Our servers run LiteSpeed, which can keep a ready-made copy of each page and serve it to visitors in a fraction of the time. On WordPress, the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin switches this on and keeps the copies up to date. It's included with all of our cPanel hosting at no extra cost.
Turning it on usually makes pages load faster and uses less of your plan's CPU and memory, which helps on busy sites and online shops.
Before you start
- Use one caching plugin only. If you already use WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache or similar, deactivate and delete it first. Two page-caching plugins on one site often cause broken layouts, old pages showing, or login problems.
- Take a backup, or make sure you know how to restore one. See Restore files, databases or email from a backup.
Step 1: Install the plugin
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard. See Log in to your WordPress dashboard if you're not sure how.
- Go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
- Search for LiteSpeed Cache. Choose the one by LiteSpeed Technologies.
- Click Install Now, then Activate.
You can also install it from cPanel: open WP Toolkit, go to your site's Plugins tab, click Install and search for LiteSpeed Cache.
Page caching is turned on as soon as the plugin is active. For many sites, that's all you need to do.
Step 2 (optional): Choose a preset
The plugin has ready-made groups of settings, called presets, that go further than page caching. Go to LiteSpeed Cache → Presets.
- First, open the Import / Export tab and click Export. This saves a copy of your current settings so you can go back.
- Open the Standard Presets tab and click Apply Preset under the one you want.
- Essentials: page and browser caching only. Safe for almost every site and doesn't need an account.
- Basic: adds image optimisation and a separate cache for mobile visitors.
- Advanced: adds tidying of CSS, JavaScript and HTML. Faster, but test your site carefully afterwards.
- Aggressive and Extreme: combine and delay files for the best scores. These are the most likely to break menus, sliders, forms or checkout, so only use them if you're comfortable testing and rolling back.
Presets above Essentials use LiteSpeed's online service, QUIC.cloud, for things like image optimisation. The plugin will ask you to link your site to it. The free tier is enough for most small sites.
If something looks wrong after applying a preset, go back to Import / Export and import the file you exported, or apply Essentials.
Online shops (WooCommerce)
LiteSpeed Cache recognises WooCommerce and doesn't cache the cart, checkout or My Account pages, so customers see their own basket. A few things to keep in mind:
- Start with Essentials or Basic, then test adding to the cart, checking out and logging in as a customer.
- If prices, stock levels or the mini-cart look out of date for visitors, check the WooCommerce tab under LiteSpeed Cache → Cache, or ask your developer.
- Bots crawling product filters can still use a lot of resources. See WooCommerce bot traffic causing high CPU usage.
Clearing the cache
The plugin clears the right pages by itself when you save a change. If you still see an old version of a page, hover over the LiteSpeed Cache icon in the black admin bar and click Purge All. For Cloudflare and browser caches, see Website changes not showing? Clear the LiteSpeed, Cloudflare and browser caches.
Turning it off
If you deactivate the plugin, purge the cache first (Purge All). Otherwise pages cached before you turned it off can keep being shown. If you've already deactivated it, flush the cache from cPanel instead: open LiteSpeed Web Cache Manager and click Flush LSCache next to your site.
Troubleshooting
- Layout broken, or menus and sliders stopped working: usually caused by CSS or JavaScript optimisation. Apply the Essentials preset, purge the cache and check again.
- Logged-in users or customers see someone else's details: purge the cache and ask your developer to check the plugin's Cache settings for logged-in users. Open a ticket if you need us to look too.
- "Critical error" or can't log in after copying or restoring the site: a caching plugin can clash with security plugins straight after a site is moved. In WP Toolkit, switch off LiteSpeed Cache and any security plugin on the site's Plugins tab, check you can log in, then turn them back on one at a time.
- Site still slow: see Using XRAY PHP to diagnose a slow WordPress website. For sites with a lot of database activity, Redis caching can also help.
For every setting in detail, see LiteSpeed's own guide: LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress documentation.
Need help?
If you get stuck, open a support ticket from Support → Open Ticket with your domain name and what you're seeing.
