Redis is a caching technology used by some PHP applications to speed up page load times by reducing the amount of processing needed to render the result and send it to your browser. It is often used alongside other caching systems to speed up sites considerably.
Some PHP applications have native support for Redis, but WordPress also has the option of using this system when you use the Litespeed Caching plugin.
If you are currently using Memcached on one of our WordPress Plus hosting packages, we highly recommend switching over to Redis. Redis is considerably more secure and each user gets their own Redis instance!
Redis is currently only available on our WordPress Plus hosting plans. If you need to implement an object caching solution on your VPS or Dedicated Server, contact our support.
The Litespeed Caching plugin on its own is pretty capable, but unfortunately Redis is not enabled by default. Some extra setup is required. The following section will detail how to get Redis working with the Litespeed Cache plugin for WordPress, but if you want to use Redis with another PHP application that supports it, the connection settings should be the same.
Getting Redis Working with Litespeed Cache for WordPress
Before you can use Redis, there are two tweaks you’ll have to make. Start by logging into your cPanel. Once logged in, the first place you need to go is the ‘Advanced’ section. Click on the ‘LiteSpeed Redis Cache Manager’ icon
From there, click on ‘Enable Redis Service’ and click on the ‘OK’ button to confirm it.
That’s all you’ll have to do here, so head back to the main cPanel menu, and find the ‘Select PHP version’ icon.
From there, You’ll see your current PHP version, and below that, a big array of checkboxes, one for each possible PHP extension you can enable. Head down to the ‘R’ section and enable ‘redis’. It should look like this:
If you see a Warning popup saying “msgpack enabled as dependency (redis)” This is normal and you can ignore the warning.
If you’re switching from Memcached to Redis, you can disable the Memcached PHP extension here while you’re enabling Redis.
That’s all the setup you need from cPanel. The rest of the setup will be done inside your wp-admin:
- Inside wp-admin, expand the ‘Litespeed Cache’ section
- Click ‘Cache’ from the submenu
- Click on the ‘Object’ tab at the top.
- Make sure ‘Redis’ is selected, and that the Host and Port settings match the image above. The ‘Host’ should be “/tmp/redis.sock” and the ‘Port’ should be “0”. Further down, the Username and Password should be left blank. The defaults usually work here.
- Toggle the Object Cache setting to ‘ON’
- Click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the top right corner of the page.
That’s it! You’re finished setting up Redis. If you use a different application that has Redis support it will ask for all the same connection details as what was pictured here, but the exact steps to enable it in your application may be different.