What is cache busting?

Trying to improve the speed of my website www.mothsoftware.com a bit. GTMetrix tells me that I should fix the following:

Remove the following redirect chain if possible:

https://www.mothsoftware.com/resources/m.common.css?rwcache=577965093
https://www.mothsoftware.com/errors/404/index.php

When I look into the source of the website then the file isn’t found. I did a bit of Goggling and found out that this is called cache busting. Unfortunately, there is no description in the manual what this is supposed to do.

Can someone explain cache busting for me?

Regards

Beatrix Willius

RapidWeaver added the cache busting parameters to the end of resources files loaded into the project so that browsers will redownload the file after its been re-uploaded by you. You want this…

As per my comments on Weaver’s Space, I have no clue what is loading the m.common.css file.

Did a bit thinking. Every time I make a new version of the website the rwcache part of the url is changing.

So the cache-busting options makes sure that I always get the newest version from the cache. So it allows caching but prevents that I get an old file when updating the website.

A cache busting link will make the browser think that the file in question (such as css) has been changed, and thus, the browser loads the new file. There really is no “old” file as far as you and your website is concerned. It’s just that browsers cache files to speed things up and if they don’t think a file has changed they will just load the “old” cached file (from the users computer) and not bother to download and read your new file. Thus, if you do a file update every day and you have 10 people who visited once each of those 10 days all 10 people can see a different file! It’s the one in their cache on their computer (browser).

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.