WordPress w3 total cache is one of the most downloaded plugins in the official wordpress plugin repository. W3 Total Cache supposedly compresses your wordpress pages into html so that the page is smaller and loads faster.
I wanted to verify the claims that wp-supercache makes about how it improves the page load time in wordpress. So I decided to test them by loading my blog with the plugin enabled and without the plugin enabled to see if it was noticeably faster.
I tested the page load time with pingdom tools. With the plugin enabled it said my page loaded in 4.4 seconds. Without the plugin enable the blog loaded at 4.2 seconds. Which is not just the same as with the cache enabled but faster than the cache! I think this may be because my blog is so small, that my database isn’t big enough to need to be compressed. This is definitely a very interesting result. I will have this test again in a year or so to see if it changes when my database increases in size.
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To do this test properly you need to make sure that your cache is primed. Meaning, that a cache file exists for the page your are testing. Here are two good links with some advanced tests:
http://loadimpact.com/blog/wordpress-load-test-part-2-amendment
http://cd34.com/blog/scalability/wordpress-cache-plugin-benchmarks/
Frederick,
Thanks for the comment. I was just testing the front page. So there should be a cache file for it. Those are some really good links, their tests are much more in depth than mine!