W3 Total Cache Might Slow Down WordPress

NOTE: This post addresses problems W3 Total Cache apparently caused long before the latest security threats surrounding this plugin and 2 others (WPTouch, AddThis) existed. To address W3 Total Cache’s security issues, click here. Or better yet, jump down below to get rid of the plugin completely.

Like all WordPress bloggers, I love plugins. Unfortunately, plugins slow down blog performance, and the general consensus with these things is ‘less is more.’ So I begrudgingly deactivated roughly half of the plugins I installed over the last few months, hoping to improve this blog’s performance.

Deactivation Yielded A Huge Improvement

It wasn’t until after I deactivated the W3 Total Cache plugin that I noticed a huge improvement. This video shows the tremendous problems I experienced prior to removing W3 Total Cache.

Here’s the same blog with the plugin deactivated. I completely removed the plugin, all of its generated folders, and all of the plugin’s .htaccess matter.

GZip is compression software that optimizes PHP webpages. More information about GZip is here.

I also enabled gzip in the blog’s header file. As you can see, the blog is much faster than before.

Operable For Hours

Simply adding GZip functionality to your blog may completely eliminate the need for any cache-ing type plugin.

So far, the blog has been operable for hours, which when compared to earlier in the day, seems like a miracle. If you’re suffering from the same problem, and you host your WordPress blog with GoDaddy, try removing this plugin if it’s installed. A small thread opened at the WordPress support blog reveals that its removal may help.

Removal Instructions

You can always remove the plugin from within WordPress’ plugin panel, however if you’re having problems as demonstrated in the first video above, your blog might not complete the process. To manually remove the plugin:

1. Log into your site via FTP and navigate to the directory that stores your WordPress plugin folders.

2. Right-click the W3 Total Cache folder and select Delete.

3. Click up to the wp-content folder and look for (1) a cache folder, (2) a wp-cache-config.php file, (3) a db.php file (if found), and (4) an advanced-cache.php file. Right-click and delete each one of those items.

4. Click up to the blog’s root folder and look for the .htaccess file. Right-click it and select Edit. Then remove everything except what’s between # BEGIN WordPress and # END WordPress. Save the changes to your server to continue.

5. Navigate to your blog’s theme folder, open it, and then look for your header.php file. Right-click it and select Edit. Then add the following at the very top (above all existing code):

< ?php if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); else ob_start(); ?>

[Download this code in a text file.]

NOTE: GZIP is only available on GoDaddy’s Linux Hosting plans.

6. That stuff enables gzip on all your blog’s pages and posts so they’ll load faster. Save the file to your server, and then continue.

7. Navigate to your blog’s root folder and open wp-config.php. Look for a line that reads, “define(‘WP_CACHE’, true).” If found, delete the entire line, and save the file to your server.

8. If you’re a stickler for keeping your database clean (and you should be), open that up via phpMyAdmin (or its equivalent) and locate all tables that indicate a relationship with the plugin (e.g.: wp_w3tc_cdn_queue). When/if found, drop (delete) every single one of them.

W3 Total Cache No Longer Exists

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After removing the plugin and logging into your blog, you might get a warning that the W3 Total Cache plugin no longer exists. Just click ‘Ok’ or whatever it is that you need to acknowledge to get rid of the warning. And while you’re logged in, feel free to remove any other plugins that aren’t 100% necessary. As cool as they are, the wrong ones can be down-right pesky! Current events surrounding WordPress issues can be found in our WordPress News section.

External Resources:

1. WordPress Bible
2. Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)
3. WordPress In Depth (2nd Edition)