Implementing browser caching on your WordPress website improves performance for visitors who visit multiple pages or visit your website multiple times.
It allows their computer to store commonly used files in their browser which means pages can be displayed faster on those repeat visits.
The Google PageSpeed recommendation to serve static assets with an efficient cache policy is all about browser caching. It’s usually pretty straightforward to fix on WordPress sites.
“Static assets” means the files on your site: CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, videos (and other media files).
“Efficient cache policy” means that they have a long enough browser caching value so that they do not have to be downloaded by your site visitors frequently. Usually 4 months or longer is enough to satisfy Google and other tools.
Addressing PageSpeed’s recommendation to Reduce Unused CSS improves your site’s overall score, along with the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metrics.
Removing unused CSS is closely tied with removing render-blocking resources, and the plugins available will often let you achieve both things at once:
The PageSpeed recommendation to “avoid an excessive DOM size” is a tricky one for WordPress site owners. There isn’t a plugin that can magically fix this for you. You, the site owner, will need to make some changes to your content.
Most of the articles you’ll find on this topic are going to go into the technical things to do which aren’t possible for non-developers. However, this guide is a practical one for WordPress site owners.
I’ve been working with WP Rocket’s support team for a number of years, so I’m not only intimately familiar with the plugin, but I’ve also seen a lot of mistakes that customers make when they attempt to use it.
Even though it’s one of the easiest WordPress caching plugins to use, speed optimization is inherently technical and complex. It’s common to get confused or overwhelmed when using optimization plugins.
But here you have the “ultimate” guide, from the horse’s mouth. Even if you don’t use WP Rocket specifically, many of the guidelines apply to caching plugins in general.
Sometimes you might see this error when trying to upload an image in WordPress:
The server cannot process the image. This can happen if the server is busy or does not have enough resources to complete the task. Uploading a smaller image may help. Suggested maximum size is 2560 pixels.
