How To Enable Dynamic Caching On NameHero

Normal shared hosting is pretty basic. You get a Linux server, with the ability to install a few applications, and that’s it. Cheap web hosting doesn’t include any additional features like a real CDN, backup solutions, or dynamic caching. Which is what makes NameHero so different from other hosts on the market.

Unlike the big providers like Hostgator or Bluehost, NameHero provides its users with server level dynamic caching. And this is possible because of the LiteSpeed web server rather than Apache. The team at LiteSpeed has integrated server level caching, and that means the functionality comes out of the box.

What Does this Mean for You?

It means you don’t need to install resource intensive plugins like WP Super Cache, or W3 Total Cache. It means you don’t need to spend money on purchasing a solution like WP Rocket. Even with the aforementioned plugins, they’re not implemented at the server level. Which means that they will always be slower than what LiteSpeed is able to give you.

Other providers have expensive upgrade options to enable something like this – and NameHero implements it for free! That’s pretty amazing.

Here’s how to enable dynamic caching with LiteSpeed on WordPress, and an explanation of some of the features.

Getting the LiteSpeed Plugin

Even though the caching happens at the server level, we still need a plugin to interface with it and provide the options. This is not the same as the normal WordPress caching plugins. It’s available on the WordPress repository. You can download and install it just like any other plugin.

After you activate it, you can go to the plugin settings. By default, the caching functionality is already enabled as shown here:

You can test it to see if everything’s working by loading a page from your site and opening up the HTML. There right at the bottom, you should see something like this:

This indicates that the page has been served by the LiteSpeed cache! Something like this is far more efficient than forcing WordPress to generate the page from scratch each time. Not only would it more expensive in terms of resources, it would also slow things down for your viewers.

Special Features: Crawling to “Warm” the Cache

Normal caching plugins are always a bit inefficient for the very first user that looks at a page. That’s because it’s being generated for the first time, and stored away. There’s also a bit of extra processing going on which makes it even slower.

To avoid this, the LiteSpeed plugin includes a “crawler” that requests pages in the background and generates the pages to “warm” the cache. This means that the first real user who visits a page will get the cached version and will benefit from the same speed improvements as everyone else!

The options for the crawler can be found in the “Advanced Options” tab in the LiteSpeed plugin. Check out the options to maximize the efficiency for your site!

Caching for Commenters

The LiteSpeed caching plugin also generates a private cache for users who have submitted a pending comment. Without this, they would see a cached version of the page – and it would look as if their comment has vanished into thin air!

You can find the option for private comment caching under the “Cache” tab as shown here:

I really like the thought that’s gone into the plugin. It has a ton of other features like minifying and combining CSS files. I’m also particularly impressed by the HTTP/2 push, which might reduce the need to use “preload” directives and inline CSS. Though I would personally prefer to use dedicated plugins for minification and/or combination of static files.

In summary, the LiteSpeed server allows NameHero to offer what other hosts can’t. Sever level dynamic caching out of the box, with a fully developed WordPress plugin for complete control. That’s an amazing thing to have for basic shared hosting!