Clear Cache of Your WordPress Website: A Step by Step Guide

May 13th, 2017 | by Ravi Chahar || Leave a comment |

Doesn’t your website content appear even after reloading the page? Have you tried to clear cache of your WordPress website?

Yes, sometimes the cache stored in the caching plugin or the browser can make you appear you the cached data of your website and you don’t see any change.

It may happen when you activate a new plugin and doesn’t clear the cache. Just a few days ago, one of our clients had the same problem.

The website was not loading because of an old cache. That’s why it’s always recommended to clear cache of your WordPress website just after activating and deactivating any plugin.

What does Cache Mean and How is it Beneficial

Whether you use a caching plugin or not, the web browser also stores the cache of the website once you visit it.

Basically, it stores the static version of your website having the basic images, JS, CSS and a few more things so that the website can get opened faster next time.

After storing the cache, the browser doesn’t load all the files. Instead of that, it will pick up from the cached data which is easy and fast.

For a WordPress website, there are many plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.

Keeping the cache for a long time is not a good thing. The main purpose of using these caching plugins is to improve the user experience.

It helps to boost your WordPress website speed. There are many users who are using the CDN platforms like ClourdFlare and MaxCDN.

It also helps you to protect your website from brute force attacks by adding a firewall.

For effective use, you should know about the best settings of WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache plugins.

Clearing the Cache From Your Web Browser

As mentioned before, the web browsers store the stylesheet and many other files which help to provide a better user experience.

But sometimes when the size of the cached files gets increased, the web browsers fail to recognize the change of the design or the content of the website.

Most of the users are using Google Chrome. To clear the cache, you have to click on the menu button showing on the top right corner.

Then go to More Tools>>Clear browsing data and a new tab will open.

You will have the option to check to clear the browsing history, download history, cookies and other site and plugin data, cached images and files.

The above two options can be kept because to clear the cache, you just require to clear the cookies and cached images.

Don’t forget to clear it from the beginning by selecting it from the drop-down menu. Click on the “Clear browsing data” and it will clear everything within a few seconds.

After that, you can check your website and the problem will get solved. If not, then you have to clear the cache from the caching plugin you use.

Clear Cache From Your Caching Plugin

As mentioned above, the most commonly used caching plugins are WP Super cache and W3 Total cache.

Both of the plugins provide an option to set a time duration to keep the caching plugins and delete those files and data once that deadline crosses.

But when you stuck with the problem then you can delete it manually from the plugin itself.

Clearing Cache from WP Super Cache Plugin

Login to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to Settings>>WP Super Cache and the main page of the plugin configuration will open.

You can easily see a button to delete cache. Click on the button and you’re done.

The cache stored by the plugin will get flushed and you can try to open your website. And you will see the fresh content on your website.

Clearing Cache from W3 Total Cache Plugin

If you’re using W3 Total Cache then it has the easiest option to clear the cache.

When you log in, you can see the WordPress bar above in the browser. It will consist and an option of performance. When you can hover your mouse, it will show you a drop-down menu.

Click on “Purge All Caches” and the cache will get cleared.

But many WordPress users don’t enable this bar. For those, there is another option. Use the plugin settings page.

Go to Performance>>Dashboard and you will see the plugin’s settings page. It may show some notification depending on the plugins you use and the settings you have enabled.

To clear the cache, click on the “empty all cache” button.

That’s all you need to do. If you use any other caching plugin, find an option to delete the stored cache for the better experience.

I Hope You Can Easily Clear Cache of Your WordPress Website

The first step is to clear the cookies and cached images from the web browser you’re using. It may be Safari, Google Chrome, Opera etc.

Then check the caching plugin you use. I am sure, it wouldn’t be difficult to clear cache of your WordPress website.

If you’re a web developer or designer then you can easily resonate to such situation. You write a code and it doesn’t show the results because of the caching problem.

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