Hello everyone, I have a Baby plan hosting with Hostgator and run 7 WordPress installations, which are feeding content to my mobile apps. There are currently about 1500-2000 total visits to these sites per day. My sites got a bit slow so I'm wondering what should I do? Should I install CloudFlare (http://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/technical/cloudflare/what-is-cloudflare-how-do-i-enable) or WP Super Cache, or both? CloudFlare looks good, but I've read about troubles with displaying AdSense ads (it has to do something with JavaScript), plus the installations seems kind of complicated. WP Super Cache has much less benefits than CloudFlare, but it should speed up the sites considerably, however, some people also reported trouble with AdSense, after installing this plugin (problems with duplicated content, if I understood it correctly). Can you please share your experiences with these services or give some advice? Your help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Actually CloudFlare and WP Super Cache have different purposes. Yes, both will help in improving the speed of your website. WP Super Cache is a caching plugin. WordPress platform is built in PHP language. PHP files will usually take more execution time than static HTML files. WP Super Cache plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. As a result, the page loading speed will increase, and the server load will decrease. I run WP Super Cache in many of my blogs, and there is a considerable improvement in page loading speed. I use Adsense in those blogs and it works well. Another good alternative you can consider is W3 Total Cache. I feel that it is more effective if your are using a VPS or dedicated hosting. CloudFlare is like a CDN (Content Delivery Network). It delivers content from the location closest to the visitor. This speeds up your site’s loading time and they have plenty of data centers around the world. CloudFlare will cache static content such as images, CSS, and other files on your site automatically.. You can use both the caching plugin (in this case WP Super Cache) and CloudFlare without conflicts. Now my personal experience. CloudFlare provides some security measures to block spammers, DOS attacks, or suspicious bots before they get to your site. But in my case this created some problems. A lot of visitors complained that they were presented with a captcha before entering the site. This caused some reduction in traffic. I don't know why that happened. Most of my visitors were from India where we have dynamic IP's, may be that is the reason. Anyway these days I use MaxCDN (it is paid service). Still CloudFlare is a good service and used by many websites. Hope this helps
rojishroy, thank you very much for this detailed explanation. I will start with CloudFlare then and if everything is OK, I'll also install WP Super Cache. I will report back how it goes. Thanks again!
Why not just try WP Super Cache now for free and see what sort of difference it make? There are plenty of good sites that you can run metrics on. Where are most of your visitors coming from and how many plug-ins are you running? Do you use multisite or individual installs?
Hi. I've just installed CoudFlare through cPanel on HostGator and all my sites stopped working for 20 mins. I've disabled the CF in cPanel, so they came back on, and now enabled it again. Now the sites are working instantly, the clouds are orange (it means that CF should be active), but I'm not sure, if it really works. If I log in to CF's website, I don't see my sites anywhere. This is a bit confusing. I'll install WP Super Cache now on my least visited site. I run about 5 or 6 plugins (for AdSense, contant form, TinyMCE, ...) and most of my visitors are from US and India (it depends on the site).
Hi, I've notified CloudFlare about the problems I was experiencing and they said that these were HostGator issues. They are resolving it now. I've installed W3 Total Cache instead of WP Super Cache and turned on most caching options, except for the Minify option. I've read people had too many troubles with AdSense if they used Minify. Anyway, my page visits dropped for more than 50% (in one day) since installing W3 Total Cache. Can W3 somehow be the cause for this? Or maybe this is due a 2-3 hour downtime due to CloudFlare (but this was not at peak time). I'm also worried about the AdSense - does W3 affects what ads are shown (localized and based on visitors browsing history)? Thanks.
As I said earlier when I used CloudFlare a lot of my visitors were asked to solve a captcha and it turned away lot of visitors (a big portion of my traffic was also from India). So that can also be a reason. If that is the case it is better to turn off CloudFlare. Installing a caching plugin won't create any reduction in traffic, in fact it is a must have for every WordPress blog. I have been using them for about 6 - 7 years now and never had traffic reduction problem.
Good to know, thanks so much. The CloudFlare didn't even work for me, only took down my sites, and showed some kind of DNS error. But, as I said, they identified the cause and I was asked to notify HostGator about it, which I did. Do you also use W3 Total Cache? Are there any negative effects on Google AdSense that you've ever noticed? Yeah, I understand now, that running a cache plugin is a must. I've seen a big improvement - the ads are showing fine I just hope they are remaining user relevant, as they were before (location, site content, etc.).
Yes, I use both W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache (not on same site). For the websites hosted in VPS I use W3 Total Cache and for websites hosted in shared hosting I use WP Super Cache.
Good to know, thanks. I'm gonna leave W3 Total Cache on my sites for now, but in future, I'll stick to WP Super Cache. Most people recommend WP SC (even HostGator) but I found W3 TC kind of easier to set up and with more documentation.
Hi, I advise you to use WP Fastest cache. I can help you about setting up. Using is so easy. http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-fastest-cache/
Hello guys, As for me - on one website of ours lustjobs.com (warning: contains adult content!) we use both CloudFlare (pro account) and WP Super Cache. Everything works just fine and I can sleep better >> we have some aggressive competitors Oh, yes - the website is hosted by hostgator (my favourite hosting company) where I have reseller account. Have a productive day, Helmuts
Just a quick note that most of a site's visitors would never be challenged with a captcha (they have to appear in our datasources as having issues from that IP recently). You can easily override the captcha behavior by: 1. Changing your security level settings to a lower level. 2. Whitelisting IP(s) and/or countries in Threat Control.