W3 Total Cache Pro and WordPress Page Loading Speed

W3 Total Cache Pro has recently been introduced by W3TC Plugin developer and here is some answers to the frequently asked by the WordPress users as suggestion to us via email and/or comments. First and foremost important thing is that – the uncomfortable questions asked by the innocent visitors / readers regarding W3 Total Cache Pro are not possible to answer by us. We do not use W3 Total Cache Pro but the free W3 Total Cache, which is available in WordPress Plugin Repository under GNU GPL for free of cost. Any opinion about W3 Total Cache Pro by us, probably has no value because simply we never used it. This article is not intended to hurt any seller’s market, but what is apparently correct with measurable metrics are presented here.

 

Does W3 Total Cache Pro increases WordPress Page Loading Speed Significantly?

 

Without having an optimized backend – that simply means both better quality of coding of the front-end web software with a good practically nice database system and a good server (to minimum), it is never possible to get an optimized speed.

Unfortunately, WordPress uses MySQL database, not even MySQLi. We basically configure the backend with a Scalable MySQL Database to cover this issue. There is plugin to change the database to Postgresql, indeed we have given a basic guide to install WordPress with PostgreSQL on Rackspace Cloud. But Postgreqsql database is probably too risky for a serious website – there is practically none help.

Officially, “the pro version unlocks the fragment cache, which can be used to increase the performance of the transients API in WP” for StudioPress Genesis Framework only. We really like StudioPress Genesis because of excellent quality of coding. Transients API is a feature of WordPress :

 

 

Sometimes you only want to cache a section of a page instead of the entire page. Fragment caching is the answer in this aspect. You can see quite good guide and opinion for Transients API :

 

Technically, with these features you will get around 10% lesser page loading time at minimum from our calculation. Page loading time is checked with webpagetest.org as gold standard, unfortunately theory might not be right in practice, although the example test is for different reason :

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131029_CM_17ccc5c29d668f5223629ec674995ca1/

In other words, there can be improvements, but difficult to predict it theoretically.

 

Will I Purchase W3 Total Cache Pro?

 

We do not have :

1. A theme or theme framework to sell
2. A theme or theme framework to sell as affiliate
3. A WordPress Cache Plugin to sell
4. A Reseller Hosting Service

We only provide tutorials, guides etc. We only can say, StudioPress Genesis Framework is a good choice for the quality of coding. Plus the cost is quite lesser as there is no restriction on number of domains, the support, documentations are quite good. It is quite uncomfortable for us to say yes or no regarding purchase of a premium WordPress Plugin. W3 Total Cache is definitely a good cache plugin for WordPress.
We use managed Rackspace Cloud, Akamai or Rackspace Cloud Files as CDN and if WordPress is used, then Genesis and normal version of W3TC is usually used. We sometimes deliberately do not use CDN. Which we never tested, we never provide any opinion about. If we use W3 Total Cache Pro definitely we will provide feedback / tutorial. We hope this answers the questions asked.