Hi all
Here is a general question about updating a site whenever I update a site. my client gets exasperated because her cache still shows the old work. Once I tell her to empty cache , all is well with the world… but she says other people have the same problem. I have already explained that she or they are on the site so much that their brwser cache has kept old info and it has to be cleared. Is there a better explanation or a fix.
I was thinking that maybe if I for publish when changes are made could be a fix???
thx
It’s an old programming joke/truism that there are only two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things, and expiring caches. You can try one of a number of tricks to get the client to see the new content (adding a ?afsdfsdfsd to the end of the URL you send to her may work) but really this is something that you cannot reliably control. Caches are by their very nature distributed and layered. Your browser has one, but your ISP may maintain one, and your hosting provider may enable one in Apache on your Web server. So while you may find it easy to explain how to bust the browser cache, busting all of the intermediate cache layers as well might prove to be a waiting game at best.
One thing you can do to ensure your client always sees the latest while reviewing the site is to publish each iteration in its own subfolder. So you may have http://example.com/v30/path/to/file.html to show today, and v42 tomorrow. Once the site is approved, you can remove these version folders and publish into the Web root again. You will have to repeatedly explain that the old version will still be available for some people until their cache stack times out and they once again request the actual file from the server.
There’s a trick you could do with an .htaccess file to map /v42 to / without changing the apparent URL, but that’s a pretty geeky solution to a problem that only affects a few frequent viewers. Most people won’t have this problem, so it’s hardly worth spending the time on solving it.
Walter
On May 28, 2013, at 11:45 AM, Carla wrote:
Hi all
Here is a general question about updating a site whenever I update a site. my client gets exasperated because her cache still shows the old work. Once I tell her to empty cache , all is well with the world… but she says other people have the same problem. I have already explained that she or they are on the site so much that their brwser cache has kept old info and it has to be cleared. Is there a better explanation or a fix.
I was thinking that maybe if I for publish when changes are made could be a fix???
thx
Thx Walt… this is unfortunately way over my head but I suppose telling the client to empty cache and wait a bit should be enough… Although it isn’t!
thx
Seriously, that’s always the problem. I would consider using the version folder approach. It’s easy in Freeway to update the folder where you publish the site, so just use an FTP application to create a subfolder inside your live server, just inside the Web root folder (htdocs, public_html, whatever that folder is called). Name it 1 or version1 or any other thing you like. In Freeway, change the Directory path (Document Setup, Upload tab) to include that folder name. Upload, and send the client a link to the site that includes that folder. The original site will not be affected at all. Each time you upload a new version of the site, repeat this process. You’ll end up with a lot of extra HTML files on your server, but you’ll be able to point back in time when reviewing things, compare and contrast, etc. It’s a great tool for documenting your progress. Then, when you finally have sign-off, you can remove all of those folders, delete the folder name from the Directory path in the Document Setup, and publish once, overwriting all of the changes. Because your client has been browsing v12/folder/page.html instead of /folder/page.html, her cache will not be primed with the wrong content, or will be significantly older than if she had been refreshing the same path over and over to look at changes. As a result, you may have far fewer cache hits when you release the real new site, and you should have fewer of these communication breakdowns with your client.
Walter
On May 28, 2013, at 12:44 PM, Carla wrote:
Thx Walt… this is unfortunately way over my head but I suppose telling the client to empty cache and wait a bit should be enough… Although it isn’t!
thx