Clearing Website Browser Cache Clears Up Frustration
At Sandstorm, we do a lot of website maintenance. That can mean many different types of things like development of new site components, updating old content or creating new content. With each of these different types of work there is a popular issue that can cause panic: he or she forgets to clear his or her caches after making the updates.
Nothing changed. Is the site broken?
If you’ve ever maintained a website, or maybe just updated content on one, you may have come across a situation where it looks as though your edits didn’t save. This ultimately leads into what seems like a broken website, but turns out (after consulting a developer) that you just need to “clear your cache”.
What is “cache”?
Like most people, myself included, when this first happens you are probably wondering what in the world is a “cache”. Google will tell you that it is “a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place,” but that makes me even more confused. In layman’s terms, cache is a save file that allows web pages to load faster.
When you arrive at a website, your browser takes elements of that page and saves them locally into “cache”. This way, the next time you decide to visit that specific page, your browser is going to remember how it looked the last time and, instead of downloading those pieces again, it will use what is stored in the cache to build the page. This results in a great performance boost. Unfortunately, it can, at least appear to, be a nightmare for content editors who don’t understand why their changes are not showing up on the live site.
It’s an easy issue to address
Even with this knowledge, I still come by this simple issue every so often (so don’t feel bad if you do, too). What you should remember is to clear your browser’s cache, refresh the page and see if your edits are now in place (this is particularly easy on a Drupal site). If your changes are not there after that, then you can run frantically to your local developer or IT department. Assure them that you did clear your cache, and this may actually be a real bug.
