settings confusion & wp-config edit?

  • quantaweb

    (@quantaweb)


    11 years, 1 month ago

    I discovered that my site’s performance is not really improved with W3 Total Cache installed. If anything it seems a bit slower.

    (I have an enterprise hosting plan for an online arts magazine which presently has about 250 posts and 25K visitors/month.)

    I’ve never used a caching plugin before and confess I don’t really understand how all the options work. My webhost instructed me to install this particular plugin.

    In my webhost’s knowledgebase, it says to use these settings:
    “You will want to turn on the following caching:
    Page Cache: Enable (Method: Disk: Basic)
    Database Cache: Enable (Method: Disk)
    Object Cache: Enable (Method: Disk)
    Browser Cache: Enable”

    So, that’s what I did. But since it didn’t speed up my site, I asked them what I could do and got this reply.

    “1. W3 cache is OK for static page cache but NEVER use the disk based object/database cache.

    2. Enable the static css file mode by adding define( ‘LESS_FILE_MODE’, true );
    to wp-config.php for increasing the response time.”

    They also said to “contact the plugin developer” if I have more questions. Helpful, huh?

    So, now I’m doubly confused:

    1. They’re saying (I think) to NEVER use the disk object/database cache, even though that’s what the knowledgebase says TO do. And if I don’t use the “disk” setting, what do I use instead? There are so many other options and I don’t know what they all do.

    2. They’re asking to modify a non-theme file. I have never touched anything other than the theme CSS so am freaked about modifying anything when I don’t even understand why I’m doing it. What does “( ‘LESS_FILE_MODE’, true );” do, and how will it impact my site’s functioning?

    Really appreciate any advice you can give me!
    all best,
    Denise

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

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  • ME

    (@mr-eddy)

    11 years, 1 month ago

    For the wp-config.php, it’s not very complex in fact.
    You just need to edit this file. First download it (using any FTP software or some webftp if your provider offers one), you will find it at the root of your FTP where you have uploaded all the wordpress files when you installed it.

    Then open it using an html/php edit software if you have one. If not, the basic editing text software is planty enough (text edit on a mac for example)
    And add this string at the end of the file :
    define( 'LESS_FILE_MODE', true );

    Save it, upload it back to replace the old wp-config.php and you are done.

    IMPORTANT : Keep a backup of the wp-config.php file and only do the edit on another copy. This way, if anything goes wrong, you’ll just have to upload the backup version 🙂

    About page cache in W2TC I can’t help yet since I am having an issue with it and minifying css & js . So I am back to hyper cache for now.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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