Speed Up WordPress with LiteSpeed Cache

Our servers run LiteSpeed, not Apache or Nginx, and that changes which caching plugin you should use. LiteSpeed Cache is free, and on this stack it is faster than the popular alternatives because it caches at the server level rather than inside PHP.

The difference is not marginal. A PHP-level cache still boots WordPress to serve a cached page. LiteSpeed serves it before PHP is involved at all.

Install it

Plugins → Add New, search "LiteSpeed Cache", install and activate. It is published by LiteSpeed Technologies.

If you already run WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket, deactivate and delete it first. Two caching plugins fighting each other produces stale pages, broken layouts and hours of confusion.

The settings that matter

Cache

LiteSpeed Cache → Cache → [1] Cache

• Enable Cache — ON. This is the whole point.
• Cache Logged-in Users — OFF. Otherwise a logged-in view can be served to a visitor.
• Cache Commenters — OFF.
• Cache REST API — ON.

That alone delivers most of the benefit. Stop here, test, and only continue once you have confirmed it works.

Browser cache

Cache → [5] Browser → Browser Cache ON. Returning visitors then reuse local copies of images, CSS and JavaScript instead of re-downloading them.

Image optimisation

Image Optimization → Image Optimization Settings

• Auto Request Cron — ON
• Optimize Original Images — ON
• Create WebP Versions — ON
• Image WebP Replacement — ON

WebP is typically 25–35% smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality. On an image-heavy site this is usually the single biggest gain after page caching.

Run Image Optimization → Send Optimization Request once to process your existing library.

Page optimisation — the careful part

Page Optimization is where sites break. Enable one setting at a time and check the site after each.

Generally safe:

• CSS Minify — ON
• JS Minify — ON
• HTML Minify — ON
• Remove Query Strings — ON
• Load Google Fonts Asynchronously — ON

Test carefully, and be ready to revert:

• CSS Combine and JS Combine — often break sliders, forms and page builders
• Load CSS Asynchronously — can cause a flash of unstyled content
• JS Defer — frequently breaks sliders and anything depending on jQuery load order

Lazy Load Images is worth enabling, with one exception: exclude anything above the fold. Lazy-loading your hero image delays your Largest Contentful Paint, which is the opposite of what you want.

Verify it is actually working

Do not assume. Check.

Open your site in a private window, open DevTools → Network, reload, click the first document request and look at the response headers for:

x-litespeed-cache: hit

hit means served from cache. miss on a first load is normal — reload and it should become hit. If it stays miss, caching is not working: usually another caching plugin is still active, or you are logged in.

Purge when things look wrong

If you have changed the site and still see the old version, purge: LiteSpeed Cache → Toolbox → Purge All.

If you also use Cloudflare, purge there too. Two caches means two places holding the old copy, and people routinely purge one and conclude the fix did not work.

Measure before and after

Run PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix before you start and after. Two things worth knowing:

• Test the same page both times, in a private window
• A cold cache is slow. Load the page once to warm it, then test

If TTFB is still high with caching confirmed working, the problem is upstream of the cache — usually a resource limit. Our 508 guide covers that.

What caching cannot fix

• A 4 MB hero image. Resize it.
• Thirty active plugins. Audit them.
• A bloated page builder generating 900 KB of CSS.
• An unindexed database with 50,000 expired transients.

Caching hides slow work; it does not remove it. Logged-in users and dynamic pages like carts and checkouts bypass the cache entirely, so those pages expose whatever is actually slow underneath.