How to Clear Cache in WordPress (Complete Guideline)
Wondering how to clear WordPress cache? You’re in the right place. Let’s see how to clear cache in WordPress.
Caching pages is a must to make a WordPress website faster. It also saves your server’s computing resources. How fast may your website be, you can improve the page loading time further by caching the site.
Caching is simple. It generates static HTML pages from your dynamic WordPress pages/posts. Thus, it reduces the server load. Because serving a previously cached version of the page is quicker than generating it from the database and then serving to the visitor. This improves the overall user experience and website performance.
But still, you’ll need to clear the cache of a WordPress site in a few situations. And cleaning the cache might not be so straightforward all the time. This is why you would want to know how to delete the cache in WordPress. Worry not! This wp clear cache guide will help.
Why you would want to clear cache in WordPress
You may be wondering “if caching solutions speed up my site, then why should I delete/flush the cache in WordPress?”. Well, there are a few reasons behind this. Let’s know them first before starting the step-by-step WordPress how to delete cache portion.
You’ve changed some content
As you already know, caching saves a static version of your WordPress page or post. This helps your site load radically faster. If you change or update a WordPress page or post, there’s a chance that the change won’t reflect on the front-end. This is because the older version of that page is still being served on the frontend.
So now you should clear that cached copy of the page or post in question. Then if someone visits that page, they will see the new version. Sounds fair, right?
The site design has been updated
This can happen quite often. Webmasters run experiments with their website design, especially with the landing pages. Maybe you wanted to change the font size or a button color… To make this change visible on the front-end, you need to clear the cache.
A theme or a plugin got updated
WordPress themes and plugins receive updates now and then. With the core WordPress updates and newer versions of other relevant web technologies, theme/plugin developers update their products. This ensures these run smoothly.
Few of these updates may have some impact on the front-end site experience. To make these new experiences available to the visitors, you have to clean the WordPress cache.
The site has been migrated to a new server
When you change your website server, the root directory and some other resource directory paths can change. But your cached copy of the site may not be synchronized with this crucial change. It could make the site behave weirdly. For example, some cached style files may not load and the pages may look broken. Clearing the entire website cache should fix this issue.
So, how to clear the WordPress cache?
When you talk about WordPress clear cache or how to clear cache on WordPress, you’re actually referring to more than one action. There are several cache layers for WordPress sites. Don’t worry. We’re going to discuss all of them in this how to delete WordPress cache tutorial.
Clearing the cache inside the WordPress server
This is the cache generated by the WordPress caching plugins. Different caching plugins have different methods to clear the cache. Let’s have an overview of some of the most popular caching plugins regarding deleting their cache.
WP Super Cache: To clean the cache files created by this plugin, go to your WordPress dashboard > Settings > WP Super Cache.
On that page, you’ll find a Delete button to clear the cache. Press that button and you’re done.
WP Rocket: A popular WordPress caching plugin with some of the best caching features. If you’re using WP Rocket, deleting the cache built by this plugin is easy. Go to your WordPress dashboard > Settings > WP Rocket.
On the plugin’s dashboard page, you’ll get the Clear Cache button. You can learn more from our WP Rocket video tutorial.
W3 Total Cache: To clear the cache created by W3 Total Cache, navigate to your WordPress dashboard. Open the Performance > Dashboard link from the left sidebar.
On the top, you’ll see the button called “empty all caches”. Press that.
LiteSpeed Cache: Go to your WordPress dashboard. On the left sidebar, hover over LiteSpeed Cache. Click the Toolbox link from the available options.
On the Toolbox page, click the Empty Entire Cache button. Confirm the prompt.
If you use any other caching plugin like WP Fastest Cache or so on, please see their available cache options. You’ll find an empty all caches button in every caching system whether it’s a server-side caching script or a built-in feature in your managed WordPress hosting panel. The process is similar. So, don’t overthink it!
Clearing the cache outside the server
If you use a WordPress CDN like Cloudflare or any other service alike, their servers may also have some cached data of your site. If you don’t see the updated content after clearing your on-site cache, you need to clear the CDN cache too.
For Cloudflare, sign in to the service. Open the dashboard for your specific site (domain). On the top right side, there will be a Purge Cache link. Open that. Purge all cache from the available options.
Clearing the browser cache
After making any change on the front-end, the easiest way to see the impact is by visiting the site from a private window. In Google Chrome, it’s called Incognito. If you want to check it from your main browser window, you should clear the browser cache.
Cleaning the browser cache is different for each browser. Find the specific way from the support document of your desired browser. Here we’ve given the relevant resource links for the popular browsers:
However, you can only delete your own browser cache. You cannot go to each of the visitor’s houses and clean their browser cache. So it’s only helpful for the developers. Make sure you clean the server and CDN cache. These should do the work for all.
Wrapping up
In this article, we’ve discussed all the possible ways to clear the WordPress cache. Also, we’ve shed some light on why someone should delete the cache of their WordPress site. We hope you have found the tutorial helpful. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments. Thanks for being with us!
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