Caching is something you’ll prefer when the performance of your WordPress website goes down. That will be the second thing you’ll be doing other than maintaining proper web security for your WordPress site. Now, what if you need to clear all the cache? Even if you have software automation for each and everything in WordPress, it’s worth learning how to clear your cache in WordPress.
With the following article, you can, first of all, understand the needs for clearing cache on your WordPress website. Afterward, we’ll see how to delete cache from inside and outside your WordPress installation.
Why Caches?
Briefly saying, caching is an efficient way to deliver your website content to your visitors.
Speeding up of websites is vital if you are looking for better leads and profit generation through your business website. No visitor will wait after one or two seconds to load a webpage. This is where WordPress caching helps you to attain visitor satisfaction with fast loading web pages.
Having said enough about caching, there may come times where clearing cache is more than necessary.
Reasons to Remove Caches from WordPress Websites
By using website caching, we can yield the best website experience to the visitors. With a saved static copy of the website, the site will load faster with every new visitor.
Now, why is it that you are speeding up your website loading time if you ain’t got anything new to show them?
Visitors always look for compelling something everytime they visit a website. At least, there should be something relevant to share with them. If a website lacks an updating of new content in regular intervals, there are chances that your visitors won’t make a comeback.
Therefore, we are going to discuss some instances where caching can be an antagonist in the story. It may stand in your way of delivering new contents to the visitors and requires manual clearing as a result.
Design Changes Not Reflected?
A business website is as important as any other marketing collateral. It is always subject to regular changes. You may need to regularly update your contact information and product details. There may also be some revamps or remarketing in the business. Tweaks are essential for a website to stay on the road. Otherwise, it will start deteriorating and gradually will fade away.
See, if you recently updated the design or content on your website, and you are not able to see the changes on the frontend. That means the caching mechanism hasn’t identified the changes you made.
Adding New Content
Every website needs relevant and worthy content in them. These contents may be in the form of case studies, white papers, or blog articles. Contents like these are always helpful to attract new visitors and make the old ones return. Search engines like Google take note of these changes and are fond of websites with regular updates and good quality content.
If your web site’s server is retaining a cached version of the previous page and doesn’t display the new changes, they will neither be discovered by the Google bots either. This trend is usually seen when contents are added to the widget areas of the website.
Plugin & Theme Updates
One of the main reasons to clear the cache is the regular WordPress updates. Whenever an update occurs to a plugin or a theme, it may affect the code, files, and the outward appearance of the website. If your cache is not cleared, these changes won’t take effect on the next HTTPS request.
Changes in Database
The caching mechanism in some hosting providers can cause issues if not cleared under particular circumstances.
This is really important if your website rests on a managed WordPress hosting. Even slight changes or migration of the site demands a clearing of the cache. By doing so, you can avoid displaying error pages or antiquated website versions to your visitors.
Images Hosted Externally
If you are using a WordPress plugin to optimize your images, you may notice that the server is delivering the older and uncompressed version of these images. To make sure that the server picks up the compressed images from the plugin, always clear the cache after optimization.
Having said all these, let’s have a look at how to clear the cache.
Step 1: Clear The Browser Cache
As a first step, clear your browser cache. Most of the web browsers store static contents, say, JavaScript, stylesheets, images, etc. from websites for a faster loading experience.
Still, browsers may fail at times in recognizing changes happening to a web page. Instead of displaying the fresh version of the page, the browser might still load the same old page directly from the cached version in the memory.
To clean the browser cache in Chrome, navigate to Menu » More Tools » Clear Browsing Data.
A popup will appear where you can select what to remove and what to keep. Ensure that cached images and files are checked. Once confirmed, click on ‘Clear Browsing Data’.
Now that you have cleared the browsing data, try visiting your website again.
Is there isn’t any change still, let’s move to the next step.
Note: For clearing browsing history in other browsers, refer to their respective documentation.
Step 2: Clear Cache From The WordPress Caching Plugin
If you use a WordPress caching plugin on your website, the plugin cache needs to be cleared. Most caching plugins come with easy settings for clearing the cache.
Clear the Cache in WP Super Cache
The most popular among the WordPress caching plugins is the ‘WP Super Cache’ plugin. It comes with the option to clear or purge all the cache in a single click.
Navigate to Settings » WP Super Cache and click on ‘Delete Cache’.
That’s it, WP Super Cache will then delete all the cache from your WordPress website.
Clear the Cache in W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is another WordPress caching plugin popular in the domain. It also has options to clear the cache as easily with a single click.
Navigate to Performance » Dashboard and click ‘Empty all caches’.
W3 Total Cache will then delete all the cache for your WordPress site.
Clear Cache on WPEngine
WPEngine is one of the most popular managed WordPress hosting providers. WPEngine has their own caching solution so that their customers are in no need of a caching plugin.
If no changes are easily visible, try clearing the cache from WPEngine through your WordPress admin area.
Click on the WPEngine menu in the admin bar. Under ‘General’ settings, click ‘Purge all caches’.
WPEngine will then purge all the stored caches from your WordPress site.
Clear Cache in Sucuri
If a web application firewall like Sucuri is in use, you can relax. Sucuri also comes with their own caching mechanism.
Navigate to Sucuri » WAF in your WordPress admin area to clear the cache.
Wrapping Up
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