Clear your site’s cache

Cache clearing can resolve display issues, plugin conflicts, and outdated content problems on your WordPress.com site. In this guide, you will learn how to clear your site’s cache and understand when this troubleshooting step is necessary.

This feature is available on plugin-enabled sites with our WordPress.com Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce plans. If your site has one of these plans, make sure to activate it. For sites on the free plan, upgrade your plan to access this feature.

The cache is like a storage room where your website keeps copies of information to speed up your site load time for visitors. When someone visits your site, instead of creating everything from scratch, your site can quickly grab the saved copy from the cache. The cache includes:

• Global edge cache stores static website assets, like images and HTML pages, on servers around the world. This means visitors see your site faster because the files are stored closer to them geographically.
• Object cache saves information from your site’s database (like your posts and user information) in temporary storage. This helps your site load faster because it doesn’t have to search through the entire database every time someone visits.

Examples of when to clear each cache:

• If you’ve updated your theme code and logged-out visitors don’t see the changes, try clearing the global edge cache.
• If you’re seeing outdated or incorrect data from your database that doesn’t affect public-facing content, clearing the object cache may help.
• If you’re unsure which to clear, it’s safe to clear both.

This guide covers server-side website caching, which you can flush on plugin-enabled plans. If you have a site without plugins, you cannot and do not need to clear your site’s cache (as the cache is cleared automatically.) If you’re experiencing a cache-related issue, you may need to clear your browser cache instead. Learn how to clear your browser cache here.

Clearing your site’s cache removes temporarily stored data that may be causing display or functionality issues. To clear caches on your plugin-enabled WordPress.com website, follow these steps:

1. Visit your Sites page: https://wordpress.com/sites/
2. Click the ⋮ next to your site and select Settings.
3. Click on the Caching section of Server.
   • Or, from your sites list, press ⌘K on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows and Linux and use the Hosting Command Palette to search for Cache.

4. Click the “Clear all” button next to “Clear all caches“ to clear the global edge and object cache together.
   • Clearing both caches is the safe and recommended option if you’re unsure which cache to clear, but you can clear the edge or object cache individually if required.

5. Wait a moment until you receive a confirmation message that the respective caches are cleared successfully.

Once the cache is cleared, the corresponding buttons will be disabled for one minute.

Global edge cache can deliver your site faster by storing content physically closer to end users on our global network. Enabling this caching feature brings your content closer to your visitors, wherever they might be—this means faster load times, less waiting, and a better overall experience.

Global edge caching is always enabled for sites on the Free, Personal, and Premium plans. On a Business or Commerce site, you can enable the global edge cache using the “Enable global edge caching for faster content delivery” option in the site caching settings shown in the previous section.

To enable global edge cache, your site must be set to public.

In the site’s caching settings, you’ll also find an option related to object cache. This feature improves performance by storing frequently used data, such as database query results, in memory. Instead of pulling the same data from the database each time it’s needed, your site can access it more quickly, which reduces server load and speeds up page delivery.

WordPress.com uses Memcached, a high-speed, memory-based caching system, to handle object caching. This feature is automatically enabled on all WordPress.com plans. While you can’t disable it, you can clear the cache if needed, as explained above.

If your site has a plugin-enabled plan, you might receive a recommendation from a plugin to clear your WordPress.com site’s cache as a troubleshooting step.

They commonly recommend a caching plugin, but these plugins are incompatible with WordPress.com because we automatically provide server-side caching for your site. Instead, you can manually clear your site’s cache by following the steps above.

If everything on your site is optimized and well-coded, clearing your site’s cache should not be necessary. It is not a tool for optimizing your site’s speed.