How to Enable W3 Total Cache Debug to Troubleshoot Your Configuration

When using WordPress and W3 Total Cache it can sometimes be a mystery to solve performance issues. Enabling debugging tools will provide HTML comments about your caching configuration, and whether it was a hit or miss to help you track down those issues that can otherwise be overlooked.

Warning: Debugging can have an adverse impact on your site performance. Use it sparingly, and disable it when not using to ensure you have the fastest WordPress site.

Configure W3 Total Cache Debug in WordPress

• In your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Performance → General Settings
• Scroll down to the Debug section.
• Select any cache to see information about it in your sites source code
• Click Save all settings

Viewing your sites source code

To see the information appended to your site by W3 Total Cache’s debugging tool, you would check your sites source code. In most cases, this is done by right clicking on the website, and selecting View Source.

Once there, scroll all the way down and you will see output similar to the following image:

That is it! Note that it is showing nothing was cached, because I was logged in at the time of viewing it.

You now know how to use W3 Total Cache Debugging tools to monitor the status of your various caches. Next, you may want to enable the Statistics Pro Feature for a more granular look at your caching methods and hit rates.