While making changes to your websites you may notice the expected output not showing. Do you know why? Yes, you got it, it’s a WordPress caching issue. It can be enabled from your hosting server, CDN, WordPress plugin, or any custom code. To speed up your WordPress website, you may use the cache maybe you know or maybe not.
Let’s know how you can use cache smoothly and purge them instantly without hassle.
Real-Life Issues & Its Solutions
Here are some of my real-life experiences with Caching, hope this will help you in the future and will save you lots of time.
#01. Crying Issue
At the beginning of my WordPress journey, I was working on a client project, updating some CSS and text but couldn’t see the output, which was weird. And spent many hours trying to sort out from where it was coming. When I read some articles and understood that it was a caching issue. Then I purged caches and it came to the expected output.
#02. Hidden CDN
It was a big learning curve to figure out this issue. While working on freelance projects I found a website where I was updating content and purging caches from plugins and servers, but the expected output not coming.
Again read lots of articles to understand what my fault is. then I realized maybe caching handling from any third-party source. and finally found! it’s a CND (Cloudflare). To learn more about CND you can check this article What is a CDN? | How do CDNs work?
#03. Social Media
One of my content writer colleagues was updating last year’s content. While he was trying to share the link on social media platforms showing the back-dated title, description, and featured image. I was thinking its a caching issue, but no.
After spending some time I applied a trick and just added some extra arguments in the link here is an example:
the link was before: heymehedi.com/plugins/
new one: heymehedi.com/plugins/?updated
After posting this URL it’s coming to the expected output. From then my colleague every time following this trick while posting existing content on social media.
#04. The Cache Busting
While I was developing a product for WordPress, I faced a horrible issue, when I updated some styles and scripts it was not updating instantly, every time I had to clear caches manually. So I read lots of articles and found the Cache Busting solution.
More cases coming soon…
Where To Clear The Cache?
There are multiple ways to clear caches. Here are some of them.
#01. Cloudflare
World’s most popular CDN(Content Delivery Network), First, check if the site is hosted through Cloudflare. How can you check if is a website hosted on Cloudflare?
Here is a way I follow, and it works for me.
- First I visit this site with the domain name https://www.whois.com/whois/heymehedi.com
- Then just check if the Name Server exists the Cloudflare.com
, i will always will be look like this abc.ns.cloudflare.com
def.ns.cloudflare.com
#02. Server Level Cache
It actually depends.
Here are some hosting providers who by default provide nice caching service.
- Siteground – They have two options to clear the cache, one is from their free WordPress plugin and another one is from the hosting backend.
- WPMUDEV – I just cleared the cache from the hosting backend, maybe they also have a WordPress plugin.
- … and lots more
I do prefer you contact your hosting provider or hire an expert.
#03. WordPress Plugins
In my WordPress journey, I found lots of speed-up and caching-related plugins. All are useful and they have individual special features. So clearing the caches from WordPress plugins will depend on the plugin settings. So I can’t actually show how can you clear caches. It would be good to read their docs or ask question on the support forum.
Let me share some useful speed-up and caching plugins, which are helped me over time.
- W3 Total Cache
- WP Rocket
- WP-Optimize
- LiteSpeed Cache
- WP Super Cache
- WP Fastest Cache
- Hummingbird
- Comet Cache
- Autoptimize
- Flying Pages
- Cache Enabler
- Borlabs Cache
It’s not guaranteed that the above plugins will work perfectly on your site. To speed up a site is actually a trial and error process.
#04. Custom Code
Sometimes website owners and theme authors write custom code to speed up websites. So clearing the cache actually depends on the code structure. I do recommend you contact the code author.
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