Best FREE Wordpress cache plugin?

M

MASE

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Aug 19, 2020
Messages
33
Hello,
I'm looking for alternative for LSCache plugin, and it seems like the free ones are not so good.

I've tried Flyingpress and its great but I want a free one so all of my clients and websites can use.

Do you recommend a plugin for Nginx or Apache/Nginx ?

Thanks
 
Redis cache plug-in and redis cache installed from DirectAdmin.
 
exlhost said:
Redis cache plug-in and redis cache installed from DirectAdmin.
Click to expand...
The plugin called "Redis Object Cache" ?
It gave me this error :
Redis is unreachable: Connection refused [tcp://127.0.0.1:6379]

And since redis using port 0 and /home/admin/.redis/redis.sock path.

How you managed to make the plugin work ?

Thanks
 
MASE said:
How you managed to make the plugin work ?
Click to expand...

Enable it on the user side and add the following in your WP config file:

define( 'WP_REDIS_SCHEME', 'unix');
define( 'WP_REDIS_PATH', '/home/USER/.redis/redis.sock');
define( 'WP_CACHE_KEY_SALT', 'user.com');
define( 'WP_REDIS_DATABASE', '3');
define( 'WP_REDIS_PORT', 0 );
Click to expand...

change USER with your username and domain name to have the right salt
 
Would W3 Total Cache be a better plugin than Redis Object Cache? Since you can configure W3 Total Cache to use the specific Redis socket from within the W3 Total Cache settings in the WordPress dashboard? No messy wp-config.php file modifications to have to deal with.

Or is there a more specific reason for using the Redis Object Cache plugin?
 
sparek said:
Would W3 Total Cache be a better plugin than Redis Object Cache? Since you can configure W3 Total Cache to use the specific Redis socket from within the W3 Total Cache settings in the WordPress dashboard? No messy wp-config.php file modifications to have to deal with.

Or is there a more specific reason for using the Redis Object Cache plugin?
Click to expand...
I'll test a bit, but from my testing, W3 is not the best at all.

LScache is good and flyingpress is the best.
The rest free plugins give similar performance.
The problem here is the optimization of the page, not the caching function itself. At least for my case.
 
You dont need all of that in your config file.

just this part

Code: 
define( 'WP_REDIS_SCHEME', 'unix' );
define( 'WP_REDIS_PATH', '/home/<user>/.redis/redis.sock' );
define( 'WP_REDIS_DATABASE', 0 );

and if the hosting package/account need a second site running with a own database, you should raise this with 1

e.g.

Code: 
define( 'WP_REDIS_SCHEME', 'unix' );
define( 'WP_REDIS_PATH', '/home/<user>/.redis/redis.sock' );
define( 'WP_REDIS_DATABASE', 1 );
 
I've always used LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress, so don't have any particular recommendations.

What I will say is that make sure your database is properly optimized. In many cases I've come across for WordPress sites I've tuned, they've had MyISAM tables with no indexes/keys. Switching to InnoDB with the relevant indexes/keys has made a night and day difference.

This plugin can do those things easily for you: https://wordpress.org/plugins/index-wp-mysql-for-speed/

Also, make sure you're using the latest version of PHP (8.4). WordPress is compatible with it. Some plugins/themes might not be, so that would need testing.
 
I don't know if it's really fair to bring LSCache into this discussion.

To use LSCache you have to be using Litespeed - or more specifically lsphp - and that may not always be the case. Redis caching doesn't depend on what web server or PHP handler you are using, so it has a potential higher footprint. But Redis cache also requires the configuration of a Redis server to handle the caching.

You can't really compare LSCache and Redis caching, since it's two different things. Or, more specifically, two different methods for accomplishing essentially the same thing. Both have different infrastructure requirements.

LSCache is probably going to be faster - at least in the limited tests that I have done. Although it's marginally faster when compared with Redis caching. When considering the overhead of having to switch to Litespeed or lsphp, depending on your environment, the benefits of LSCache over Redis may not be worth it.

While the OP doesn't say what PHP handler they are using, they do state they are looking for an alternative to the LSCache plugin. And the OP doesn't really say they are using or wanting to use Redis cache. So any caching plugin or method would be open for discussion.

You just can't really compare Redis specific caching plugins to LSCache specific caching plugins. The two are apples and oranges.
 
If it's not a LiteSpeed server, I personally prefer Surge. It's from an Automattic employee, has zero knobs to be fiddled with, and generally does what it says on the tin.
 
The issue I see with Surge is that there is no configuration at all. You can't flush the cache or exclude certain paths from being cached. But as a simple caching plugin it would appear to be very simple and beneficial, especially if you just want to set it and forget it.

This also got me to looking at other caching mechanisms. With Surge, the benefits of it's caching are very near the benefits of LSCache and Redis, without having to insure you are using Litespeed or lsphp or configuring a Redis server. I then looked at W3 Total Cache and it has it's own caching system as well that rivals the performance of LSCache and Redis without having to set up a Redis server.

So I'm not sure if Redis is even needed to get better performance with your WordPress site. You can use various WordPress caching plugins that employ their own caching systems. Less mess and the benefits of the caching system.
 
sparek said:
I don't know if it's really fair to bring LSCache into this discussion.

To use LSCache you have to be using Litespeed - or more specifically lsphp - and that may not always be the case. Redis caching doesn't depend on what web server or PHP handler you are using, so it has a potential higher footprint. But Redis cache also requires the configuration of a Redis server to handle the caching.

You can't really compare LSCache and Redis caching, since it's two different things. Or, more specifically, two different methods for accomplishing essentially the same thing. Both have different infrastructure requirements.

LSCache is probably going to be faster - at least in the limited tests that I have done. Although it's marginally faster when compared with Redis caching. When considering the overhead of having to switch to Litespeed or lsphp, depending on your environment, the benefits of LSCache over Redis may not be worth it.

While the OP doesn't say what PHP handler they are using, they do state they are looking for an alternative to the LSCache plugin. And the OP doesn't really say they are using or wanting to use Redis cache. So any caching plugin or method would be open for discussion.

You just can't really compare Redis specific caching plugins to LSCache specific caching plugins. The two are apples and oranges.
Click to expand...
Hello, I don't mind using any PHP handler since I'm not sure if I'll use Nginx or Apache/Nginx, since I think Openlitespeed is kinda buggy.

You can see in the OP that I'm looking for Nginx or Apache/Nginx ;)

adam12 said:
If it's not a LiteSpeed server, I personally prefer Surge. It's from an Automattic employee, has zero knobs to be fiddled with, and generally does what it says on the tin.
Click to expand...
Thanks gonna give it a try :)
 
IMHO, using a web-server cache (like LScache) is better than Redis/memcached.
When someone visits your website, the request typically follows this flow to display the requested page:

Traditional

Client > web-server (nginx / apache / etc) > PHP handler (PHP-FPM, for example) > Database queries > web-server > Client

Redis
Most plugins using Redis will cache database query results, and some even cache the entire HTML output (or parts of it). This saves time and resources by reducing database and data processing overhead.

Client > web-server (nginx / apache / etc) > PHP handler (PHP-FPM) > Redis cache > web-server > Client

Web-Server Cache (e.g., LScache, Nginx Cache, Varnish, etc.)
The web-server cache stores the entire HTML output, allowing the web server to serve requests without hitting the backend at all.

Client > web-server (nginx / apache / etc) > Web-server cache > Client


As shown above, the web-server cache bypasses the PHP handler and database entirely, making it significantly faster.
The request is served directly from the web server, which is especially beneficial for WordPress, as every request typically involves PHP processing and database queries.

LScache for WordPress is a good choice, but it's free version is limited to 1 worker (cpu), 1 domain and 2 GB RAM.

However, the same results can be achieved with Nginx or Varnish, though you'll need to configure these manually (server-side).
For WordPress, there are plugins that can automatically purge caches for Nginx or Varnish, much like the LiteSpeed plugin does for LiteSpeed servers.

For extremely high-traffic websites, you can combine both Redis (or any other object-cache) and a web-server cache for optimal performance.
 
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