WordPress MU

I've installed WPMU v 2.9.2 and want to install a cache plugin...I see quite a few and am just wondering if people here have any recommendations. The ones I'm considering are:

WP-Cache (134 ratings, 4.5 stars, last version released 948 days ago)
WP Super Cache (474 ratings, 4.0 stars, last version released 77 days ago)
W3 Total Cache (234 ratings, 5 stars, last version released 43 days ago)

Frankly, I just can't decide which one to use. They all appear to work with MPMU and they all appear to have very good ratings. (And of course they all claim they're the best! lol) Are there any features or options on one of them that would cause you to pick it over the others? Or, is there something about any of them that would cause you to not choose it?

If it makes any difference, I'm running Debian on an Apache 2 server, with mySQL 5, and PHP5.

Traffic on the main portion of the site (http://psoug.org) is heavy, about 250,000 to 350,000 page views per day, sometimes as many as 450,000. I'm expecting a fair number of those users will start viewing the blog section once it's released so this is something I'd really like to install before we make it public.

Any thoughts or suggestions on which one to use would be very welcome.

It's a toss up between WP Super Cache & W3 total Cache.

Don't use the top one as it's been too long since it was updated.

Thank you, Andrea.

Yes, the age of the last update for WP-Cache made me a little hesitant about using it; it seems like it hasn't been updated in a while.

I'm kind of leaning towards 'W3 total Cache'; do you use that or do you have any experience with it? Does one or the other have a feature you find particularly useful, or is one significantly more configurable than the other?

Someone wrote up a rather extensive review of the different caching systems with ratings and the like but I can;t find it right off. They tested with additions like memcache and offloading.

I do find this but it wasn't the one I was thinking of:

http://www.tutorial9.net/web-tutorials/wordpress-caching-whats-the-best-caching-plugin/

edit: And it;s always on the next page after I click on the Submit button:

http://cd34.com/blog/scalability/wordpress-cache-plugin-benchmarks/

Thank you, tdjcbe.

I dunno...I installed WP Super Cache, but it doesn't seem like it's working. I've logged out and browsed around but I don't see the cache indicators in the source of the page.

Actually, sometimes I do, but following the install instructions doesn't seem to work for me...if I remove/rename the "advanced-cache.php" and "wp-cache-config.php" files and comment out the WP_CACHE define statement in wp-config.php, it doesn't seem to work. If I leave them in then I do see the wp-cache lines in the source.

I posted about this on the WordPress Super Cache forum, and they closed the topic with no replies.

Maybe I need to remove or deactivate WP Super Cache and try something else. :(

Still need help?

No, Frederick, I'm still having problems sorting out when/what to minify and how/which scripts to combine and with which profile. Is there anything published like a general "how-to"?

i think that W3 Total Cache probably is better than WP-Super-Cache

BUT you cant enable it sitewide tithe the same settings so that is a HUGE drawback i think.

When will there be site wide support for W3 Total Cache?

Why is that a drawback? No one seems to understand that they're asking for impossible things. W3TC has too many features and creates too many files to support network activation without randomly breaking sites, too many assumptions are required.

What you can do in the current release is configure the super admin blog settings and the subordinate blogs will use those settings as their default upon activation. So if you just want page caching, you can more easily get that running.

In the next release, you can import settings files into respective W3TC installations.

But the fact remains, that each site in a network can have it's own themes and plugins and CDN and page cache, database cache etc optimizations and enabling those settings network wide unless all variables are known and equal would cause more backlash than not doing adding it. Most plugins that support it do not write files to the file system or do anything else that W3TC does.

Anyway, try it if you want, lots of users have used it without issue, trying to compensate for WP's continuously buggy network activation is not fun.