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Do you want to know how to clear your plugin cache on WordPress? Caching allows your website to load faster and enhances the overall user experience. This article explains what WordPress caching is, why you should clear your plugin cache and how to do it quickly.

Why Caching is Essential for Your Site

Caching on WordPress means creating a static copy of your content and providing that content to your visitors faster than loading all the queries from scratch. The goal is to store the data in a cache to get fewer roundtrips to and from the database. 

There are three good reasons why you should use caching for your WordPress site:

#1 – Improve the page loading speed by unloading the server

#2 – Boost the user experience by optimizing the Core Web Vitals

#3 – Rank higher on Google

What’s WordPress Object Caching

WordPress has a built-in object cache (the WP_Object_Cache class) that stores any content from the database in the PHP memory. It’s a type of server-side caching, meaning the cache is stored on the server, not on the user’s browser. As a result, it prevents repeated and unnecessary calls to the database. 

To summarize how caching works on WordPress, you can look at our figure below, which shows how caching is correlated with performance.

• Page caching makes your website load faster as it significantly shortens the path from the user to the content.
• Object cache is the WordPress default cache that helps the content loading faster, but the user-content roundtrip is slightly longer than page caching.
• Without caching (the database column), the content would take even longer to be displayed on the user’s screen because it’s coming from the database. There is no cache “shortcut”.

Now that we have gone over the concept of WordPress caching, we will explain why it’s crucial to clear your cache every so often. 

Why You Should Clear Your Plugin Cache

Clearing your plugin cache is essential to serve up-to-date content to visitors and for debugging purposes. 

There are three popular situations when clearing your plugin cache is recommended:

1. When you’ve updated your website’s content and want to push this fresh content to visitors. For example, If you have designed and uploaded a new promotion banner, you want all your clients to be able to see it instead of serving outdated content. 
2. When you need to troubleshoot one of the WordPress errors.  Clearing your cache is always a good start when debugging a WordPress-related issue such as error 403. 
3. When you are experiencing performance issues. Sometimes, your cache may store outdated content and files that trigger issues and prevent you from loading a page or accessing your WordPress admin. Clearing your cache may solve this type of issue.

How to Clear Your WordPress Plugin Cache 

Clearing your WordPress cache can be easily done with WP Rocket, one of the best caching plugins on the market. The powerful extension gives an extra speed boost to your WordPress site. The main features are: caching, delaying and deferring JS, removing unused CSS, and even lazy loading your images.

Clearing your cache using WP Rocket can be done directly from the WordPress dashboard. Simply go to: 

Settings > WP Rocket > Dashboard > Quick Actions and press the Clear and preload cache button. 

The WP Rocket plugin is easy to install and will cache your WordPress content as static files. These files – that contain media, texts, and code –  are directly served to users, reducing the load on the server and improving performance. 

Clearing Cache on a Multilingual WordPress Site Using WP Rocket

WP Rocket allows you to clear the cache for a specific language, which is very handy when building a multilingual WordPress site. WP Rocket will detect your language configuration file and cache/purge/preload the content for a specific language (or all of them simultaneously).

Finally, with WP Rocket, you can also set your cache lifespan: files older than the specified duration will be automatically deleted. 

If WP Rocket detects some activities on your WordPress site that may affect the front end, then one of the solutions offered is to clear the cache in one click:

Other WordPress caching plugins allow you to clear the cache, such as WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WP Fastest Cache. You only need to find the button about “Empty/Delete cache”.

Wrapping Up

Using a WordPress cache plugin is crucial for performance, but don’t forget to clear the cache from time to time. This will avoid serving outdated content to users, which might be a great start when debugging an issue. 

With WP Rocket, you can combine caching, GZIP file compression, JS, and CSS optimization to reduce your page load time and significantly boost the performance of your website. Try WP Rocket today and provide your visitors with a better user experience! No risks are taken thanks to the 30-day money-back guarantee.

Do you want to know how to clear your browser cache and why it’s important? Hint: If you have encountered an issue with your WordPress site, one of the easy solutions may be to clear your cache! In this guide, you’ll learn more about browser caching and how to clear each browser’s cache (and cookies). 

Let’s dive in!

What’s Browser Cache?

A browser cache stores files and resources downloaded directly from a website, such as media assets, text, and coding files (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). Built into your web browser, the cache is a database that “memorizes” web content. 

Why Browser Cache Is Important

Browser cache allows content to be served faster to users that have already visited your website. It saves users time and reduces page loading time and web server bandwidth.

This is crucial for performance and the user experience because cached content loads faster than regular content: your browser doesn’t have to load everything from scratch.

For example, the server could tell the browser to store the payment method images and not download them when a user returns: 

Those images are unlikely to change daily so you could cache them for at least a week.  

Using WP Rocket to Enable Browser Cache

To enable browser caching, you can use WP Rocket – one of the best caching plugins for WordPress. The plugin requests the browser to save the frequently used (but rarely updated) files in its local cache memory, resulting in a faster experience for visitors. 

All you need to do is to install and activate the plugin. WP Rocket will do the heavy lifting and smartly set expiration lengths on the less updated files. 

You’ve learned the meaning of browser caching and how to implement it, let’s explain why it’s important to clear your browser cache as a user. 

Why You Should Clear Your Browser Cache

It’s important to clear your browser cache to avoid seeing outdated content and to solve most of the common problems on the internet – for instance, “issue 403”, nonce issues, and any development made in a local environment (if you don’t clear your cache, you may not see the updated content when you push it from the development environment to production).

We can take the example of a new banner you added but can’t see this change on the front end yet. That’s because your browser is still showing the cached version of the page with the old banner. By clearing your cache, you’ll finally see it when refreshing the page. 

Remember that a browser stores the cached content for a limited time or until it’s full. After that, the cache is cleared, and the browser will serve the updated content on the next visit.

You can also clear your cookies on a computer to protect your privacy and avoid third-party tracking.

The next section shows you how to delete cookies and clear your cache from the major browsers.

How to Clear Cache and Cookies on Your Browser

You can clear your browser cache and cookies manually on every major browser. To help you with this process, we have put together some easy tutorials for the most popular ones.

How to Clear Cache on Google Chrome

To clear the cache on Google Chrome, click the three dots icon in the top right corner of the browser window, then open the More Tools option and select Clear Browsing Data from the submenu. 

You can choose to clear the basic tab with the browsing history, cookies, cached images, and files by clicking on the Clear data button.

If you want to go further, you can open the Advanced tab and check the boxes of your choice. Note that if you decide to clear the cache of the Passwords and other sign-in data categories, then you will lose all your saved password for each website you have an account for. That may hurt your user experience for future purchases and connections.

When clearing your cache, you can also decide if you want to clear what happened in the last hour, 24 hours, 7 days, 4 weeks, and All time. If you want to clear everything since the beginning of your browsing history, click on “All time”. 

To clear cookies and other site data, you can go to Google Chrome Settings > Privacy and Security > Cookies and other site data:

In this section, you can define your preferred settings for cookies. You can decide to allow them on some websites only. It’s a customizable experience. 

How to Clear Cache on Safari

To clear the browser cache (including cookies and web data) on Safari is pretty straightforward. Simply go to Safari > Clear History.

Then you can decide for which amount of time you want to clear your history, by selecting your preferred option from the drop-down menu. When you have chosen the duration, click on the Clear History button.

If you follow those steps, you’ll delete all the history and cookies from your browser. If you need more customizations with your settings, navigate to 

Safari > Preferences

From the General tab, you can choose the time length of your history items:

Then go to the Privacy tab and select how you want to manage the cookies and website data: 

Pro Tip: to easily empty the caches, go to Develop > Empty Caches.

How to Clear Cache on Firefox

To clear the browser cache on Mozilla Firefox, click on the Hamburger icon in the top right corner of the window, and select History > Clear recent history.

You can select the elements you want to clear and indicate your preferred time range:

You also have a dedicated Privacy & Security tab accessible from the following address in the search bar:

 about:preferences#privacy

In that section, you can decide which cookies and data you want to clear. 

To download an add-on for browser caching, go to the add-ons window and search for the extension of your choice:

How to Clear Cache on Opera

To clear the browser cache on Opera, click on the History icon (that looks like a clock) on the lower left side menu and press the Clear Browsing Data button.

You have both a basic and advanced tab that allows you to select the content you want to clear the cache for, including cookies. Make up your selection and click on the Clear data button.

Opera also has a dedicated section for choosing which cookies to delete or block, accessible from the easy setup button > Privacy & security > Cookies and other site data.

How to Clear Cache on Microsoft Edge

To clear the browser cache on Microsoft Edge, click on the three dots in the top right of your browser window and select History > Clear Browsing Data:

Select the time range and check the boxes of the content you want to clear the cache from, including the cookies:

If you are looking to do more advanced caching navigate to the three dots icon > Settings > Privacy, Search and Services and then press the Choose What to Clear button:

Regarding the cookies, Microsoft Edge has a dedicated Cookies and Site Permissions panel that allows you to allow or forbid sites to save the cookies data.

How to Clear Cache on Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer is now discontinued so we don’t encourage you to use it for your research on the web. Since 2022, Microsoft has been encouraging their customers to move to Microsoft Edge, which is safer and provides support for modern websites and apps. 

How to Clear Browser Cache on Mobile

To clear the browser cache on iPhone and Android, simply open your browser’s settings by default and navigate to the history and website data. The process is similar for every major web browser, but there is a little difference between iOS and Android. Let’s look at how to clear the cache for those two operating systems. 

Clearing Browser Cache on iOS 

To clear the browser cache on iOS go to your iPhone Settings and scroll down to the app. We are taking Safari as our example.

Then, tap Clear History and Website Data and confirm. This will remove history, cookies, and other browsing data.

Clearing Browser Cache Android

To clear the browser cache on Android, launch your browser app and open the three dots icon on the top right of the screen. We are taking Firefox as our example.

Then, navigate to the Settings submenu:

Tap the Delete browsing data option:

Finally, tick the boxes of your choice and press the Delete browsing data button:

Wrapping Up 

It’s important to clear the cache of your browser but make sure you find the right balance between privacy and user experience. Having your sign-in and password saved in Google Chrome can be very handy to accelerate your online shopping experience.

A browser cache takes content such as text and images from the websites you visit and saves them in a database for your next visit. As a result, browser caching improves your page load times and enhances the user experience. 

If you want to implement browser caching and speed up your site, try WP Rocket! You don’t take any risks with the 30-day money-back guarantee. And the best part is: you just need to install the plugin as no extra configuration steps are required to set up the cache. 

Do you need to implement caching on your WooCommerce site? Read our tips before diving into it, we will show you how you can enable caching easily and give an extra speed boost to your e-shop. 

Why Caching is Essential for WooCommerce

Caching improves the speed and performance of your WordPress site built with WooCommerce. It helps your e-shop to load more quickly by reducing the amount of data transfer between the browser and the server. Caching saves a static version of your site so it can be displayed faster on each subsequent visit.

According to Google, site speed is a top priority for online shoppers: every second delay in mobile page load can make conversions fall by up to 20%. 

Another research conducted by Portent a few years ago says that the highest e-commerce conversion rates occur on pages with load times between 0-2 seconds. 

E-commerce sites are often the slowest on the web because they contain many images, videos, products, payment gateway, API connections, etc. Implementing caching ensures that the pages load faster, resulting in a better user experience. 

The last reason you should improve your page speed with caching is to boost your SEO rankings. The quicker your page loads, the higher it’ll rank in Google search results, meaning more visitors (and sales) will come your way!

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of caching let’s see how to implement it on your WooCommerce site.

How to Enable Cache on WooCommerce

WooCommerce does not cache content out of the box, but you can install a WordPress cache plugin that will do the job for you! For example, you have WP Rocket, one of WordPress’s best caching plugins, enabling caching automatically upon its activation. Of course, more options are available in our guide listing the best caching plugins for WordPress.

Step 1: Exclude the dynamic pages 

When you implement caching on your WooCommerce site, the content is saved and served in the same way to visitors every time. As a result, there are pages you should not cache, such as: 

• The Cart page – or the users may end up with products they never added.
• The Checkout page – this is the crucial page where users add their credit card information, so you don’t want any problems in that part of the purchasing process.
• My account – this involves a login and a password with probably private data that should be cached.

• Other pages to consider excluding – the custom “thank you” and confirmation pages.
• Any other widgets, custom post types, or custom pages that handle adding to cart, account, or checkout options. 

Step 2: Exclude WooCommerce Cookies and Sessions From Caching

WooCommerce cookies such as “items recently viewed” are useful for the user experience, and some others help the whole purchasing process to be seamless. That is why the following cookies should be excluded from your caching strategy:

• The “woocommerce_cart_hash” and the “woocommerce_items_in_cart” – ensure that the cart reflects the correct items. Otherwise, you may still see some products in the cart after removing them.
• The “wp_woocommerce_session” — helps WooCommerce to find the shopping cart data in the database for each visitor/customer.
• The woocommerce_recently_viewed  — pops up to help the customer find a previously seen product.

WooCommerce explains the different types of cookies, their purpose, and their ideal duration very well. You can read more about WooCommerce cookies directly on their website.

Most caching plugins have a tab to exclude any scripts of your choice. Simply scroll to the exclusion fields and add the cookies mentioned above. 

How to Clear Cache on WooCommerce

No matter which cache plugin you choose for your site, you will always be able to clear the cache on WooCommerce directly from your WordPress dashboard. They all have the feature from their options panel. 

For example, with WP Rocket, you can navigate to WP Rocket Dashboard > Quick Actions > Clear and Preload cache.

Another way to clear the cache of your WooCommerce site is to use the top bar in your WordPress admin directly. For instance: WP Rocket > Clear and preload cache.

7 Tips to Make the Most Out of Caching

Caching may seem daunting at first, but it can be much easier with the right tools and guidance. Here are 7 tips to make the most out of caching on your WooCommerce.

1. Enable Page and Browser Caching

As seen in the first section, page caching stores a page’s HTML on the initial page load to serve the same static content for the next visits. As a result, every visitor will notice a significant increase in the site’s speed. 

WP Rocket is one of the best WordPress caching plugins that will automatically enable page caching to WooCommerce. WP Rocket does the heavy lifting for you, and no actions are required from you to activate the cache. 

2. Enable Object Caching

To unload the server and the database, you can implement object caching on WooCommerce using Redis or Memcached. Those tools are very popular and store the loaded query results. Therefore, the next time they’re needed, they can be loaded from the cache instead of the server. That reduces the round-trip time between the server and the data meaning better performance for your WooCommerce site.

3. Include Opcode Caching

According to php.net, OPcache improves performance by storing PHP in shared memory, removing the need for PHP to load and parse scripts on every request. If you optimize your PHP, you also optimize your page speed overall, as WordPress and WooCommerce are built on this code.

4. Setup Varnish Cache

Varnish cache is an HTTP reverse proxy that makes page load time 300–1000 times faster. It’s a piece of software you put in front of your server to reduce the loading times of your website by caching the server’s output. The only inconvenience is that to install it, you need to be familiar with the configuration files and command lines of your terminal. 

5. Reduce or Cache API calls

Your WooCommerce site may need to call third-party apps like Facebook, YouTube, or Paypal, which could impact its loading speed. To reduce those API calls, you can use the WP Rocket helper API plugin or the WordPress Transients API.

6. Optimize CSS and JS files

Another performance optimization along with caching it to minify, defer and reduce unused CSS and JS files. While you can conduct these code improvements manually, you can also use the File Optimization tab from a caching plugin like WP Rocket. 

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > WP Rocket > File Optimization You’ll find all the options needed to optimize your code:

Thankfully, most caching plugins allow you to easily exclude WooCommerce scripts when you select the minify JS option. For instance, here’s the option that WP Rocket offers:

7. Use a CDN

CDNs also use caching to distribute content faster to users located around the world. They use edge servers to cache the data, store it temporarily and display it to the closest international visitors. That results in a faster site because the content does not need to come from the origin server. There are many CDNs available in the market, but if you want one fully integrated with WordPress that does the configuration for you, try RocketCDN.

How to Enable Cache on WooCommerce with WP Rocket

After its installation, WP Rocket automatically enables cache, excludes the dynamic pages from the process, and allows you to do your own page/cookie exclusions. 

Let’s go over each feature:

• Enabling caching with WP Rocket

WP Rocket does the heavy lifting for you and applies caching on your WooCommerce site as soon as it’s installed. More than 80% of web performance good practices automatically upon its activation!

• Excluding scripts and pages of your choice with WP Rocket

To exclude cookies from the cache with WP Rocket, go to Settings → WP Rocket → Advanced Rules and enter the values of the cookies in the “Never Cache Cookies” field:

• woocommerce_cart_hash 
• woocommerce_items_in_cart  
• wp_woocommerce_session 
• woocommerce_recently_viewed 
• (…)

Performance test with and without WP Rocket 

Additionally, the plugin helps improve your Lighthouse performance score and boost your Core Web Vitals, partly thanks to its advanced JS and CSS optimization features. 

PageSpeed Insights recommends implementing caching to boost the speed of your WordPress site. As you can read in the screenshot below, a long cache lifetime can speed up repeat visits to your page:

I ran a performance test using PageSpeed Insights, sharing my results with and without caching (using WP Rocket).

Performance without caching (No WP Rocket)

My performance score on mobile is 74/100. One of my Core Web Vital, the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), is in red, while the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is in orange. 

Lighthouse also recommends implementing caching:

I followed the PSI’s suggestion and activated WP Rocket. Then I opened the file optimization tab, applied a few options on my JS and CSS files, and here’s what happened.

Performance with caching (WP Rocket):

My performance score went to 99/100, and my Core Web Vitals are in the green:

All the previous performance issues related to caching and files optimization are now in the “passed audits” section:

Wrapping Up 

Our tips will certainly help you in your caching journey and give an extra speed boost to your WooCommerce site! WP Rocket helped us pass the PageSpeed Insight audit on caching and code optimization. So if you need to quickly implement caching on your WooCommerce site, then why not give WP Rocket a shot? Run your own before/after an audit on PageSpeed Insights to compare your performance results!