41 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
Executable File
41 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
Executable File
# Getting Started
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## Where to find the settings
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After activating the plugin, go to **Dotjuice → Page speed** in your WordPress admin menu. Settings are organised into nine tabs: Caching, CSS, JavaScript, HTML, Images, Preload, CDN, Database, and Advanced.
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Every toggle saves through a single **Save Settings** button in the top toolbar — changes aren't applied until you click it. A **Clear Cache** button sits next to it for whenever you want to force a fresh rebuild of every cached page.
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## Sensible defaults
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The plugin ships with the safest, most broadly compatible optimisations already switched on: page caching, mobile-aware caching, CSS/JS minification, CSS combining, JS deferring, HTML minification, emoji script removal, lazy loading, font-display swap, cache preloading after publish, and font preloading. These are the settings virtually every WordPress site benefits from with no downside.
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Settings that carry more risk of visibly breaking a page if your theme or plugins do something unusual — CSS/JS combining across the board, async CSS loading, JavaScript delay-until-interaction, CDN rewriting — are left off by default so you can enable and test them deliberately.
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## The one-time setup step: enabling the fast cache path
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For the fastest possible caching (page loads served in milliseconds rather than tens of milliseconds), your site needs one line added to `wp-config.php`:
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```php
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define( 'WP_CACHE', true );
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```
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The plugin tries to add this automatically when you activate it. If it can't — for example because `wp-config.php` isn't writable by PHP on your hosting — you'll see a persistent notice in your admin dashboard with a **Retry automatically** button, or you can add the line yourself just above the `/* That's all, stop editing! */` comment.
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**Your site works fine without this.** If the automatic fast path isn't available, caching still runs through a normal WordPress request — just a little slower than the bypass path. Nothing breaks; you simply don't get the absolute fastest response times until it's in place.
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## Recommended first steps
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1. **Leave the defaults as they are** for your first save — they're the safest baseline.
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2. **Set your LCP image** on the Preload tab (see [Preload](preload.md)) — this is the single highest-impact five-minute change you can make for your PageSpeed score.
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3. **Clear your cache and reload your site** in an incognito/private window to confirm everything looks right.
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4. **Work through the optional tabs one at a time** — CSS async loading and JS delay give the biggest additional speed gains but are worth testing on staging first if your site is complex (see the warnings in [CSS Optimisation](css-optimisation.md) and [JavaScript Optimisation](javascript-optimisation.md)).
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## If something looks broken after enabling a setting
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Every optimisation on this plugin can be switched off individually. If a page looks wrong after a change:
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1. Click **Clear Cache** (top toolbar or the button in your WordPress admin bar) and reload — a stale cached page is the most common cause of "it looks broken."
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2. If it's still wrong, turn off the most recently changed setting and clear the cache again.
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3. See [Troubleshooting](troubleshooting.md) for the settings most likely to cause visible issues and what they need to work safely.
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