Reasons to Clear Your Cache in WordPress

January 18. 2022

Did you know that website pages that take more than three seconds to load end up losing up to 40% of visitors? This fact alone confirms how the speed at which pages load on your website is a crucial factor for user experience. The easiest way to boost your website speed is to clear your cache in WordPress. It will not only help your website run faster but it will also ensure any changes you made go into effect and your website runs smoothly. If you are not sure how to do this, continue reading. By the end of this article, you’ll learn why clearing cache in WordPress is important and what are the easiest ways to do this. Of course, you can always hire experienced WP professionals to handle your WordPress website maintenance. They’ll ensure your website is running to its without any glitches.

How does WordPress cache work?

You probably already know how important clearing your browser cache is for your everyday browsing experience. However, it’s even more important for your WordPress website and your users’ experience. There is no easier way to get rid of visitors than by having a slow website!

Caching is used by websites to reduce the number of data requests and thus speed up the time it takes to load a page. The first time any user visits your website, WordPress sends a request to the database using PHP. After combining this information, WordPress generates the HTML page your visitor sees.

It can take a lot of time to request and reformat data from the primary base. Imagine if WordPress needed to communicate with the central database each time user returned to your website – it would take ages for pages to load. That’s what caching helps with!

After WordPress requests specific pages for the first time, it makes sure to store the static HTML pages. It stores them in a high-speed data layer which we all know as a cache. So every next time someone requests a website page, WordPress will display the saved page. It’s much faster than querying the central database all over again. By displaying a static HTML file, WordPress increases page loading time.

However, keep in mind that cached pages are static. This means that they don’t include any updates or edits you potentially made after the first visit.

What does “clear your WordPress cache” mean?

Many people get confused and think that by clearing cache files they’ll delete the website’s permanent data. Of course, that’s not the case as only the snapshots of web pages that were previously saved get deleted.

When you clear your website’s cache, you are actually deleting the temporarily saved files that are kept in your cache data layer. Once you clear your website cache, you’ll allow browsers to load the most recent version of your website pages. Browsers will then use those pages to create new cache data.

When and why should you clear your cache in WordPress?

You are probably wondering how does clearing the cache in WordPress makes sense if it increases page loading speed. But regularly cleaning the WordPress cache is an important part of website management. Here are just some scenarios where clearing WordPress cache is needed:

• If you changed your website design or content, it’s important to clear your WordPress cache. As mentioned, your website will show your visitors saved versions of pages so they won’t get to see any changes you made. Therefore, after publishing any significant changes, make sure to clear the WordPress cache.
• In case you’ve updated your WordPress theme or plugins, it’s recommended to clear your cache. Developers often release new versions of both WordPress themes and plugins to improve their performance. If you don’t clear cache after these types of changes, they might not get into effect.
• Should you look for a better web hosting service and decide to migrate your website, make sure to clear the cache afterward. Failing to do this might result in weird website behavior and poor user experience.
• Installing an image compression plugin is a great way to boost your page loading speed and overall website performance. However, if you don’t clear your cache after installing it, your website will continue showing old images.

How to clear cache in WordPress?

Now that you know how important it is to clear your cache in WordPress, you are probably wondering how can you do it. Further in this article, we’ll reveal three simple ways to do this.

Clear your browser cache

In case you made changes to your website but can’t see them, it could be that your personal browser cache is the culprit. As your browser stores data such as HTML pages, it could be that it’s showing you the old, saved copies of your website.

Therefore, try clearing your browser cache and loading your website again.

Clear WordPress cache

In order to speed up your WordPress website caching, you will need to install one of the WordPress caching plugins. There are several WordPress caching plugins and most of them are pretty straightforward to use. They usually have a “delete cache” or “clear cache” button on their settings page.

Clear server cache (Bluehost cache)

Lastly, make sure to clear your server cache. You can easily do this on Bluehost by using your WordPress dashboard. Simply click on caching in your WordPress admin menu, then select purge all and you’ll successfully delete all caches.

The bottom line

As you can see, if you regularly clear your cache in WordPress, you’ll ensure to give your visitors a great user experience. As your website speed and performance depend greatly on cache, make sure to add clearing it to your regular WordPress website maintenance routine. Or, get in touch with an expert WordPress maintenance team who will handle all aspects of managing your website while you can relax and watch the number of visitors on your website grow each day!