speed up a web page and that until now a separate plugin was needed, although with this we no longer need it.

I recommend to activate it for the images and check immediately that we like the operation and does not hinder the navigation.

I’ve had clients who didn’t like it.

Regarding iframes and videos, I’ve also noticed some problems in some sites.

So check your website after activating them.

Mobile cache

The mobile cache is used to separate the cache of mobile devices from that of the desktop.

It’s interesting if you use a specific mobile theme.

Or if you use plugins that create a different mobile view like WP Touch, Jetpack’s mobile theme or some other.

There are themes that have specific CSS and JS and make the speed much better.

You can also save files separately for mobile devices, which greatly enhances this feature.

User cache

It’s to activate the cache for logged in users and I recommend it.

One mistake that people usually make is that they check the web being logged in and this way you don’t see the errors that there are.

In this way you learn everything and also the web will be faster for you.

If you use plugins builder as Elementor that is the one I use, I recommend you to check that everything is ok.

SSL cache

SSL cache works best when your entire website runs on HTTPS.

Emoji cache

WordPress makes a request to the emoji file that sometimes is a little slow and from here we deactivate it.

However, they will stop working.

Embeds

With embedded content we prevent other sites from using our content, which slows down our server.

But it also prevents WordPress from embedding certain content.

Cache lifespan

In the cache section we can manage this function.

Caching the web is very important if we want to avoid 500 errors and server crashes, in case of lack of resources.

wp rocket coupon code 2020

Static files

Minimize HTML

The HTML minification function reduces the size of the HTML code by removing things that don’t serve as comments, spaces, and so on.

Optimize files

In the section of optimizing files we can configure some interesting options to improve the loading of CSS and JS or JavaScript files.

Although the ideal thing is to use themes and plugins that do not use so many.

The good thing about this is that it substantially improves the speed and ranking in tools such as Pagespeed.

The bad news is that there are templates or plugins that can stop working with this function.

My recommendation is that you activate one by one and prove that your site looks good.

Note: Enter from an incognito window, since if you enter from there, WP Rocket does not cache pages to registered users.

Combine Google Font files

Almost all websites use Google fonts, but these make many requests.

With this you combine Google Fonts and reduce the number of requests.

Remove query strings from static resources

Query strings are basically a version control of static files.

The problem with that is that this check slows down the web a lot and this eliminates the versions.

Minimize CSS files

CSS files or style sheets are very large and tend to slow down the web a lot.

The ideal would be to use good plugins that do not put many requests, but with this you can improve it a lot.

This eliminates what is not necessary such as comments, spaces and others, making these files load faster.

Combine CSS files

By combining them, CSS files will make fewer requests.

So if you have for example 10 CSS files, they will all join into one.

Exclude CSS files

In the event that something goes wrong on the web, the files that go wrong should be excluded.

You exclude it and you can continue using that function that improves the speed of your web a lot.

Optimize CSS delivery

Basically it creates a CSS file with the code that is loaded first from the web, so that it loads faster.

Minimize JavaScript files

Files will be minified, so all blank spaces, comments and other codes that only make those scripts heavier will be removed.

Combine JavaScript files

It combines them into one so that fewer requests are made to the server, which speeds up a lot.

Integrated JavaScript excluded

If we have JavaScript integrated in the HTML, we can exclude it from the optimization.

Exclude JavaScript files

In case something stops working, we check and exclude the files.

Load JavaScript files on a deferred basis

With this the files do not block the loading of the web, so it will be faster.

JQuery Safe Mode

This makes JQuery not fail, but will make the web load something slower.

Media

In media we can optimize everything that has to do with images and similar content.

wp rocket plugin

CDN

With WP Rocket we can configure a CDN or Content Delivery Network in our WordPress.

A CDN is a server system that copies our static content such as images, videos, CSS and JS scripts around the world.

So if a user enters our website from the United States, those files are served to them from the nearest server.

From here you can activate this function and configure the CDN that suits you best.

Among the best known are Amazon CloudFront, StackPath (former MaxCDN), KeyCDN, Akamai and a few more.

We can also use our website as a CDN.

If we create in our hosting a subdomain called for example cdn.miweb.com, it will multiply the speed of our web.

Some files are downloaded from our main domain and others from the cdn subdomain.

This makes the web load faster, as the download is done simultaneously.

We can create as many CDNs as we want: cdn1, cdn1, cdn3, etc.

This same trick was used with WP Super Caché.

Cloudflare

Show Cloudflare settings tab

CDN Content

All URLs of static files (CSS, JS, images) will be rewritten to the CNAME(s) entered below.

CDN Cnames
CDN without SLL

If your CDN account does not fully support SSL, you can disable URL rewriting on HTTPS pages here.

Exclude files from the CDN

If you see that there are problems or simply do not want some files to be loaded from it, from here you can excuirlos.

coupon code for wp rocket 2020

Advanced

In the advanced rules we will be able to configure several interesting parameters for when we have problems.

Never cache these URLs

For when we don’t want certain URLs to be cached.

By the way, WP Rocket is already compatible with many ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads and never caches any of your pages like cart, payment, checkout, etc.

Think that if they were cached, some users would be shown other users’ pages such as the shopping cart or the account page.

This is one of the few plugins that saves you from doing the task of adding store pages manually.

Never cache these Cookies

Sometimes it can be interesting that some cookies are cached and that’s what this function is for.

Never cache these user agents

You can avoid caching different user agents, such as certain browsers that may give you problems.

One case is if you don’t want to cache pages that look bad, for example in the iPhone browser.

To do this you use the user agent which is the browser with which you enter the web.

You add the Apple-iPhone user agent of that version of iPhone and that’s it.

Always purge these URLs

It may also be interesting to purge the cache of some pages or entries.

Caching these query strings

If there are query strings that are not in cache, you can add them with this function.

wp rocket discount 2020

Database

From this section you can optimize the WordPress database, without having to enter the hosting, or installing other plugin for this task as in the case of WP Optimize.

I personally recommend doing a more effective cleaning from the hosting, but this improves a lot.

Revisions

With this we can eliminate the revisions that WordPress creates each time we update a content.

This is very important because you don’t see the revisions that are created every time you edit an entry.

By the way, I have disabled the revisions in the wp-config.

Automatic Erasers

Automatic drafts are created when we are updating content and with this we can delete them.

Discarded entries

This function removes discarded entries from our database.

Spam comments

You can schedule spam comments to be automatically deleted, but I personally recommend that you check them from time to time.

Be careful to delete good comments that have fallen into spam because of bad luck.

Discarded comments

Discarded comments can also be deleted.

Expired Trasients

The trasients are a kind of temporary data cache that WordPress creates from the calls to the database.

It makes requests to the database faster and WordPress accesses the data faster.

So when a certain call is made, it is stored as a trasient for later reuse.

Unfortunately having many can also slow it down, so this function removes those that are no longer useful.

Since they have an expiration date, we can delete those that are no longer usable from here.

All trasients

You can also remove all trasients, but this will make the requests a bit slower.

Optimized tables

Once we’ve cleaned up the database, we need to optimize the tables.

This is done by means of a function in the database that, by explaining it in some way, orders and improves the speed of the database.

This makes it go faster and also weighs less.

If you’re one of those who doesn’t handle databases or phpMyAdmin, this is going to be great for you.

With a single click we will optimize the database so that queries are done much faster.

Schedule automatic cleaning

We can schedule this cleaning to be done automatically from time to time on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

What more are you going to ask for?

wordpress rocket

Preload

The preload function causes the cache to be created before the user visits a URL, as usual.

With this function we activate so that the preload is done automatically.

In addition, WP Rocket can create it using the sitemap of several plugins such as Yoast SEO, All-in-one-one, Rank Math SEO or The SEO Framework, if you activate it.

Be careful because this increases the CPU consumption of the server.

Preloading DNS requests

You can also preload DNS requests.

Basically, if your website calls for example a Google Maps map, the DNS is loaded beforehand to make the request faster.

This works for Google Maps, Google Font, Google Fonts, Fonts Awesome or any external file.

Just insert the domain and subdomain without http to make it work.

Sitemap preloading

Activate sitemap-based cache preloading

Sitemap crawl interval

Waiting time between each URL crawl

Sitemaps for preloading

You must specify XML sitemap

Preload bot

Manual or automatic

Prefetch DNS requests

You must specify external hosts to be prefetched

Varnish

There are hostings that apart from you using some cache system, they implement their own as is the case of Varnish.

Unfortunately, most of the time they don’t have a plugin as in the case of the Siteground hosting provider, which does offer us the possibility of managing their cache system.

With this what can happen to us is that you are making some change in your web and you see that the change is not made no matter how much you clean your browser cache or the plugin.

With this method at least we will be able to correct this problem if our hosting uses this cache system.

If your hosting doesn’t have it, don’t pay any attention to it.

The bad thing about having 2 caches is that even if you empty the plugin, the hosting is still intact.

So with this addon and a single click, we empty both.

buy plugin wp rocket wordpress coupon discount 2020

Tools

He also has several interesting tools for those of us who work with him on a daily basis.

Beta testing

To make your site part of the tester program and test new versions. But beware, they are not stable and may have bugs.

Clear cache

To regenerate it again. Watch out, if you need to clear the cache of a URL, you can do it from the WordPress toolbar, once you’re in that URL.

Preload the cache

So that it loads all at once.

Export settings

You can export the settings to have them saved or if you usually use the same settings on multiple websites.

Import settings

From the import settings function you can import them and have the plugin configured with a click.

Rollback

The Rollback tool is one of the most interesting, since it allows you to return to a previous version of the plugin if you have problems with the update.