W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugins

W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugins is the most recommended WordPress cached plugins used by such big websites / blogs as Mashable.com, etc and How to uninstall / remove if thing goes wrong.

CONTENTS

1. Why W3 Total Cache
2. About W3 Total Cache
3. How to Install
4. Features
5. How to Remove the Credit
6. How to Uninstall Remove Delete WTC Plugins
7. How to Fix Installation Errors
   1. Error: advanced-cache.php is not installed
   2. Error: db.php is not installed

I. Why W3 Total Cache
My blog (not this one) got crushed two days ago because of sudden spike of visitors of around 65,000 pageviews a day. Actually, such number of visitors is still tolerable to Hostgator shared hosting so far as you have WordPress cache installed. Unfortunately, I did not install it (as I did not expect the sudden rise of visitors). So, the CPU usage reaches between 26 to 30 percent. I breached the TOS 25 percent CPU usage. And the frontpage is disabled and cannot be accessed for a while.

Then came a letter of warning from Hostgator, which advise me to install W3 Total Cache which it said is the best among WordPress cache plugins available.

Hostgator said: the plug-in W3-Total-Cache can be setup to provide sort of caching with the page caching method “Disk (enhanced)”. Also, we would strongly recommend that you enable “Database Cache” and “Object Cache” in the plug-in’s settings for the best performance.

II. About W3 Total Cache

1. Name of plugins: W3 Total Cache
2. Author: Frederick Townes
3. Functionality: Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery
4. Download: Download for free here (zip file).
5. Server compatibility: it’s compatible for any type of servers including shared hosting, VPS, dedicated and clusters.

III. How to Install
To easy-install it, follow these steps (WP version 2.8 to 3.1)

1. After login -> Plugins -> Add New ->
2. Upload -> browse W3 Total Cache zip file  you’ve just downloaded -> Install Now
3. Activate it. Done.
4. You need to make a proper settings after activation.

IV. Benefits and Features

1. At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Grade A in YSlow or significant Google Page Speed improvements) when fully configured
2. Improve conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com
3. “Instant” second page views (browser caching after first page view)
4. Optimized progressive render (pages start rendering immediately)
5. Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site (visitors view more pages)
6. Improved web server performance (sustain high traffic periods)
7. Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds
8. A lot more

If you’re confused how to set it up, keeping the default setting (plus enabling database cache and object cache) is good enough. However, if you want to optimize the full advantage and features of this plugin, WPbeginner.com has written a very nice step-by-step how-to settings which is a must read.

V. How to Remove the Credit Comment HTML
If your install it successfully, you may find the credit comment HTML in the view source like this:

<!– Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/ Minified using disk Page Caching using disk (enhanced) (user is logged in) Database Caching using disk (user is logged in) Object Caching 744/1544 objects using disk Served from: www.example.com @ 2010-09-09 06:39:57 –>

If you like it, keep it that way. If you don’t, or just want to remove the plugins name and URL, you may delete it right from your WordPress admin. Here’s how:

1. After login ->Plugins ->Plugins -> w3 total cache -> Edit
2. w3-total-cache/lib/ -> w3-total-cache/lib/W3/Plugin.php -> w3-total-cache/lib/W3/Plugin/TotalCache.php
3. Find the word using F3 or Ctrl+F you want to remove. Example, <!– Performance optimized by once it’s found, delete it.
4. Update File. Done.

VI. How to Uninstall Delete Remove the Plugins
Some WordPress plugins are just not compatible with this plugins and it creates unresolveable errors including RSS Feed error (as in my case). If you experience the same problem and want to unistall it, follow these steps:

1. Deactivate  the plugins through Plugins -> Deactivate
2. Delete the plugins right from inside the WP admin panel through Plugins -> W3 Total Cache -> Delete.
3. Go to Cpanel (site.com/cpanel):
   1. Open wp-config.php
   2. Remove the following line in wp-config.php` file: define(‘WP_CACHE’, true);
   3. Save.

Next, delete the following files from your server using FTP Client

1. wp-content/advanced-cache.php
2. wp-content/db.php
3. wp-content/w3tc/
4. wp-content/w3-total-cache-config.php
5. wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/

The folder no.3 is huge.  Removing it using FTP client (Filezilla FTP Client recommended) is a must since it contains all of your posts and others.