I’m getting feedback from users that they don’t see updates to my website unless they clear their cache. Is there a way to configure my website so that doesn’t happen?
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A URL might be helpful for someone to have a look.
What is changing that they aren’t seeing?
Are you using any services like CloudFlare?
Are you using any caching in your htaccess file?
I am seeing the same thing www.worldfoundationgggs.org
this site is at host monster.
It would be hard to say exactly what might be causing the browser(s) to cache any content without knowing what exactly you’re seeing being cached.
Browsers are getting more and more aggressive with caching content. There’s been a browser war going on for years. Each browser wanting to assertion prize of being the fastest of the bunch.
One of the easiest way to give the impression that the browser is faster is to cache things that don’t have any specific cache instructions in the HTTP headers.
For most users on a shared hosting environment, the best way to add caching directives to the header is with the htaccess file.
On this post I give some samples that you can use as a starting point. You’ll notice that the sample even caches HTML for 10 minutes. This should ”force” the browser to reload the HTML after 10minutes. That gives your user a faster experience if they bounce back and forth between pages.
Users aren’t seeing the updated content. I have to clear my cache to see it.
I don’t know what CloudFlare or htaccess file is. 
I’m not sure I understand what you wrote. Speed is not the issue. It is users not seeing updated content on the website.
What Content?
On what page?
Is it text on the page?
Is it one or more of the images in the in-motion carousel?
Is it a background image or banner?
Is it styling?
Is it in navigation?
Saying “content” doesn’t help much. Each file type can have different caching rules. The page http://awakeninglifeguide.com/ really doesn’t have any content other than one sentence and some images.
Cashing done for one reason: Speed!
If you are having issues with caching, it is the browser(s) trying to serve a page faster. If you the website developer don’t specify what caching you want, you leave it up to the browser to decide.
we added some content that isn’t showing up.
I don’t know what CloudFlare is or htaccess file is.
Since you don’t know what Cloudflare is, it’s not in play here.
As I said above, browsers are getting more and more aggressive when it comes to caching content. When I checked your site before you didn’t appear to be settings any cache rules. If you don’t explicitly tell them how long to cache what then they’ll set their own rules.
You’ll probably need to add some caching rules to the htaccess file. RW8 has a Built-in htaccess file editor it’s in publishing settings.
If you go to the post that I linked above there’s some samples of what you can add to your htaccess file.
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I appreciate your help but I’m not tech savvy enough to use it. LOL
I’m not concerned about speed. I want users to see updated content without them having to clear their cache (which users don’t typically do I don’t think). So, I don’t know what rules to add to that file so that users see updated content every time they land on the site and the content has been updated. I hope I’m explaining this clearly.
Content is a generic term. Are you talking about text on the page or images or backgrounds or styling.
See each type of content would have different caching rules. If you add an image to a page and it’s file name isn’t the same then it couldn’t have been cached. If you are using cache busting link option (default is to use it) then changing any styling or background images or colors would produce a new file name for the CSS file(s) and cannot have been cached.
Sorry, when people say that my instinct is to ask why are using a computer then? You might not worry about speed but there’s a good chance that your users are. And definitely browser makers and search engines care a lot about performance.
It’s very irritating for your site’s users to be browsing the site, hit a navigation link on the same site, then decide to go back to the previous page and have to wait for that page to reload from a server.
Wouldn’t be a much better experience for your users to have the page reloaded instantly from there browsers cache?
The sample I linked to above is a pretty good starting point. It will cache things like images (they are usually large and takes time to load) for a longer time “access plus 1 month”. It will cache the HTML files for 600 seconds (10 minutes). That means a user of your site would only have content(text) that’s been browsed in the last 10 minutes.
You can easily change those settings to what you want, I would probably actually set them for longer times. This is a sample from DreamHost.
My suggestion would be to try this out, RW8 has an htaccess file editor built in the publishing settings. Once you have added these rules your users shouldn’t have to clear there cache.
Please be aware that this would only work for Apache web-server. If you’re not using Apache then you should check with your hosting company’s knowledge base on setting cache rules.
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Thank you. It’s not that I don’t care about speed. It’s just that at this moment, I’m trying to resolve the caching issue. I will try to figure out all of the info you have given me. Thanks much!
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