Deactivate and uninstall any other caching plugin you may be using.

Pay spec ial attention if you have customized the rewrite rules for fancy permalinks, hav e previously installed a caching plugin or have any browser caching rules as W3T C will automate management of all best practices. Also make sure wp-content/ and wp-content/uploads/ (temporarily) have 777 permissions before proceeding, e.g. in the terminal: # chmod 777 /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/wp-content/ usi ng your web hosting control panel or your FTP / SSH account. Login as an administrator to your WordPress Admin account. Using the "Add Ne w" menu option under the "Plugins" section of the navigation, you can either sea rch for: w3 total cache or if you've downloaded the plugin already, click the "U pload" link, find the .zip file you download and then click "Install Now". Or yo u can unzip and FTP upload the plugin to your plugins directory (wp-content/plug ins/). In either case, when done wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/ should exist . Locate and activate the plugin on the "Plugins" page. Page caching will auto matically be running in basic mode. Set the permissions of wp-content and wp-con tent/uploads back to 755, e.g. in the terminal: # chmod 755 /var/www/vhosts/doma in.com/httpdocs/wp-content/. Now click the "Settings" link to proceed to the "General Settings" tab; in m ost cases, "disk enhanced" mode for page cache is a "good" starting point. The "Compatibility Mode" option found in the advanced section of the "Page C ache Settings" tab will enable functionality that optimizes the interoperablity of caching with WordPress, is disabled by default, but highly recommended. Years of testing in hundreds of thousands of installations have helped us learn how t o make caching behave well with WordPress. The tradeoff is that disk enhanced pa ge cache performance under load tests will be decreased by ~20% at scale. Recommended: On the "Minify Settings" tab, all of the recommended settings a re preset. If auto mode causes issues with your web site's layout, switch to man ual mode and use the help button to simplify discovery of your CSS and JS files and groups. Pay close attention to the method and location of your JS group embe ddings. See the plugin's FAQ for more information on usage. Recommended: On the "Browser Cache" tab, HTTP compression is enabled by defa ult. Make sure to enable other options to suit your goals. Recommended: If you already have a content delivery network (CDN) provider, proceed to the "Content Delivery Network" tab and populate the fields and set yo ur preferences. If you do not use the Media Library, you will need to import you r images etc into the default locations. Use the Media Library Import Tool on th e "Content Delivery Network" tab to perform this task. If you do not have a CDN provider, you can still improve your site's performance using the "Self-hosted" method. On your own server, create a subdomain and matching DNS Zone record; e.g . static.domain.com and configure FTP options on the "Content Delivery Network" tab accordingly. Be sure to FTP upload the appropriate files, using the availabl e upload buttons. Optional: On the "Database Cache" tab, the recommended settings are preset. If using a shared hosting account use the "disk" method with caution, the respon se time of the disk may not be fast enough, so this option is disabled by defaul t. Try object caching instead for shared hosting. Optional: On the "Object Cache" tab, all of the recommended settings are pre set. If using a shared hosting account use the "disk" method with caution, the r esponse time of the disk may not be fast enough, so this option is disabled by d efault. Test this option with and without database cache to ensure that it provi des a performance increase. Optional: On the "User Agent Groups" tab, specify any user agents, like mobi le phones if a mobile theme is used.