Cache Enabler – See How Good It Works?

Caching plugins are crucial if you want to decrease the workload on your servers and increase the loading time on your website.  A lot of times webmasters will get their hosting account suspended, and the quick fix is often to install a caching plugin.  There are some different caching plugins that you can install on your WordPress websites.  Previously, I have tried out WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WP Fastest Cache.

So, I recently got the chance to try out Cache Enabler which is developed by KeyCDN (view it here).  This plugin has been installed on 7,000+ websites and gets 4.6 out of 5 stars on WordPress.org.  In this article, I am going to show you the features that you can use with Cache Enabler.

How To Install Cache Enabler

The first thing you’re going to want to do is to log into your WordPress dashboard and click on Plugins then click add new.  Then you type in “Cache Enabler.”  You should see the following caching plugin in your WordPress dashboard.

Make sure you activate Cache Enabler and then you will be ready to adjust the settings.

Cache Enabler Options

Here is a screenshot that shows you the different settings you can easily configure with Cache Enabler:

You can expire your cache in hourly increments.  You just type in how many hours you want the cache to expire in.  Note that “0” means the cache will never expire.  I would recommend adjusting the hourly increment to 1 or 2.

There are four boxes where you can define the cache behavior. They are as follows:

• Clear the complete cache if a new post has been published (instead of only the home page cache).
• Clear the complete cache if a new comment has been posted (instead of only the page specific cache).
• Pre-compression of cached pages. Needs to be disabled if the decoding fails in the web browser.
• Create an additional cached version for WebP image support. Convert your images to WebP with Optimus.

You can exclude different pages from caching if you want too.  These can be post or pages.  You only put in the post or page ID and separate them by a comma.

Then you can define your cache minification settings.  The three options are disabled (not recommended), HTML, HTML & Inline JS.  It’s a good idea to use HTML or HTML & JS depending on whether or not you have Javascript.  It helps decrease your loading time drastically.  Do not ignore this setting!

Cache Enabled Speed Test

So, now I have a test website that I wanted to toy around with Cache Enabler and see if I can get any noticeable performance gains.  I should point out that I am using Extra (by Elegant Themes).  I disabled my caching plugin that I was currently using and cleared by browser and server cache.  I like to use GTMetrix for checking my websites loading times.  It’s completely free to use, but I do suggest that you start up a free account with them.  So, I went over to GTMetrix.com and put in my websites URL, and you can see a screenshot of my website down below:

Next, I installed and activated Cache Enabler.  I went into the settings for Cache Enabler and enabled minification and used the HTML & Inline JS settings.  I then saved the settings and cleared my browser and server cache and went back to GTMetrix.com.  You can see my website performance down below:

Next, I noticed some advanced features of Cache Enabler allowed me to bypass the PHP on my server.  Simply put, this will make your website very fast.  I should note that you have to go into your .htaccess file and carry out the necessary changes.  Just do yourself a favor and make sure you backup your .htaccess file first.  Here is documentation on how to do it https://www.keycdn.com/support/wordpress-cache-enabler-plugin/#advanced-configuration. From the screenshot below you can see how fast my test website loads now:

Optimize Images With Optimus

If you want to increase your website performance, even more, you install Optimus.  This plugin was also developed by KeyCDN and helps drastically improve the loading time of your images.  The Optimizer does integrate flawlessly with Cache Enabler.  There is a free plan that you can try but does have it’s limitations.  With the free plan, you can optimize JPEG and PNG images, the maximum file size is 100KB, use on unlimited images, and makes your JPEG’s progressive.  You can learn more about progressive images here at https://optimus.keycdn.com/support/progressive-jpeg/

Optimus Paid Plans

The free Optimus plan is great, but there are a couple of paid options.  The two plans are Optimus HQ ($19/year) and Optimus HQ Pro ($99/year).  These plans support 5 MB files, https sites,  WebP conversion, and a developer API.  I do recommend you use Optimus HQ for $19/year.  It’s a very affordable price tag and helps decrease your images loading times.

Final Verdict

Overall, I have been very happy with Cache Enabler.  This caching plugin is 100% free and works great.  In a matter of minutes you can drastically decrease your website’s loading time, can manually clear or automatically clear your cache, control pages and post you want to purge the cache, see the cache size in your dashboard, minify HTML and Javascript, supports multisite, etc.  It does help speed up the speed of your website as my test have clearly shown.  I went from 6 seconds to 2.2 seconds with just 10 minutes of work.  This plugin is very easy to use, lightweight, and works great with other plugins like Autoptimize, CDN Enabler, Optimus, etc.