Setup WordPress with W3 Total Cache

Important note

This tutorial assumes you have already created a pull zone.
 

Installing W3 Total Cache

  • Login to your WordPress Admin Panel
  • Hover your mouse over “Plugins” and click “Add new”
  • In the “Search” box, type “W3 Total Cache” and hit “Search Plugins”
  • Find “W3 Total Cache” and in the “Description” box, it will show that the plugin is created by “Frederick Townes”. This is the plugin you need to install.
  • Click “Install Now”. A Prompt Dialog will open asking if you are sure you want to install the plugin, click “OK”. After the plugin is installed, click “Activate Plugin”.
  • A new Menu Item called “Performance” will appear on the left panel. Hover on it and click “General Settings”.

Configuring W3 Total Cache

  • Login to your WordPress Admin panel, and scroll down to the “Performance” link on the left panel and hit “General Settings”.
  • Enable “Page Cache” with method “Disk: Enhanced”.
  • Enable “Minify” with mode “Manual”.
  • Disable “Database Cache”.
  • Enable “Object Cache”.
  • Enable “Browser Cache”.
  • Enable”CDN” and select “NetDNA” OR “MaxCDN” depending on your account type, from the “CDN Type” drop down list.
  • From left side menu navigate to “Performance” —> “CDN” to enter detailed CDN settings.
    • Under “General” section you can select which types of files you wish to host on CDN and enable “Add canonical header” for SEO benefits.
    • Scroll down to “Configuration” section and insert your API details (alias, consumer key and consumer secret) in “Authorization key” field following this format: alias+consumer_key+consumer_secret or hit “Authorize” button which will redirect you to your CDN control panel in order to retrieve API details. If you don’t have API generated already, please follow this instruction page in order to generate API details.
    • After Authorization key is populated insert your CDN domain, which you’ve gained after Pull zone is created, (temporary URL or custom domain if you have any)  into the “Replace site’s hostname with” field.
    • To test the connection to your zone hit “Test NetDNA” button. In case you are directed to main w3tc page with error: “A configuration issue prevents CDN from working: You need to select / create a pull zone. Specify it here.” just hit on provided link called “Specify it here” and you’ll be directed back to Configuration section to select a pull zone from newly provided drop down list.
    • Hit Test NetDNA again and test should pass as a success.
    • To finish settings just confirm with “Save all settings”.

Tweaking

  • Tweak Browser cache: From left side menu navigate to “Performance” —> “Browser Cache” to define cache policy.
    • Under “General” section check in provided features for browser caching:
      1. Set Last-Modified header
      2. Set expires header
      3. Set cache control header
      4. Set entity tag (eTag)
      5. Set W3 Total Cache header
      6. Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
      7. Disable cookies for static files
      8. Do not process 404 errors for static objects with WordPress
      • Hit “Save all settings” to finish defining browser cache policy.
  • Tweak Minify: From left side menu navigate to “Performance” —> “Minify”.
    • Under “HTML & XML” section check in “Enabled” and define (enable) minify settings:
      1. Inline CSS minification
      2. Inline JS minification
      3. Don’t minify feeds
      • Hit “Save all settings” to finish setting minify.

Additional CDN tweaks

  • Custom File List (Performance —> CDN)
    • W3TC may not automatically identify all of the files that you want served by the CDN. To change this, simply add these files or directories to the “Custom File List” text area (one file/directory per line)
    • Some files that are commonly ignored are those within your wp-content/uploads directory. To serve these files add this line to the text area: “wp-content/uploads/*” or use directives to locate WP directories (wp-content, uploads, plugins, gallery) as follows:
    1. {wp_content_dir}/gallery/*
    2. {wp_content_dir}/uploads/avatars/*
    3. {plugins_dir}/wordpress-seo/css/xml-sitemap.xsl
    4. {plugins_dir}/wp-minify/min*
    5. {plugins_dir}.css
    6. {plugins_dir}/*./*.js
    7. {plugins_dir}/*gif
    8. {plugins_dir}/*.jpg
    9. {plugins_dir}/*.png
     
  • Rejected File List
    • Similarly, there may be certain files that are being served by the CDN that you would like to serve locally, usually these files are a part of plugin(s) designed to disregard cross domain load. To change this, simply add these files or directories into the “Rejected files” text area (one file/directory per line) and same as for “Custom File List” you can use directives to locate WP directories:
    1. {uploads_dir}/wpcf7_captcha/*
    2. {uploads_dir}/imagerotator.swf
    3. {plugins_dir}/wp-fb-autoconnect/facebook-platform/channel.html
     

Important notes

WordPress users, some themes/plugins/options are known to break the CDN Functionality.
Please make sure you do not have any plugins that perform any of the following functions
  • GZip compression
  • CSS and/or JS and/or HTML minifcation
  • CSS and/or JS combination
Users who use the WordPress CATALYST Theme must disable the GZip Compression opition.

Important notes

  1. In some cases, enabling Minify for CSS/JS or Database Caching will result in errors and your website breaking. It might be a good idea to disable these two options for the time being.
  2. In some cases, Flash-Based sliders/carousels break when using W3 Total Cache. If you notice such issue, make sure to add the slider plugin path to the W3 Total Cache “Rejected files” box.

Video Tutorial