Hello @halielambert
Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.
1. This depends on server resources, theme, plugins, and external resources. No one can predict how much the speed and the performance of the website will improve, however, Page Caching and modification of the assets (some of the W3TC features) will help in improving the website speed and performance for sure.
2. This depends on the caching method you are using. For example, Page caching set to Disk: Enhanced method, stores the cached pages in wp-content/cache/page_enhanced/ folder. If you choose to use memory-based Caching like Redis or Memcached, then the cache is stored in the memory. This is the case for all other caching features like Minify, Object Caching, Database caching, etc.
3. In some cases, yes. The optimal W3 Total Cache configuration takes into account a number of factors: your theme, your plugins, and the technologies available on the server. Since everyone’s site and traffic and theme are different, there is no one size fits all solution.
This means that the best configuration for your site might not involve enabling minify, database caching, and other things that you might expect. As a matter of fact, it can actually hurt performance by implementing features for the wrong situation.
A good example is if your website is on shared hosting, it’s not recommended to use Database or Object Caching because the only available method is Disk caching in this case, and this is not recommended for Object Caching and Database Caching as it can make your website slower.
For the mentioned features, the best is to use memory-based Caching like Redis or Memcached.
For more information about W3 Total Cache features, please check out our documentation.
I hope this helps!
Thanks!
