3 June 2022
How to Clear Your WordPress Cache (Beginner Guide)
If you are a novice, you’ll probably need to know how to clear your WordPress cache.
If you’re new to the term, clearing your cache is just a method of removing temporary content and data from your website. This way, you know you’re getting the most up-to-date content or data if you’ve made any changes.
In this post, we’ll show you how to clear your WordPress cache. We’ll cover browser cache, web hosting cache, and top WordPress caching plugins in this guide.
What is Caching in WordPress?
Caching solutions save static versions of your website on their servers. This allows WordPress to avoid running larger PHP scripts every time your site loads.
The caching process helps improve WordPress speed and performance, as well as the overall user experience.
There are various sorts of caching solutions available for WordPress. The most common method is to use a WordPress caching plugin, such as WP Rocket or WP Super Cache.
These plugins allow you to control which files and media are cached, when the cache expires, when the cache is cleaned, and other features.
Depending on your hosting provider, you might already have WordPress caching built-in. For example, managed WordPress hosting providers such as WP Engine use their own caching solutions.
Popular WordPress hosts such as Bluehost and SiteGround have built-in caching for their users.
If you use a web application firewall like Sucuri or Cloudflare to boost WordPress security, then there is also a cache to speed up your site and reduce downtime.
Lastly, most modern web browsers will also save cached versions of pages on your web browser.
Why Clear Your WordPress Website Cache?
Sometimes cache won’t realize that changes have been made to your WordPress website. Instead of seeing the current version of your site, the cache will show you an older one.
This will hide any changes you’ve made from both you and your visitors.
By clearing your WordPress cache, you may always see the most recent version of your website.
With that said, let’s look at how to clear your WordPress cache.
Clear Your WordPress Cache
Method 1: Clear Your Web Browser Cache
All browsers would have a caching system that saves a copy of every website you visit. As a result, when you made changes to your site, it most likely would not have noticed them.
To clear your Google Chrome browser cache, click on the three-dot menu in the top right corner and go to select More Tools » Clear Browsing Data.
This opens a pop-up window where you may choose the content you want to remove from the cache.
Next, check the box next to Cached images and files, then click the Clear data button.
You’ve now successfully cleared the cache in your browser. You can check your WordPress blog to see if the new version of your site is loading.
Method 2: Clear Your Cache in WordPress Caching Plugin
If you use a WordPress caching plugin on your site, you must clear the plugin cache.
Here’s how to clean your cache with some of the most popular WordPress caching plugins.
Clear Cache in WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the most popular WordPress caching plugin. The best feature about WP Rocket is that it builds your WordPress cache for you in the background so that your users are always served a cached version of your site.
It also makes it very simple to clear cached files with a single click.
Simply navigate to Settings » WP Rocket and then click the Clear Cache button in the plugin dashboard.
WP Rocket will now automatically clear all of your cached files.
Clear Cache in WP Super Cache
Another well-known free WordPress caching plugin is WP Super Cache. It allows you to clear or delete all cached content with a single click.
Simply navigate to Settings » WP Super Cache in your WordPress admin dashboard and click the Delete Cache button under the Delete Cached Pages option.
WP Super Cache will now clear all cached files from your website.
Clear Cache in W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) is the best caching plugin for WordPress. Like the other plugins listed above, you can clean all caches with a single click.
Go to Performance » Dashboard and then click the empty all caches button.
W3 Total Cache will now clear all of your site’s cached content.
Method 3: Clear Your Cache in WordPress Hosting
Some WordPress hosting providers include caching features to help speed up WordPress.
Here’s how to clean your web host cache in some of the most common WordPress hosting providers.
Clear Cache in WP Engine
WP Engine is the popular managed WordPress hosting provider. They have a built-in caching system, so users do not need to install a caching plugin.
If you have made changes to your site, but they’re not showing, you can delete the WP Engine cache from the WordPress admin area.
In your WordPress admin bar, click the WP Engine menu item, select the Caching menu option, and click the Clear all caches button.
WP Engine will automatically clear all cached data for your WordPress site.
Clear Cache in Bluehost
WordPress officially recommended Bluehost as one of the best WordPress hosting providers. They provide a caching solution that quickly improves WordPress performance and speed.
Bluehost makes it simple to clear your WordPress cache from the WordPress admin area.
Log into your WordPress admin dashboard and look for the Caching button in the top admin toolbar. Hover over it, then click Purge All.
Bluehost will now delete all files from your WordPress cache.
Clear Cache in SiteGround
SiteGround is a popular WordPress hosting provider known for its speed and excellent customer service. They include a built-in caching solution to improve the performance of your website.
You can clear the SiteGround cache from your hosting account control panel and the WordPress admin area.
To remove your cache from your WordPress dashboard, first, install and activate the SG Optimizer WordPress plugin.
After activation, you must click the Purge SG Cache button in your top WordPress admin toolbar.
The plugin will automatically delete your SiteGround WordPress cache.
Method 4: Clear Your Cache in WordPress Firewall Plugin
If you use WordPress security plugins like Sucuri to protect your site, you’ll need to clear another caching layer.
You can delete your Sucuri cache by going to Sucuri » Firewall (WAF) in your WordPress admin panel.
After that, go to the Clear Cache menu and click the Clear Cache button.
Conclusion
Caching is a good practice to speed up your website by storing copies of your site’s static content for future reuse. However, outdated cache files can prevent users from seeing fresh changes to your website.
Fortunately, clearing your website cache can overcome this problem. This post showed you how to clear your WordPress cache using browser cache, web hosting cache, and the best WordPress caching plugins.
It is important to know that after the cached files are cleared, browsers and servers will need some time to download them again, resulting in a slightly longer loading time than before.
We hope this post helps you learn how to clear your WordPress cache. For your next steps, you’ll find these resources helpful:
