Mastering WordPress Performance: Unravel WP Rocket Best Settings.

(with screenshot for latest version 3.14 (June 2023)

Navigating the digital labyrinth of website performance can often seem daunting. When it comes to WordPress, however, one solution consistently stands out – WP Rocket. Yet, as many seasoned developers will tell you, mastering WP Rocket involves more than flipping switches or ticking boxes.

You’ve likely heard the term “WP Rocket best settings” thrown around quite a bit, and while it might seem straightforward, the reality is a bit more nuanced. Strictly speaking, there is no one-size-fits-all for these settings because your optimal configuration depends on various factors.

What works best for one site may be less effective for another. So how do you navigate this complex landscape and find the best settings for your site? Don’t worry,

In this article, I will guide you through the ins and outs of WP Rocket’s various settings, explaining the settings and helping you optimize your WordPress site for its best performance. Get ready to boost your website speed and improve your user experience like never before.

What is WP Rocket?

In short, It’s a speed optimization plugin that helps reduce your website’s loading time by optimizing CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.

But it’s far more than just a simple optimization tool. This powerful plugin is a comprehensive solution designed to significantly enhance your website’s performance and improve its ranking on search engine results pages.

WP Rocket operates by leveraging a multitude of performance optimization techniques. For starters, it employs page caching. It stores a static version of your website in the visitor’s browser, eliminating the need for the server to generate the page each time it’s requested, resulting in quicker load times.

Moreover, WP Rocket has built-in features for GZIP compression and browser caching. GZIP compression shrinks your webpages’ size before sending them to the user’s browser, speeding up download times. Browser caching, on the other hand, stores some of your website’s files on the visitor’s device, so their browser doesn’t have to download them each time they visit your website.

Beyond that, WP Rocket also provides a user-friendly interface for handling advanced optimization techniques such as lazy loading of images and videos, minifying and concatenating CSS and JavaScript files, DNS prefetching, and more. These optimizations can lead to dramatic performance improvements, but they often require technical knowledge to implement manually. WP Rocket simplifies the process, making these advanced techniques accessible even to less technical users.

How to set up WP Rocket?

Setting up WP Rocket on your WordPress site is surprisingly simple, even for those who may not consider themselves tech-savvy. 

Once you’ve purchased a license, you can download the WP Rocket plugin from your account on the WP Rocket website. 

Next, navigate to the plugins section of your WordPress dashboard, click on ‘Add New,’ and then ‘Upload Plugin.’ Choose the WP Rocket zip file you downloaded and click ‘Install Now.’ 

After the installation, activate the plugin, and voila, WP Rocket is now set up on your site. 

The default settings are designed to boost your site’s performance right out of the gate. 

Remember, the ‘WP Rocket best settings’ depend on your site and its requirements.

How to test the WP Rocket best settings?

I exclusively test with Google page speed metrics. It is the best way since you get scores for mobile and desktop, and the score of Google ultimately matters. From my experience, GTmetrix tests use a different technology that can sometimes draw false conclusions. Getting a high score on GTmetrix may seem easy, but it can be misleading.

Now let’s dive in and go over each option WP Rocket has. As mentioned earlier, as of June 2023, screenshots and recommendations are based on version 3.14.

WP Rocket best settings illustrated

Cache

Don’t forget to hit the ‘save changes button at the bottom.

File Optimization

CSS Files

JavaScripts Files

You notice there is also an exclude box. There you can exclude CSS files or JavaScript files from the option.

It goes without saying when you exclude JavaScript, the page score will decrease, especially for mobile. In my case, the cookie banner would not load properly.

WP Rocket simplifies JavaScript delay, making it effortless to implement.

In Version 3.13, WP Rocket introduced a powerful tool. Like many others, you have been in a situation where you enabled JavaScript delay and then discovered that an element on your website doesn’t load properly. 

Do you know how to fix it? You probably have a guess, but you must know which JavaScript to fix it. WP Rocket recognizes most, not all, plugins on your website and gives you the option to exclude them from delayed loading.

Media

I have not enabled any settings in the Media tab. I uploaded all my images in WebP format. WebP is the recommended media format for all your images.

Preload

You can identify the Fonts to Preload using Google Page Speed Insights. Open the section “Reduce the impact of third-party code.” Highlight each font and right-click and copy the link. The font must be hosted locally or on your CDN.

Read here in the WP Rocket documentation to get more insight information about font preloading. I recommend using Code Snippets instead of the Head & Footer plugin.

Advanced Rules

Although I personally don’t utilize the Advanced Rules section, it affords you the capability to exclude specific uncachable pages and more. It can be used effectively if you seek to optimize your caching needs further.

Database

WP Rocket will analyze your database periodically, and you can check various items you want to optimize. I recommend visiting this tab sporadically and cleaning up the database. WordPress stores many post revisions you only need to keep for a while.

CDN

WP Rocket offers its own CDN service RocketCDN. I haven’t used it, and the review I read are mixed. I use the Cloudflare network for this website, and for another website, I use the BunnyCDN service.

In the screenshot above, I use the CNAME for BunnyCDN.

Heartbeat

Reducing or disabling the Heartbeat API’s activity can help save some of your server’s resources.

ADD-ONS

• Varnish Cache
  If you are hosting your website with a hosting company using Varnish cache, you can turn this option on. WP-Rocket will then ensure that the Varnish cache is purged each time you purge the WP Rocket cache.
• WebP compatibility
  In most cases, you don’t need WebP compatibility. Especially if you use a plugin to convert images to WebP, using a CDN service like Cloudflare is also unnecessary. WP Rockets detects certain image plugins automatically and handles them. Here is a link to the WP Rocket docs.
• Cloudflare
  If you use Cloudflare, WP Rocket offers a convenient method to control some settings directly, including purging. There is no need to install the official Cloudflare plugin. However, since Version 3.14 WP Rocket is compatible with the service Cloudflare AP (not free). In this case, you would need to install the Cloudflare plugin.
  Check the WP Rocket documentation for more insights.
• Sucuri
  By enabling the caching feature on Sucuri Website Firewall, it is advisable to activate the WP Rocket Sucuri add-on to keep the caches in sync. As a result, your visitors always see the latest content on your site. And when WP Rocket clears its cache, the Sucuri cache follows suit, minimizing the need for manual intervention.

Image Optimization

WP Rocket has its own image optimization plugin Imagify. I don’t use this plugin. I prefer uploading my images to WordPress already converted to WebP format. With a click on the button you can install the Imagify plugin. However it is not free.

Tools

Under Tools you find some handy features like export the WP Rocket best settings, which you can import to another website to save some time.

Conclusion: for WP Rocket best settings

My WP Rocket best settings might not be your best settings. However I hope with this article I was helpful to explain the meaning of each settings and what they do. WP Rocket has some excellent tutorial video and documenations. The plugin has a higher price tag than other cache plugins. Some are even free.

However I think WP Rocket is worth the price and does an excellent job and is hard at work to improve the compatibility with hosting provider and well know plugins.

Please let me know in the comments section below what are your experience with WP Rocket?.