Are you looking for ways to make your website faster? Perhaps you’ve begun to explore the world of SEO and heard that website speed is a significant ranking factor.
As a small business owner, the thought of going into the backend of your website and making changes that could affect the code and break your website is quite scary.
Even as an SEO specialist, I know a fraction of what goes into website design and development, and tread lightly if I haven’t gotten all clear from one of our developers.
When you make any technical changes to your website, it’s important to keep track in case you need to roll any of the changes back. In a perfect world, your web hosting company would back up your website on a scheduled basis, nightly being the best.
That way if you do happen to mess up the website, you can simply revert it to the updated version you have on hand. Check with your web host to see when they do backups before proceeding with any changes.
What is WP Rocket?
Thankfully, improving website speed with little-to-no website development knowledge has never been easier with WP Rocket. This is a speed optimizing plugin for WordPress websites. Unfortunately, there isn’t a free version. However, it’s worth the cost to have a fast website! As of April 2024, WP Rocket is $59 for one website for a year.
WP Rocket’s main power is in its caching abilities. By creating files of website content, it allows servers to quickly show the pre-saved files rather than generating a new one for each web visit. This significantly increases webpage loading times and therefore search engine rankings.
Getting started with WP Rocket
You can visit WP Rocket’s website to learn about their different pricing plans. You can purchase the plugin through the website or in the “plugin” dashboard on WordPress. Once you buy and install WP Rocket, your website should start running faster automatically. There are, however, plenty of settings you can configure to boost the website speed.
I’m going to go through my recommendations below while implementing them on a new website to show you in-action how your site speed can improve! To test the website speed, I will be running a Lighthouse Speed Test in mobile view.
This is a Google Chrome extension you can install and use to test your website’s speed performance in both mobile and desktop view. I am choosing to use mobile view because Google now prioritizes mobile functionality over desktop.
Step One- Install Plugin
To install the plugin, search for it in the ‘plugin’ dashboard, or download it from the WP Rocket website. Once installed, for me, WP Rocket is under “Settings” in the WordPress menu on the left side. It could be in a different spot on your website depending on the WordPress theme and version.
Here is a website before installing and using WP Rocket:
Here is a website after installing WP Rocket but before changing any additional settings:
I’ve been using Cloudways since January 2016 for this blog. I happily recommend Cloudways to my readers because I am a proud customer.
Once you’ve installed WP Rocket, you can see your membership type and expiration date in the Dashboard:
Step Two- Cache
Now to start actually tinkering with some settings. First, let’s go to the “Cache” section.
In this section, I would recommend enabling the following settings:
Enable caching for mobile devices – ON
This speeds up your website for mobile visitors.
Separate cache files for mobile devices – OFF
I don’t recommend this setting unless you have a theme/plugin specifically for mobile devices.
Enable caching for logged-in WordPress users – OFF
This setting creates a set of cache files for each user in WordPress. I don’t recommend enabling this setting.
Cache Lifespan – 10 Hours
This option determines how long the cache is stored before being cleared. 10 Hours is the default.
After configuring these settings, the website speed has improved some, as you can see in the below image:
Step Three- File Optimization
Next, let’s go to the “File Optimization” section in WP Rocket. It should look like this:
This section can make some of the biggest improvements in your website speed. However, you should proceed with caution. Some of these settings can “break” aspects of your website.
I would recommend enabling just one setting, saving, then clearing your cache. You can clear your cache in the “Dashboard” section of WP Rocket, or in the menu at the top of your WordPress dashboard (WP Rocket → “Clear and preload cache”). Then, in an incognito browser, pull up your website and click through it to see if there are any issues with pop-ups, widgets, or overall functionality.
If you do notice an issue, undo whatever setting you enabled and make sure this fixes the problem. Then, you can go on to the next setting. If you configure this entire section before checking for issues on your website, you won’t be able to tell which setting caused the issue. This means you’ll have to disable the settings one by one to find the culprit. It’s easier to check each setting as you go.
In this section, I recommend the following settings:
Minify CSS – ON
Note, when you Minify CSS you’ll get this warning:
Again, it’s important once you enable this to review your website for any issues before proceeding.
Optimize CSS delivery – ON
This section will also give you the option to “Remove Unused CSS” or “Load CSS Asynchronously”. Remove Unused CSS is the best option for performance, but it might cause some issues with your website. If this happens, switch to Load CSS Asynchronously.
Minify JavaScript files – ON
This setting will also give you an activation warning.
Combine JavaScript Files – OFF
Load Javascript deferred – ON
Delay JavaScript execution – ON
This setting improves a lot of the speed recommendations you’ll get on speed tests. However, this setting can be persnickety depending on how many scripts you’re running. If there are certain elements that you want to appear instantly, you can select those to be excluded from the delay:
Once you’ve completed this section, do another check through your website in an incognito browser after you’ve cleared the cache to make sure it is running smoothly.
Now that I’ve enabled the above settings and made sure that nothing on my website is broken, I ran another Lighthouse speed test. My website’s speed improved more than 30 points from these changes!
Step Four- Media
This is another section that can really make a difference in your website loading time. Especially if your website contains a lot of images or videos.
I recommend enabling every setting in this section:
Enable for images – ON
Enable for CSS background images – ON
Enable for iframes and videos – ON
Replace YouTube iframe with preview image – ON
Add missing image dimensions – ON
If you use embedded YouTube videos on your website, replacing the YouTube iframe with a preview image can drastically increase page speed by showing a preview image in place of your video (as opposed to loading all of the code for the video). It will only run the code once someone actually plays the video.
Adding the missing image dimensions can improve any Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues in a speed test report. This setting reserves the amount of space needed for your image on your page when it’s loading. This means that once the image is loaded, it doesn’t cause all of the content to shift to make room for the image.
This also improves user experience overall. Have you ever tried to look at a webpage only to lose your place because an image loaded and shifted all of the content up/down? Now, that won’t be an issue on your site!
Once again, I saved these changes, cleared my cache, and scrolled through my website in an incognito browser to make sure everything still looked good. With these changes, my website speed bumped up even more!
Step Five- Preload
When you get to this section, you might notice that these settings are enabled by default. I would recommend to leave these settings on, like this:
Activate Preloading – ON
Enable link preloading – ON
That’s pretty much it for this section, easy enough!
Step Six- Advanced Rules
In this section, I wouldn’t recommend changing anything unless you have specific needs for your website.
If there are certain URLs, Cookies, or User Agents (devices and browsers) that you don’t want cached, you can specify those here. Also, any URLs you want to be purged from the cache whenever you update a page/post, you can specify that in the “Always Purge URLs” section”.
Again, in most cases, you don’t need to change anything in this section.
Step Seven- Database
This section allows you to clean up your database and schedule automatic cleanups. This will optimize your website for quick load times and reduce database bloat.
Revisions – OFF
If you use revisions on your posts, I wouldn’t enable this setting.
Auto Drafts – OFF
If you use auto drafts on your posts, I wouldn’t enable this setting.
Trashed Posts – ON
If you don’t need to save posts you’ve put in the trash, enable this.
Spam Comments – ON
This deleted any comments that have been marked as spam.
Trashed Comments – ON
This deleted any comments that have been deleted.
All Transients – ON
Optimize Tables – ON
Schedule Automatic Cleanup – Weekly
If you use revisions or auto drafts when creating blog posts, I would not enable “Revisions” and “Auto Drafts”. Trashed posts, comments, spam comments, and transients are typically safe to get rid of. The “Optimize Tables” option will clean up the tables in your database to get rid of bloat.
I like to schedule weekly automatic cleanups for WP Rocket to go through and optimize my site. These cleanups cannot be undone. Before doing a database cleanup, make sure you have a backup of your website. Most website hosting providers do automatic backups on a daily basis, but it’s a good idea to double check first.
Now that I’ve made some additional changes to the site, I’m going to clear my cache and make sure the website is still running properly.
After doing the above, I checked my site speed to see that it again has improved to 91!
Additional WP Rocket Settings and Options
CDN
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. This is essentially a network of servers around the world that work together to quickly deliver content to users, wherever they are located.
For my website, I am going to leave the settings like this:
Enable Content Delivery Network – OFF
Whether or not you should use a CDN is largely based on where your target audience is located. If the majority of your website traffic is from the country/continent where your website is hosted, don’t use a CDN. In fact, it can actually slow your website down. If a lot of your traffic is coming from around the globe, you should use a CDN!
If you are using a CDN with WP Rocket, I suggest BunnyCDN or Cloudflare. WP Rocket will recommend RocketCDN, but the ones I mentioned above are a better value.
Heartbeat
WordPress’s Heartbeat API allows your server and the browser to sync and transfer real-time data. However, this API can consume resources on your server and create high CPU usage. Reducing or disabling this activity can save server resources.
This setting is enabled by default when you download WP Rocket. If it isn’t, I recommend these settings:
Control Heartbeat – ON
Behavior in backend – Reduce Activity
Behavior in post editor – Reduce Activity
Behavior in frontend – Reduce Activity
You can also select “do not limit” or “disable” for the Heartbeat activity options. Disabling Heartbeat could break plugins or themes on your site. If you are sure that you don’t need Heartbeat API for any of these areas, you can disable it.
Add-Ons
WP Rocket has a few add-ons that may be useful depending on your website needs.
Varnish
If your website is hosted on WP Engine, Flywheel, Cloudways, or WPX, WP Rocket will detect this and automatically enable this add-on. If your website is hosted on Kinsta, Pressable, or SiteGround, you don’t need to use this add-on as the server is already synced with WP Rocket’s cache. My website does not use any of the above for hosting, so your dashboard may look different here.
WebP Compatibility
If your website uses WebP images, you should turn ON this add-on. Otherwise, do not use this setting. For image optimization, I recommend using Imagify, which I will discuss later.
Cloudflare
Using this setting lets you easily access some Cloudflare settings within WP Rocket. This is mainly to add convenience and is not a necessary add-on. Especially if your website is already operating through Cloudflare.
Sucuri
If you use the Sucuri Website Firewall (WAF) with caching, you should turn ON this add-on. The syncs your WP Rocket and Sucuri caches to keep your website updated. If you don’t use Sucuri, you don’t need to enable this add-on.
Image Optimization
WP rocket recommends Imagify to compress images on your website. This is their own plugin; however it does work well and is my preferred image optimization plugin.
Visit the Imagify website to learn more about their pricing and options. They have a free version; however the upload size and image amount will be limited.
Tools
The tools dashboard gives you the ability to import/export your settings, rollback to a previous version of WP Rocket, or manually update your inclusion and exclusion lists. These settings are for your own convenience and do not do anything to improve website speed.
Export and Import Settings
These tools can come in handy if you want to apply the settings you’ve made in WP Rocket to another website. Simply download the settings under “export” on the website with your WP Rocket configuration. Then in the new website, upload the settings file and click “Upload File and Import Settings” and boom, you’re good to go.
Rollback
If you update WP Rocket and find new issues with your website, you can rollback the update to the previous version.
Update Inclusion and Exclusion Lists
The compatibility lists are updated automatically on a weekly basis. However, if you would like to manually update these lists sooner, you may do so here.
Tutorials
If you need additional help with any of these settings, see if the subject matter is covered in the Tutorials dashboard.
Concluding Thoughts
This article outlined the best WP Rocket settings for a typical WordPress website. If your website has e-commerce, booking, or other advanced features, you may want to pay extra attention to how the website behaves after configuring each setting. Advanced features may require different settings and may have limits as to what you can enable to speed up your website.
For the average WordPress website, such as the website used in this article, you should see vast improvements in your website speed and performance. Remember, my example website went from a score of 27 to 91!
Using WP Rocket to increase your website speed will make your site more enjoyable for visitors and boost your SEO so you can beat out the competition in organic search.
In this rapidly evolving digital landscape, your business can’t afford a slow website!
About the author: Olivia Lyne is a Digital Marketing Specialist at WordwrightWeb, a high-end web design and digital marketing agency headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina. With a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Olivia brings a unique perspective to her work. Her expertise lies in managing Google Ads campaigns, executing impactful SEO strategies, and writing insightful blogs that explore the rapidly evolving world of digital marketing and web design.
