How NitroPack works with LiteSpeed servers

If your hosting provider runs LiteSpeed (common with Hostinger, A2 Hosting, CyberPanel, and others), NitroPack detects it automatically and integrates with the server's built-in caching. Here's what NitroPack does for your LiteSpeed setup and what to do if you see a notification about .htaccess.

LiteSpeed has its own server-level cache, separate from any WordPress plugin. NitroPack integrates directly with it so that LiteSpeed's server-level caching and NitroPack's optimization work together instead of competing.

By default, LiteSpeed creates a separate cached copy of your page for every different browser that visits. Chrome 120, Chrome 121, Firefox 128, Safari 17, each gets its own copy. With thousands of browser versions out there, most visitors end up hitting an empty cache and waiting for a fresh page to be generated.

NitroPack replaces this with three categories: desktop, tablet, and mobile. Instead of thousands of cached copies per page, LiteSpeed only needs three.

When NitroPack purges or invalidates a page (because you edited content, updated a product, or changed settings), it also tells LiteSpeed to purge the same page from its server-level cache. This keeps both caching layers in sync, so you won't see a situation where NitroPack has the updated page, but LiteSpeed is still serving an old version.

NitroPack configures LiteSpeed to skip the cache for visitors who shouldn't see cached content:

NitroPack sets the right LiteSpeed-specific headers (X-LiteSpeed-Cache-Control, X-LiteSpeed-Vary, X-LiteSpeed-Tag) so the server cache knows what to store, how to vary it, and how to tag it for targeted purging. All handled automatically.

If you've configured ignored query parameters in NitroPack (like UTM tracking parameters), NitroPack also tells LiteSpeed to ignore them when building cache keys. This prevents duplicate cache entries for URLs that only differ by tracking parameters.

All of the above depends on NitroPack being able to write its configuration rules to your .htaccess file. If you see this notification in your NitroPack dashboard:

File .htaccess is not writable Unable to configure LiteSpeed specific rules for maximum performance.

It means the LiteSpeed integration is not active. Your site is still optimized by NitroPack (page caching, image optimization, CSS/JS minification all work), but LiteSpeed falls back to caching by exact browser version instead of by device type. This makes your site noticeably slower for most visitors.

Make your .htaccess file writable so NitroPack can add its LiteSpeed rules:

Hostinger (hPanel):

cPanel:

FTP/SFTP:

NitroPack automatically retries writing the rules every time you load the dashboard. Once .htaccess is writable, the notification disappears, and the LiteSpeed integration activates.

If you can't change file permissions yourself, contact your hosting provider and ask them to make .htaccess writable for WordPress, or ask them to add NitroPack's LiteSpeed rules manually — contact our support team for the exact rules to provide.

No. NitroPack works directly with the LiteSpeed web server's built-in cache module. You don't need the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin installed. NitroPack actually detects it as a conflicting plugin because both try to manage the same server-level cache.

If you have LiteSpeed Cache plugin installed alongside NitroPack, you'll see a conflict notification with an option to deactivate it. NitroPack handles page caching, cache purging, and device-aware caching on its own, along with image optimization, CSS/JS optimization, and CDN delivery.

"The notification keeps coming back after I fixed .htaccess"

Some hosting providers periodically reset file permissions or overwrite .htaccess during updates. If this keeps happening, contact your host to ensure .htaccess stays writable, or ask them to add NitroPack's rules permanently.

"I deactivated LiteSpeed Cache plugin but my site is still slow"

The LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin and the LiteSpeed server cache are different things. Deactivating the plugin doesn't turn off the server cache. NitroPack's .htaccess rules configure the server cache directly. Make sure the .htaccess notification is resolved.

"I don't see any LiteSpeed notification"

If NitroPack successfully wrote to .htaccess, everything is working. You can verify by checking that your NitroPack dashboard has no warnings about .htaccess.