Should I use a WordPress cache plugin or nginx caching? Print

Question

If server-level Nginx caching is enabled in the Apache & Nginx settings within Plesk, do I also need to use application-level caching solutions like WordPress's WP Super Cache or WP Rocket?

Answer

Because application-level caching solutions (like Super Cache and WP Rocket for WordPress) are directly integrated with your website, they have two major advantages over the nginx server-level cache:

1. They are contextually aware of WordPress and the activated plugins and choice of theme: this enables them to provide specific improvements and workarounds to common caching conflicts with those plugins and theme.
2. They have the advantage of being able to create static files that last much longer (typically 10-24 hours) because they knows when page content has updated. Once you click publish on any page, post, or other content, the caching solution knows exactly what elements of the cache to clear and which elements to keep.

On the flip side, the server-level nginx cache isn't aware of those changes and so must regularly regenerate its static cache files.

Final answer: use both for optimal performance. In our testing they work great together.

Here's where to find and enable the nginx server cache in Plesk.

When you enable nginx caching, you'll see that the default config is for the cache to last mere seconds so as not to be noticeable that the content is 'old'. If your site is getting many requests per second or even just one per second, this can save on resources considerably. That said, we strongly recommend that you tune those settings to find the longest possible cache time that works smoothly for you, as this will ensure optimal performance for your site.

Here's our guide to speed up WordPress with either WP Super Cache or WP Rocket.

Notes & Tips:

• We do not automatically enable any caching solutions, though we strongly recommend you use at least one of these two options. Unless your site is already only made up of static files, without static file caching, you'll inevitably find your site performance lagging, particularly as you obtain more traffic.
• If your site is eating up dynamic processing resources on the server, we may install WP Super Cache and/or enable nginx caching so as to ensure your site and the server it resides upon continues to perform smoothly
• We use custom nginx rules that automatically detect common caching plugins in WordPress and serves their static file output directly, rather than having to launch an apache process to do this. The one catch to this is if you intend to deactivate your caching plugin and you do not clear your cache before doing so, our servers may still load the cache files. See here for more information on this.