[rossagrant]

Never used a cache plugin and wondered if a WP Supercache or alternative plugin would be good for a BP site too?
My site obviously has WP posts etc on it but is mainly about the community aspect.

Is it worth me using a caching plugin and if so which one andare there any problems assiociated?
Cheers!

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

W3 Total Cache, but not its Page Caching with BuddyPress.

[rossagrant]

Hey Paul, cheers for that link. W3 looks like the most comprehensive cache plugin I have seen.

So it obviously won’t try and cache BP pages with them being dynamic? Is there much of a setup to it or is it just a case of installing it and letting it do it’s thing. Not infront of my computer so can’t download it to test right now that’s all.

[techguy]

W3 Total Cache looks interesting. Am I seeing it right that essentially W3 Total Cache essentially is a plugin to be able to implement a CDN? Does anyone know the cost of a CDN using W3 total cache?

[r-a-y]

Check out Amazon’s S3 site for pricing and details:
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing

W3 Total Cache is very powerful; implementing a CDN is just one of the features.

[LPH2005]

You’ll also want to read this thread:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/349736

[thekmen]

@r-a-y have you used Amazon’s S3 service?
maybe I’m too stupid & can’t be bothered in reading endless boring documentation, but still can’t figure their services out…

[Jeff Sayre]

There’s also this Codex page that has some useful advice for improving performance.

[Greg]

I am using WP Super Cache on a BuddyPress installation right now, but it is not caching any of the BuddyPress or bbPress pages — only the blog. This actually does help a lot because it is the blog that gets a lot of search and direct traffic. WPSC is a great idea that works really well for pages that aren’t *too* dynamic, like a blog. It stores static versions of the pages so that they don’t have to be rebuilt all the time. Site response for a new visitor that hasn’t logged in is improved massively.

But for a very dynamic site (e.g. with activity lists updating frequently) you really need db object caching in memory (e.g. memcache) to speed things up and reduce the load on the db. I think this is what W3 Total Cache does, but I don’t (yet) have experience with it.

Andy also wrote this page on other optimization options: https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/improving-performance/

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I’m using it right now, and there are a couple, very weird and very specific issues. If you do either of these actions, your cache will get wiped out:

1) Edit your BP profile
2) Send a PM

Other than that, I haven’t found any issues! You can change your notification settings and you can post to the ‘wire’ without a problem, but those two things kill the whole cache every time.

So far, I have the following set to never cache:
wp-.*.php
index.php
activity
register
profile
groups

I had issues with W3 total cache and the DB caching. So far I’ve not needed it, though.