When should I use the top menu options and the dashboard Quick Actions

WP Rocket's top menu is automatically added to the admin bar so that you can easily run some actions from anywhere in your admin panel, without having to access WP Rocket's Settings page.

Additionally, you will find three options in the Quick Actions section in the WP Rocket's Dashboard tab:

In the top menu, depending on the server and WP Rocket's enabled features, the following options will be available:

• Settings
• Clear cache
• Clear and preload cache
• Purge Sucuri cache
• Clear Used CSS
• Clear Priority Elements
• Regenerate Critical Path CSS
• Documentation
• FAQ
• Support

⚠️ You don't need to click these actions all the time because WP Rocket automatically triggers them for you in most cases. WP Rocket's automated cache clearing should cover day-to-day usage as per this article.

Here are the exhaustive lists of situations where you need to manually run these actions:

Clear cache

You should manually clear the cache whenever you have:

• Created 301 or 410 redirects.
• Made changes to the styling in any of the CSS files, and Minify CSS files are active.
• Activated, deactivated and updated any plugin which displays something on the front end of your site.
• Installed one of the WP Rocket helper plugins that affect the front-end, e.g. exclude files from deferring, LazyLoad, Load CSS Asynchronously.
• Done changes outside the WordPress editor, via (s)FTP/SSH, on the server, on external proxys, or on CDNs.
• Made changes that aren't immediately reflected on the front-end and if you just don't see your new content live.

Additionally, there are certain scenarios where you can see specific options as with Polylang that allows you to clear cache for a specific language, see an example here. 

Clear and preload cache

When the Preload feature is enabled, the "Clear cache" button will be replaced by "Clear and preload cache" and when clicking on it, the cache will be preloaded after being cleared.

You can use this option in the same scenarios listed in the Clear cache section of this article.

Purge Sucuri cache

This option will be available if the Sucuri Add-on is enabled.

This option should be used when you have:

• Made changes to your files without changing their filenames.

Clear Used CSS

This option is available when Remove Unused CSS is enabled.

You should use this option when:

• You make changes to stylesheets, or add/modify custom CSS via the WordPress Customizer (or a plugin).
• Some custom options of a theme are changed.

Clear priority elements

This button can be used to clear the critical images handled the Optimize critical images option, and it also clears the lazily rendered elements optimized by the Automatic Lazy Rendering feature.

You should use this option:

• When you have applied manual changes to the content, CSS and/or images of your pages.

Regenerate Critical Path CSS

This option will be available only if the Load CSS Asynchronously feature is enabled.

You should run the Regenerate Critical Path CSS option whenever you have:

• Created custom CSS which would affect the critical path.
• Made extended changes to your site's CSS.
• Regenerating CPCSS shouldn't be done routinely. Only, if they make changes in CSS files of the theme (ref.: Load CSS Asynchronously).