WordPress cache is an integral part of WordPress site maintenance which can cause performance issues if it is not cleared promptly. Clearing your cache is simply a method of removing material and data from your website’s temporary storage to improve your website’s performance and serve your pages quickly to your users. It is also the first troubleshooting advice that anyone will give you. But if you are new to WordPress, you probably don’t know how to clear your cache. Fortunately, it’s pretty straightforward to clear your WordPress cache.
In this article, we will go through how to clear your WordPress cache in 3 easy steps. We can assure you that these steps will not only remove the cache but also provide a smooth loading site. So, let’s get started.
What is Caching in WordPress?
When a user visits your WordPress website for the first time, WordPress needs to make requests to the database using PHP. Then, it combines the information and uses it to generate the HTML page we see. It takes a lot of time to request and reformat data from the primary database. If WordPress needed to communicate with the central database every time a user returned to the website, pages would take too long to load.
Caching is the process of storing data in a temporary storage area. It creates and saves a static version of the frequently requested information so that it can serve future requests faster. Because of this process, WordPress no longer needs to run heavier PHP scripts and can load your web pages faster. Websites use caching to reduce the number of data requests and speed up page load time. This boosts overall website speed and improves user experience, which also impacts SEO! In short, caching minimizes the amount of work required to produce a webpage for viewing. These copies are held in the WordPress cache until the cache expires, content is changed, or the cache receives an order to purge.
Why you Need to Clear Cache in WordPress?
As we mentioned above, when a user visits your website, they receive the cached files rather than running heavy PHP scripts to request new versions of the website. But sometimes the cache fails to detect the new changes you made on your website because it’s still using the downloaded static content to load the results. Not only that, the conflict between the cached version and the updates may cause your site to break. Here clearing cache comes in handy. When you clear your website’s cache, you’re erasing the temporarily saved files in your cache data layer. This ensures that visitors will always see the newest content, such as comments and recent posts, when accessing your site. This will prevent both you and your visitors from seeing any updates you’ve made.
The cache is a useful feature, but one that does take up space. Therefore, clearing your cache means deleting any saved data (such as images or sitemaps) in an attempt to free up room on your server, browser, or device. Clearing your cache can often help with troubleshooting too, depending on what you’re trying to fix.
Clearing your WordPress cache regularly is a good practice. Having a fast-loading site is essential for user experience and SEO. Clearing cache enhances loading speeds and websites with optimized speed tend to have lower bounce rates, which results in higher engagement and conversions. Google also favors fast websites and ranks them higher on the search results page.
Hence you already know why you need to clear cache, now we will go through the steps on how to clear your cache in WordPress. Depending on your hosting provider, you might already have WordPress caching built-in. Popular WordPress hosts like Bluehost and SiteGround also have built-in caching for their users. Here, we will see how you can clear browser cache, server cache, and WordPress cache with plugins.
Step 1 # Clear your Browser Cache:
As your browser also has a caching system that stores static website content so you should clear your browser cache copies of every site you visit before clearing your WordPress site cache. The process of clearing cache differs slightly between browsers. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to clear the cache with Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
Clear Cache with Google Chrome:
If you use Google Chrome, you can clear your browser cache by going to your Browser menu (three dots in the top right corner)>More tools>Clear browsing data. Now, select the item you want to clear and click on Clear data.
Clear Cache with Firefox:
For clearing cache on Firefox, Menu Button (Hamburger-looking)>Settings>Privacy and Security>Cookies and Site Data>Clear Data. You can then choose to clear Cookies and Site Data along with Cached Web Content — or one or the other.
Clear Cache with Microsoft Edge:
In Edge browser you need to click Menu Button (3 dots in the upper right corner of the browser)> Settings > Clear Browsing Data > Choose What To Clear.
Here, you can see items like Browsing History, Cookies and Saves Website Date, Cached Data and Files, Downloaded History, and Form Data. Select the items you want to clear cache then click Clear.
Clear Cache with Safari (Mac):
If you’re using a Mac, go to the Safari menu (Safari in the top left corner of your screen)>Preferences>Privacy>Manage Site Data>Remove All.
Step 2 # Clear your Server Cache:
Popular WordPress-specific hosting such as Bluehost, SiteGround, WP Engine, etc let you clear cache directly through them. We’ll show you how you can clear your cache using Bluehost, SiteGround, and WP Engine hosting. The process may differ depending on the hosting provider but it is more or less similar in every hosting. If you use any other hosting and find yourself stuck somewhere, contact your hosting support team.
Clear Cache with WP Engine:
If you host your website with WP Engine, you can clear your WP Engine cache right from your WordPress admin area. Click on the WP Engine menu item in the admin bar and then under the General settings option click on the Purge all caches button. WP Engine will automatically purge every stored cache for your WordPress site.
Clear Cache with Bluehost:
Bluehost makes it easy to clear your WordPress cache from your WordPress admin area. To clear all cache, go to the WordPress admin dashboard and click on the Caching button in the admin toolbar. When you hover over that, you’ll see an option called Purge All. Select it, this will immediately clear all your WordPress cache files.
Clear Cache with SiteGround:
If your site is hosted in SiteGround, you can clear the SiteGround cache from your hosting account control panel as well as the WordPress admin area. To clear your cache from your Siteground control panel, go to Speed > Caching > Dynamic Cache. Now, click on the menu icon next to your domain name and then select the Flush cache option.
Alternatively, you can install and activate the SG Optimizer plugin. Upon activation, you need to click the Purge SG Cache button in your top WordPress admin toolbar. The plugin will automatically clear your SiteGround WordPress cache.
Step 3 # Clear Your WordPress Cache With Plugins:
Using your WordPress caching plugin is one of the easiest ways to clear the cache without much hassle at all. There are several WordPress caching plugins available in the market. Most of them have a Delete cache or clear cache button on the settings page to clear your WordPress cache. But not all plugins are the same, the process will differ depending on the plugin you are using. In this section, we will see the four most popular caching plugins you can use to help you clear your cache.
W3 Total Cache:
W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular caching plugins but it works a bit differently from the other caching plugins. There are two ways to clear the WordPress cache in W3 Total Cache.
One the first way, you need to do is visit your WordPress dashboard, click on Performance on the left side of your dashboard and click on empty all caches.
The second way does the same thing as the previous one. It’s just located in a different place. Go to your WordPress admin dashboard>Performance>General Settings and click the Empty Cache button to clear the cache. W3 Total Cache will now delete all cached content for your site.
WP Super Cache:
WP Super Cache is another incredibly popular caching plugin that comes with several advanced caching features.
If you use WP Super Cache, clearing your cache is super quick and easy. Just go to your WordPress website and click on Settings>WP Super Cache>Easy. Now click on the Delete Cache option.
WP Super Cache plugin also enables you to set up automated cache purges. To set automated cache purges, go to Settings>WP Super Cache>Advanced. Then, scroll down to the Expiry Time & Garbage Collection. Set your cache timeout and interval as you need. Next, click Change Expiration to save the changes.
WP Fastest Cache:
WP Fastest Cache is a beginner-friendly cache plugin that is easy to configure. It has two options to clear the cache, Delete the cached content and Delete the cached content plus the minified CSS and JavaScript files. From your WordPress dashboard, go to the WP Fastest Cache>Delete Cache tab on the top toolbar. Here, you’ll see two buttons we talked about earlier, one Clear All Cache and another one Delete Cache and Minified CSS/JS. Click the one you want but be careful about clearing Minified CSS/JS, which may contain your essential website files.
Conclusion:
Caches are very useful for both the server and browsers to make your website load faster. But if your cache storage becomes too crowded, it prevents visitors from seeing new changes on your website. So, it’s wise to clear cache religiously.
We hope this article has been helpful. If you have any other method to suggest or any questions regarding clearing WordPress cache, let us know in the comments section below!
Also, visit our WordPress Tips section to get more tutorials like How To Reduce Unused CSS in WordPress and How To Add Custom JavaScripts and Styles in WordPress.
WordPress cache is an integral part of WordPress site maintenance which can cause performance issues if it is not cleared promptly. Clearing your cache is simply a method of removing material and data from your website’s temporary storage to improve your website’s performance and serve your pages quickly to your users. It is also the first troubleshooting advice that anyone will give you. But if you are new to WordPress, you probably don’t know how to clear your cache. Fortunately, it’s pretty straightforward to clear your WordPress cache.
In this article, we will go through how to clear your WordPress cache in 3 easy steps. We can assure you that these steps will not only remove the cache but also provide a smooth loading site. So, let’s get started.
What is Caching in WordPress?
When a user visits your WordPress website for the first time, WordPress needs to make requests to the database using PHP. Then, it combines the information and uses it to generate the HTML page we see. It takes a lot of time to request and reformat data from the primary database. If WordPress needed to communicate with the central database every time a user returned to the website, pages would take too long to load.
Caching is the process of storing data in a temporary storage area. It creates and saves a static version of the frequently requested information so that it can serve future requests faster. Because of this process, WordPress no longer needs to run heavier PHP scripts and can load your web pages faster. Websites use caching to reduce the number of data requests and speed up page load time. This boosts overall website speed and improves user experience, which also impacts SEO! In short, caching minimizes the amount of work required to produce a webpage for viewing. These copies are held in the WordPress cache until the cache expires, content is changed, or the cache receives an order to purge.
Why you Need to Clear Cache in WordPress?
As we mentioned above, when a user visits your website, they receive the cached files rather than running heavy PHP scripts to request new versions of the website. But sometimes the cache fails to detect the new changes you made on your website because it’s still using the downloaded static content to load the results. Not only that, the conflict between the cached version and the updates may cause your site to break. Here clearing cache comes in handy. When you clear your website’s cache, you’re erasing the temporarily saved files in your cache data layer. This ensures that visitors will always see the newest content, such as comments and recent posts, when accessing your site. This will prevent both you and your visitors from seeing any updates you’ve made.
The cache is a useful feature, but one that does take up space. Therefore, clearing your cache means deleting any saved data (such as images or sitemaps) in an attempt to free up room on your server, browser, or device. Clearing your cache can often help with troubleshooting too, depending on what you’re trying to fix.
Clearing your WordPress cache regularly is a good practice. Having a fast-loading site is essential for user experience and SEO. Clearing cache enhances loading speeds and websites with optimized speed tend to have lower bounce rates, which results in higher engagement and conversions. Google also favors fast websites and ranks them higher on the search results page.
Hence you already know why you need to clear cache, now we will go through the steps on how to clear your cache in WordPress. Depending on your hosting provider, you might already have WordPress caching built-in. Popular WordPress hosts like Bluehost and SiteGround also have built-in caching for their users. Here, we will see how you can clear browser cache, server cache, and WordPress cache with plugins.
Step 1 # Clear your Browser Cache:
As your browser also has a caching system that stores static website content so you should clear your browser cache copies of every site you visit before clearing your WordPress site cache. The process of clearing cache differs slightly between browsers. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to clear the cache with Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
Clear Cache with Google Chrome:
If you use Google Chrome, you can clear your browser cache by going to your Browser menu (three dots in the top right corner)>More tools>Clear browsing data. Now, select the item you want to clear and click on Clear data.
Clear Cache with Firefox:
For clearing cache on Firefox, Menu Button (Hamburger-looking)>Settings>Privacy and Security>Cookies and Site Data>Clear Data. You can then choose to clear Cookies and Site Data along with Cached Web Content — or one or the other.
Clear Cache with Microsoft Edge:
In Edge browser you need to click Menu Button (3 dots in the upper right corner of the browser)> Settings > Clear Browsing Data > Choose What To Clear.
Here, you can see items like Browsing History, Cookies and Saves Website Date, Cached Data and Files, Downloaded History, and Form Data. Select the items you want to clear cache then click Clear.
Clear Cache with Safari (Mac):
If you’re using a Mac, go to the Safari menu (Safari in the top left corner of your screen)>Preferences>Privacy>Manage Site Data>Remove All.
Step 2 # Clear your Server Cache:
Popular WordPress-specific hosting such as Bluehost, SiteGround, WP Engine, etc let you clear cache directly through them. We’ll show you how you can clear your cache using Bluehost, SiteGround, and WP Engine hosting. The process may differ depending on the hosting provider but it is more or less similar in every hosting. If you use any other hosting and find yourself stuck somewhere, contact your hosting support team.
Clear Cache with WP Engine:
If you host your website with WP Engine, you can clear your WP Engine cache right from your WordPress admin area. Click on the WP Engine menu item in the admin bar and then under the General settings option click on the Purge all caches button. WP Engine will automatically purge every stored cache for your WordPress site.
Clear Cache with Bluehost:
Bluehost makes it easy to clear your WordPress cache from your WordPress admin area. To clear all cache, go to the WordPress admin dashboard and click on the Caching button in the admin toolbar. When you hover over that, you’ll see an option called Purge All. Select it, this will immediately clear all your WordPress cache files.
Clear Cache with SiteGround:
If your site is hosted in SiteGround, you can clear the SiteGround cache from your hosting account control panel as well as the WordPress admin area. To clear your cache from your Siteground control panel, go to Speed > Caching > Dynamic Cache. Now, click on the menu icon next to your domain name and then select the Flush cache option.
Alternatively, you can install and activate the SG Optimizer plugin. Upon activation, you need to click the Purge SG Cache button in your top WordPress admin toolbar. The plugin will automatically clear your SiteGround WordPress cache.
Step 3 # Clear Your WordPress Cache With Plugins:
Using your WordPress caching plugin is one of the easiest ways to clear the cache without much hassle at all. There are several WordPress caching plugins available in the market. Most of them have a Delete cache or clear cache button on the settings page to clear your WordPress cache. But not all plugins are the same, the process will differ depending on the plugin you are using. In this section, we will see the four most popular caching plugins you can use to help you clear your cache.
W3 Total Cache:
W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular caching plugins but it works a bit differently from the other caching plugins. There are two ways to clear the WordPress cache in W3 Total Cache.
One the first way, you need to do is visit your WordPress dashboard, click on Performance on the left side of your dashboard and click on empty all caches.
The second way does the same thing as the previous one. It’s just located in a different place. Go to your WordPress admin dashboard>Performance>General Settings and click the Empty Cache button to clear the cache. W3 Total Cache will now delete all cached content for your site.
WP Super Cache:
WP Super Cache is another incredibly popular caching plugin that comes with several advanced caching features.
If you use WP Super Cache, clearing your cache is super quick and easy. Just go to your WordPress website and click on Settings>WP Super Cache>Easy. Now click on the Delete Cache option.
WP Super Cache plugin also enables you to set up automated cache purges. To set automated cache purges, go to Settings>WP Super Cache>Advanced. Then, scroll down to the Expiry Time & Garbage Collection. Set your cache timeout and interval as you need. Next, click Change Expiration to save the changes.
WP Fastest Cache:
WP Fastest Cache is a beginner-friendly cache plugin that is easy to configure. It has two options to clear the cache, Delete the cached content and Delete the cached content plus the minified CSS and JavaScript files. From your WordPress dashboard, go to the WP Fastest Cache>Delete Cache tab on the top toolbar. Here, you’ll see two buttons we talked about earlier, one Clear All Cache and another one Delete Cache and Minified CSS/JS. Click the one you want but be careful about clearing Minified CSS/JS, which may contain your essential website files.
Conclusion:
Caches are very useful for both the server and browsers to make your website load faster. But if your cache storage becomes too crowded, it prevents visitors from seeing new changes on your website. So, it’s wise to clear cache religiously.
We hope this article has been helpful. If you have any other method to suggest or any questions regarding clearing WordPress cache, let us know in the comments section below!
Also, visit our WordPress Tips section to get more tutorials like How To Reduce Unused CSS in WordPress and How To Add Custom JavaScripts and Styles in WordPress.
Sidratul Sohrat