How to Speed Up Your WordPress Application with Object Cache
A strong online presence is crucial for the success of any business or personal venture. WordPress has become one of the most popular platforms for creating websites, but to truly thrive, you need to drive traffic to your site. Here are ten effective strategies to help you gain more traffic for your WordPress website.
Table of Contents
Intro
Object Cache Pro was first released in June 2020 as a premium object caching plugin for WordPress. It was developed by Till Krüss, a seasoned WordPress developer known for creating performance-enhancing tools. While WordPress itself has long supported object caching, Object Cache Pro elevated this feature by integrating seamlessly with Redis and offering enterprise-grade enhancements for WordPress users.
What is Object Caching?
For small business owners, website performance isn’t just about technical improvements—it’s about delivering a better experience for your customers, driving sales, and staying competitive. Object Cache Pro provides a practical, high-performance solution that ensures your WordPress site runs smoothly, even under pressure.
Object caching temporarily stores database query results and PHP objects so they can be reused without re-querying the database. This means frequently accessed data is served faster, reducing server load and speeding up page load times. Unlike page caching, which stores complete HTML pages, object caching optimises the behind-the-scenes operations that generate dynamic content.
How Object Cache Pro Works
Object Cache Pro takes WordPress’s built-in object caching capabilities and supercharges them by integrating with Redis, an in-memory data structure store. Redis provides lightning-fast data storage and retrieval, making it ideal for caching.
With Object Cache Pro, data like user session information, personalised content, and cart details (for WooCommerce sites) are retrieved quickly, ensuring a seamless user experience.
For small website owners, this means faster load times and a smoother experience for visitors. Whether your site has user login details, personalised content, or other dynamic elements, Object Cache Pro ensures that data like session information and custom content is retrieved instantly.
This not only keeps your website running quickly and efficiently but also helps reduce server load, saving you on hosting costs as your site grows. With Object Cache Pro, you can provide a seamless experience for your users, increasing engagement and boosting the chances of returning visitors.
What is Redis?
Redis (short for REmote DIctionary Server) is an open-source, in-memory data store that is used to store and manage data quickly. It’s often described as a key-value store, meaning it stores data in pairs, where each piece of data has a unique key associated with it.
Redis is incredibly fast because it stores data directly in the computer’s memory (RAM), rather than on a hard drive, allowing it to retrieve and store data much quicker than traditional databases. It’s used for a variety of purposes, such as caching, session storage, real-time analytics, and queuing systems.
In WordPress, Redis is commonly used for caching. By storing frequently accessed data (like user session information, product details, or blog posts) in memory, Redis ensures that this data is quickly available without needing to repeatedly access the database, which improves your site’s speed and performance.
how Redis connects with Object Cache Pro
Redis connects with Object Cache Pro to significantly improve the performance of WordPress by using Redis as a fast in-memory storage system. Once Redis is installed on the server and Object Cache Pro is activated in WordPress, frequently accessed data—such as user sessions, settings, or recent posts—is stored in Redis.
When a user visits the site, Object Cache Pro first checks Redis for cached data, which speeds up the retrieval process, avoiding slow database queries. This reduces the load on the database and improves the overall speed of the website, especially for sites with high traffic or dynamic content.
The combination of Redis and Object Cache Pro allows WordPress to deliver content more quickly by keeping data in memory, resulting in faster page load times. This not only enhances user experience but also reduces server strain.
Redis handles increased traffic effectively, ensuring the website can scale as needed, while Object Cache Pro ensures that cached data is efficiently managed, invalidated when outdated, and quickly retrieved when needed. Together, they optimise WordPress performance and make your site faster and more reliable.
To ensure Object Cache Pro is activated and working correctly
To ensure Object Cache Pro is activated and working correctly with Redis on your WordPress site, the first step is to install and activate the plugin. Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard and search for Object Cache Pro. Once found, click Install Now and then Activate. After activation, go to Settings > Object Cache Pro in the dashboard. If you can access the plugin’s settings page, it means the plugin is active.
Next, confirm that Redis is installed on your server. If you’re unsure, check with your hosting provider to verify that Redis is running. Additionally, ensure that the Redis PHP extension is enabled. You can do this by navigating to Tools > Site Health and checking under the Info tab. If Redis is properly installed, it will be listed in the server information section.
Once Redis is confirmed to be installed, go to Settings > Object Cache Pro and enable object caching by checking the relevant option. If Redis is set up correctly, Object Cache Pro will automatically use it as the backend cache. The settings page should display Redis details, such as the Redis version and cache statistics. To further confirm it’s working, check the cache hit and miss statistics, which indicate that Redis is storing and retrieving data correctly.
Lastly, to verify that caching is functioning as expected, test your site’s speed using tools like GTmetrix or Pingdom. If you notice a significant improvement in load times, it’s a clear sign that Object Cache Pro and Redis are working together to optimise your site’s performance.
