Slow Wordpress Website – Review of WP Rocket

Finally, a Solution to a Slow Wordpress Website – WP Rocket

The performance of every website is critical especially in the fact that it determines the ease of navigation, time spent by customers on the website, as well as the prompt access of information on the website.

A typical Wordpress website that receives high traffic requires it to be optimized so as to improve its loading speed. This is where WP Rocket stands out from all of the rest.

Synonymous with Rocket speeds, this plugin helps boost overall performance and also caches websites, thereby enabling instant load and speedy website response. It has been recognized by experts as the most powerful caching tool which enhances websites to load blazing fast.

This is very important in SEO ranking and ensuring that your Wordpress website regularly appears in search engines. One of the impressive features about the plugin is the fact that it utilizes a state of the art technology in boosting performance. It functions quite well with different website architecture programming, including JavaScript, HTML and cascading style sheets.

WP Rocket Caching and Optimization

Caching is one of the most important features of WP Rocket. Normally, if a website host offers caching at the server level, they do not permit the use of caching plugins. I happen to host my Wordpress site at Kinsta, who has their own caching, but WP Rocket is permitted and compatible.

Browser caching – This allows the server to speed up your Wordpress website for people visiting multiple pages, or those visiting the website individually, by storing files locally in the user’s browser.This ensures that the pages are cached and thus reducing the amount of data and time required retrieving the files. All you need is to install and activate WP Rocket and watch the magic take its course. If you don’t want you pages to be cached, it also has advanced settings where you can edit this rule as well.

Media optimization – Sometimes loading large images may slow the response time of your Wordpress website. WP rocket has a solution to all this as it includes features like optional lazy loading of images and videos.What this does is to defer loading of an image until the user has scrolled down to the bottom of the page as opposed to automatically loading it as soon as the webpage is displayed.

It also works with an image optimization plugin called Imagify, that offers free image optimization for compressing website images to file sizes and improve loading. It also creates WEBP images for improved loading.

Database optimization – Over time, a Wordpress database will get very large and it will tend to slow your website. To help combat this, WP Rocket has a database optimization feature that clears old posts, trash, drafts, and deleted comments or ones marked as spam. To achieve this, WP Rocket can be scheduled to automatically clean up your database on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Mobile detecting and caching – With the increased use of smartphones and tablets, accessing websites demands that websites be optimized to include such devices. WP Rocket optimizes your Wordpress website to this segment of your audience by enabling caching for mobile devices. This helps to speed up loading for these smartphones and tablets users.

Web compatibility – WP Rocket is compatible with most, if not all web hosts. In some cases, it might be disabled to start automatically and then require manual starting. Even if your web hosting may include caching services, WP Rocket has more added advantages such as lazy loading, database optimization, device optimization and many more beneficial optimization features.

Custom cache lifespan – The clear cache feature is enabled to clear old content when new content is published. However, there are some situations when you may need to set the plugin to delete old cache files at a certain interval. WP Rocket ensures that your website visitors are shown the most up-to- date information of the website content.

WP Rocket Pros

WP Rocket has many relevant and useful features that makes it the go-to caching plugin for so many website owners. Here are the ones that are important to me:

Pricing – It gives you the most bang for the buck. It comes with a 1 year license term which is set to auto-renew by default, and in return, rewards you with a 30% to 50% discount per year.This feature is optional and you do have the option to set it up for manual renewal. WP Rocket has 3 plans. You can get a yearly plan for $49 that includes updates for one web site. The Plus plan at $99 covers a one-year period of updates for 3 web sites. The Infinite plan at $249 covers you for one year for an unlimited number of web sites.

It’s very easy to install and configure – Even with all of the features offered, WP Rocket is very easy to install, configure and use regardless of your technical background. Installing the plugin is simple as it is already configured for the basic features.If you’re not sure if the basic configuration is for you, there is ample documentation available. In my case, where I host with Kinsta and have caching at the server level, Kinsta has documentation to fine tune the various settings.

Automatic optimization – WP Rocket has a wide range of optimization features that fits both experienced users and beginners. The features for website, media and database that the website does automatically, assures you great performance with a shorter response time.

Super speed – It gives your Wordpress website blazing speed which is essential for good SEO rankings. For an eCommerce site, speed is critical for an increase in conversions. If you’re a “speed geek” like me, you want blazing speed just because you do.

Add-ons – WP Rocket includes a number of very helpful features like the Cloudflare CDN, and varnish caching. What this does is that it automatically purges the cache each and every time you publish a post on your server. It does require a direct connection between the Cloudflare cache and the server cache on your end.

Integration with CDN (Content delivery network) – A CDN permits the rapid transfer of internet content that must be loaded for a specific site. This includes JavaScript files, videos, HTML pages, CSS stylesheets, and various types of images.

If you use a CDN to speed up the delivery on your Wordpress website, WP Rocket will rewrite your URLs to use your CDN but you can also exclude certain files from your CDN if you so choose.

Support– Documentation is available with step to step manuals on how to install and configure the plugin. If you have a problem, their support team will step in to assist quickly.

WP Rocket Cons

This is one of the very few plugins that I have had a hard time trying to find things that were wrong. The only one I can think of is:

All packages are premium – it has no free version for you to try out, nor do they offer a trial or monthly subscription. If for whatever reason you don’t like it, though, you have 14 days from the date of purchase to return it for a full refund.

WP Rocket Summary and Recommendation

Compared to other caching plugins, WP Rocket is by far the fastest and the most user-friendly Wordpress website solution. I would strongly recommend anyone using Wordpress to try it out.

Installation is very simple and automatic if you will be using the basic configuration already built in the plugin. You can simply activate the plugin & you’re good to go. If you want or need to set the advanced features, documentation is readily available.

The WP Rocket team has worked very hard to ensure compatibility and integration in different platforms. For most Wordpress users, it works just fine right out of the box.

If you compare all of the features offered by WP Rocket to the other caching plugins, you’ll find that it’s simpler to set up and configure. But the most important feature is that it does exactly what it says it will do – speed up your website loading time.

So, if your Wordpress website just seems to hang there, consider investing in WP Rocket. If you have an eCommerce website, and your site loads slow, you’re losing valuable sales. I’ve used this fine plugin for two years now, and couldn’t be more satisfied.

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