Setting Up LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress: Safe Starting Settings

Our plans run on LiteSpeed Web Server. On this server the most effective caching solution for WordPress is the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin, which talks directly to the server's own cache engine. Unlike PHP-based caching plugins, cached pages are delivered by the server without PHP running at all.

Before you install

• Setting up WordPress from scratch? See our manual installation guide first.
• If you use another page caching plugin, deactivate it first. Two page caches running at once cause problems. The difference between cache types is in our WordPress caching article.
• Take a fresh backup of your site. See backing up in cPanel.

Installation

1. In the WordPress dashboard go to Plugins › Add New.
2. Search for "LiteSpeed Cache", install the plugin published by LiteSpeed Technologies and activate it.
3. A LiteSpeed Cache section appears in the left menu. Page caching starts working by default right after installation.

First check: is the cache really working?

Open your site in a browser where you're logged out (or a private window). In the developer tools' Network tab, look at the page's response headers. If you see x-litespeed-cache: hit, the page came from cache. Seeing miss on the first visit is normal; it should change to hit when you reload.

If your site sits behind Cloudflare this header still appears, alongside Cloudflare's own cache headers.

Settings you can turn on safely

• Cache › Browser cache: lets visitors' browsers keep static files.
• Cache › Logged-in users: leave it off unless you run a membership site.
• Image optimisation › Lazy load: delays images further down the page. Remember to exclude the main image at the top of the page, or LCP gets slower. See the Core Web Vitals guide.

Settings to enable carefully

The CSS/JS combine, minify and JavaScript defer options under Page Optimization can break menus, sliders or forms in some themes. Turn them on one at a time and check the site in a private window, especially on mobile, after each change. Switch off whichever setting causes trouble and carry on.

Features such as image optimisation and the CDN that work with QUIC.cloud are optional external services; you don't have to use them.

If you run WooCommerce

LiteSpeed Cache doesn't cache cart and checkout pages by default. Even so, test the cart, login and checkout flow end to end before a campaign. The checklist is in our WooCommerce caching article.

LiteSpeed and LSCache come ready on all WordPress hosting plans.