---
title: "W3 Total Cache Optimization for Cloud Sites"
source: "https://docs.nexcess.com/hosting/cloud-sites/website-management/w3-total-cache-optimization-for-cloud-sites/"
description: "Optimize your WordPress site on Cloud Sites using W3 Total Cache. Learn the exact General, Page Cache, Minify, and Browser Cache settings you need."
vertical: "Hosting"
date: "2024-03-04"
last_modified: "2026-07-02"
---

# W3 Total Cache Optimization for Cloud Sites

Configuring page cache requires specific settings in Cloud Sites due to its unique infrastructure in order to provide the best experience for a given site. Please use these settings when you are configuring W3 Total Cache instead of the settings in [Optimizing WordPress with Caching Plugins](https://docs.nexcess.com/hosting/cms/wordpress/optimizing-wordpress-with-caching-plugins/). This article assumes you have already installed the W3 Total Cache plugin.

The left navigation menu in your WordPress dashboard will have a new option: **Performance** after you’ve installed W3 Total Cache. This is where you’ll make changes to your W3 Total Cache setup.  
![wp cache in wp-admin](https://docs.nexcess.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/help.liquidweb.com_HMHzEV.png)

Make sure to click **Save all settings**  as you change these settings so you don’t lose your configurations!

## General Settings

In the **General Settings** section of W3 Total Cache, make sure your settings follow this plan:

**Page Cache**

- **Page Cache**: Enable
- **Page Cache Method**: Disk: Basic
- Click **Save all settings**.

**Minify**

- **Minify**: Enable
- **Minify mode**: Manual
- **Minify cache method**: Disk
- Click **Save all settings**.

Do not enable **Database cache** or **Object cache**.

**Browser Cache**

- **Browser cache**: Enable
- Click **Save all settings**.

**Miscellaneous**

- Select **Verify rewrite rules**.
- Make sure **Enable file locking** is not selected.

You can leave all other settings at their default values. Click **Save all settings**.

## Page Cache

In the left navigation menu, click on **Page Cache**.

**General**

- Select **Cache front page**.
- Select **Cache feeds**.
- Select **Cache SSL requests**.
- Select **Cache URIs with query string variables**.
- Do not select **Cache 404 (not found) pages**.
- Select **Don’t cache pages for logged in users**.
- Click **Save all settings**.

**Cache Preload**

- Select **Automatically prime the page cache**.
- Select an **Update interval**. Values here affect the time before a page is recached. 86400 seconds equals 24 hours, 604800 seconds equals one week, etc.

Leave all other settings at their default values. Click **Save all settings**.

## Minify

In the left navigation menu, click on **Minify**.

**General**

- Select **Rewrite URL structure**.
- Click **Save all settings**.

**HTML & XML**

In the HTML and XML section, select the following check boxes:

- Enable Inline CSS minification
- Inline JS minification
- Don’t minify feeds
- Click **Save all settings**.

JS minify settings: Select Enable.

CSS minify settings: Select Enable.

Click **Save all settings**.

## Browser Cache

In the menu, click **Browser Cache.** Set the following options and then click **Save all settings**:

**General**

Select the following checkboxes:

- **Set Last-Modified header**.
- **Set expires header**.
- **Set cache control header**.
- **Set entity tag (eTag)**.
- **Set W3 Total Cache header**.
- **Enable HTTP (gzip)** c**ompression**.

**CSS & JS**, **HTML & XML**, and **Media & Other Files**

In all three of these sections, select the following checkboxes and options:

- **Set Last-Modified header**.
- **Set expires header**.
- **Expires header lifetime**: Specify 31536000 seconds.
- **Set cache control header**.
- **Set entity tag (ETag)**.
- **Set W3 Total Cache header**.
- **Enable HTTP (gzip) compression**.

Tip

You can export your settings in W3 Total Cache! This means you can import them to other sites you have to make setup quicker. In the left navigation menu under **Performance**, click **General Settings**. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click **Download** next to **Export configuration**.Once you’ve selected your settings, click on **Dashboard** in the left navigation menu and select **empty all caches**. This will cause a new cache to be built. Visit your site to make sure your theme wasn’t affected and that everything else is working as intended. Once you’ve tested, use GTMetrix (or the site you used before) to compare your site’s performance to before you enabled caching.