Supercharge Your Site Speed With WP Engine And WP Rocket
WP Engine’s ultra-scalable caching layer EverCache helps make your site ridiculously fast and scalable using advanced server side optimizations. However, when you couple our server side optimizations with the benefits provided by the WP Rocket plugin, the result can be blazing fast load times, resulting in lower bounce rates, higher conversion rates, and better search rankings (especially on mobile searches).
WP Rocket is a plugin that helps you speed up the load time of your site with tools like minificiation of CSS/JavaScript, lazy loading images, deferring remote JavaScript requests, and more. These additional speed optimization tools help you deliver a great experience for your customers and better revenue performance from your website.
Think of speeding up your website like racing in the Tour de France. You can’t shave your legs and win the Tour de France, but there hasn’t been a Tour de France winner in the last 10 years who hasn’t shaved their legs. Every little bit helps.
Because WP Rocket makes it so easy to implement front end speed optimizations, we’re proud to announce that it is the newest addition to our WP Engine Solution Center!
I thought WP Engine bans caching plugins?
Now, some of you might be saying, “Wait just a minute…isn’t WP Rocket a caching plugin? Aren’t those disallowed on WP Engine?” And, the answer to both of these questions is “yes.”
The reason WP Engine bans most caching plugins is because most caching plugins conflict with our bundled EverCache technology.
But WP Rocket has gone through great efforts to optimize and tune their plugin for our platform. When you install WP Rocket on the WP Engine platform, they deactivate the parts of their plugin that conflict with our EverCache technology. You get all the front end optimization options of WP Rocket *and* the benefit from our server side optimizations with EverCache.
Installing and testing WP Rocket
We suggest you use our one-click-staging feature (look in the “WP Engine” link in wp-admin) to create a copy of your site. You can make a backup of your site at this time as well. From there, install the WP Rocket plugin and it will auto detect that you’re on WP Engine and exclude the caching functionality of their plugin. There’s even a special 20% discount for WP Engine customers when you visit this link!
Once you test out your site in staging, you can then push to production and use the backup you created above to roll back if anything goes wrong. WP Rocket also offers support for their customers to help with optimizing their plugin’s settings.
Is this worth my time?
If you have a site that is generating ecommerce transactions, leads, or ad revenue, speeding up your site can be a great way to boost your revenue. Using WP Engine and WP Rocket together can help you speed up your site to reduce bounce rates, increase conversion rates, and improve SEO.
If these things are important to your site, projects like using WP Rocket to streamline your site can have big impacts on your bottom line.
A great alternative to W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is a popular WordPress caching plugin. However, it is banned on the WP Engine platform due to caching incompatabilities. The WP Rocket plugin, on the other hand, runs a special version on WP Engine which excludes our caching functionality so it doesn’t conflict with WP Engine’s caching.
Oh man! I was hoping WP Rocket was going to be free for WPengine customers when i read the headline.
I use the following checklist in the Ninja WP School courses
Make sure all links are ok
Make sure your site is not blocking for Google
Check if site security is ok
Verify that backup is ok
Check if SSL / HTTPS is ok
Check if there is a problem with mobile
Verify that all contact forms are working correctly
I believe that this is also very important.
Thanks for the insight. Speeding up a website is almost an obsession. I did click on the link provided and found the price is the same as everyone else. Do you have a different URL for the discount?
How does this plugin compare to the free ‘Autoptimize’ plugin which you usually recommend (https://wpengine.com/resources/improve-wordpress-site-speed/)?
I was using autoptomize for some time, and I ran a bunch of tests (Google’s pagespeed insights, pingdom and WP Engine’s test). Then I deactivated it and ran the same tests again. I get way better speeds without it. I didn’t activate any of the optimizations that could possibly negatively impact performance.
WP Engine had to patch autoptimize, due to a vulnerability, but I don’t think that’s the cause. The performance hit came after I switched to asynchronous code for Media.net. (Why do all the speed tests include async ads as part of my site?!? ARRGGGGGGH! The whole point of asynchronous code is that it doesn’t affect PAGE load time.) Something with autoptomize and Media.net’s asynchronous code is causing it to slow down. But it worked well for me for some time and I can’t complain about the price.
Autoptomize can actually hurt performance. If you use it, try deactivating it and doing some speed tests.
If you use WP Touch for your mobile theme, they “recently” added a page speed extension. That really boosted my mobile speed.
As for WP Rocket, still trying to buy it… My credit card (issued from a major bank) keeps getting declined and they haven’t got back to me. It doesn’t bode well for a company when they can’t handle credit card transactions, but I will keep an open mind. Not too happy about wasting the better part of an hour trying various ways of entering my credit card. I’ve never seen a credit card billing form that didn’t have address fields. That’s usually required for credit card transactions. All I know is that my credit card is valid and my bank isn’t getting any fraud triggers…
I just wanted to update… WP Rocket triggered my fraud detection but the notification from my CC company was put into junk mail, as their domain isn’t properly authenticated. Nothing showed up on my phone or credit card website. I’m not sure why WP Rocket is triggering fraud detection, but I have a hunch as to why my credit card company’s fraud detection correspondence is flawed (it rhymes with “moff boring”).
So I will be installing it soon and hopefully, it will work.
I retested my pages without autoptimize yet again, and it’s no fluke. MUCH FASTER WITHOUT IT. That’s just my experience. Try it both ways. If you have used it for a while and notice poor page speed test results, deactivate it and see what happens. It worked quite well for me for a while, but it just didn’t work with Media.net’s asynchronous ad code.
I actually had the same experience as Appledystopia concerning autoptimize. It made the site slower…
I need to fill in a COUPON CODE for the discount .. which code should I use?
Do you have any specific settings you recommend that we use, or don’t use?
Evercache is same FastCGI caching? cuz WP Rocket said they can replace the nginx cache file to point to their cache file… but WP Engine is same this setup as explained? https://www.littlebizzy.com/blog/fastcgi-cache-nginx
If not same,, what is different fastcgi cache and Evercache technology? thanks
Had someone from WP Engine support recommend I disable WP rocket as it conflicts with their caching. I suppose they didn’t read this article?
WPEngine advised that I removed WP Rocket from all installs (that’s over 75 websites)….. sooo….. what is this article then?
Hi Colton,
Thanks for reaching out. WP Rocket should still be working properly with our platform. We are doing research to make sure our Support team is providing accurate information. Please reach out if you have any further issues.
So before I buy WP Rocket, is the official stance of WP Engine is that it works and is the better of the two recommended solutions?
Hey John. I’m not sure what the other solution is other than WP Rocket in your comment “..of the two recommended solutions” (feel free to reply to clarify), but WP Rocket is a great plugin. In addition to including useful things like image compression and various other features that help boost page speed. Additionally, the WPR team worked with WPE to make sure the caching on the WPE platform plays nice with the caching features inside of WPR. The result is a nice combination where you get the power of the WPE platform as well as the additional benefits of WPR. IMO, WPR is a great asset for helping to make your site as fast as possible 🙂