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This blog post is written by Ashley, head of NINE2, a Norwich web design agency that has been using WP Rocket.
When you’re as dedicated to WordPress as much as we are, plugins become part of your everyday life, but, how do you make the decision on which ones to try and which ones to buy?
Me and my team here use WordPress ALL the time. Literally every single day.
Like the millions of other users out there we like how easy it is to work with, how flexible it is and how beautiful simple it’s become for our customers to take on website editing themselves (with a little help here and there).
It’s become a fantastic tool for users, developers and agencies like us across the internet. It is constantly growing thanks to incredible themes and plugins like WP Rocket.
As time goes on, we have found that it’s becoming harder and harder to ‘see the wood for the trees’. There are a lot WordPress plugins available.
There are currently over 49,000 WordPress plugins residing in the WordPress Plugin Directory!
A crazy amount of choice! – How do you choose between them?
Then there’s the argument about whether or not you invest some hard earned cash into a WordPress plugin that could potentially be useless?
This is the reality we face on a daily basis and it’s really quite, frustrating!
It’s like a bunch of school children! – Plugin A doesn’t like Plugin B so they can’t sit next to each other but Plugin C REALLY likes Plugin A but they can’t all be in the same room together, a nightmare!
Take Caching plugins for example, I’ve honestly lost count with the amount of plugins we’ve tried both free and purchased. Oftentimes, the setup turns out to be clunky, old fashioned and somewhat confusing. On top of that we experiences issues with compatibility.
Investing in premium plugins
I first came across WP Rocket via a targeted advert and my first thoughts were “oh no, here we go again, another plugin promising the world” but, the more I read through the website and feature list, the more reassured I was that this wasn’t just ‘another caching plugin’.
Wondering if you should pay for a WordPress plugin?
I spent a good amount of time leafing through the documentation and guides and everything looked like it was ‘properly sorted’. It wasn’t expensive either! (around £25 GBP per site here in the UK).
Evaluate your plugins by asking yourself these questions:
- Do you have access to some type of support?
- Is there extensive documentation available?
- Is the plugin compatible with your themes or other plugins?
- Are there regular updates?
- Will it save you coding time?
So, I thought, we’ll WP Rocket give it a try!
I paid for a license and downloaded the plugin. After that, I headed over to my WordPress dashboard, deactivated my current solution and replaced it with WP Rocket. After activating WP Rocket and checking a few additional options on top of the pre-filled ones that come with the installation, I was good to go!
I ran the usual tests to check everything was working correctly, also Pagespeed, GTMetrix and Pingdom etc.
The results were GOOD! I’m quite SEO focused and caching is a HUGE part of the process in getting our websites to run as quickly as possible here at NINE2.
I’m quite relieved I’ve found a solution that just ‘works’. Is it an expensive solution? – Not really when you take into account the time it saves and how efficient it is.
Does it work? – Absolutely! WP Rocket is definitely a WordPress Caching Plugin worth investing in and I’d waste no time at all in recommending it to other developers, designers and agencies.
