How to make sure customers see latest version of page

[feemish]

When I upload a new bunch of products and then visit my site, I only see the new products once I click refresh. I understand this is because I am seeing a cached page until I do that. A customer recently contacted me saying he couldn't see the new items I'd added, I told him to 'refresh' his browser and all was fine, but I wonder how often this happens to my regular customers.. If they don't know about 'refreshing' their browser.. how long will it take before they see my updated pages.

So my question is.
How long do browsers hold a cache of a page before refreshing it?

Is there a way to give the pages a 'lifespan' For example give them a lifespan of say a couple of days, and then after that a browser should reload them?

Cheers!

[Buzby]

We have this problem with A javascript generated collection date for Click and Collect.

Customer views on Monday, and site says ready to collect Wednesday.

They revisit Wednesday and the site still says Wednesday.

We turned the feature off due to cache issues.

[feemish]

yes its actually quite an issue isn't it? Sellerdeck uses static html pages.. this problem wouldn't happen with dynamically produced pages on a database driven shop.

I've just read that pages can stay in browser caches for months even years.. Is it possible that returning customers might never see your newly added stock!

[malbro]

yes its actually quite an issue isn't it? Sellerdeck uses static html pages.. this problem wouldn't happen with dynamically produced pages on a database driven shop.

I've just read that pages can stay in browser caches for months even years.. Is it possible that returning customers might never see your newly added stock!

Try this in the header section of the page

<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="max-age=0" />
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="0" />
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="Tue, 01 Jan 1980 1:00:00 GMT" />
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" />

It should turn the cache off in most if not all browsers

[feemish]

Thanks very much for the interest in this Malcolm, and the code.

However not caching the content at all wouldn't be ideal as each page would be loaded fresh when moving around the website... so increasing load time.

I am wondering if there is a way to tell the browser to cache a page for a certain number of days.

That way, an individual session wouldn't be affected, and if someone revisited a few days later they would load the new content.

[malbro]

Thanks very much for the interest in this Malcolm, and the code.

However not caching the content at all wouldn't be ideal as each page would be loaded fresh when moving around the website... so increasing load time.

I am wondering if there is a way to tell the browser to cache a page for a certain number of days.

That way, an individual session wouldn't be affected, and if someone revisited a few days later they would load the new content.

You can use htaccess settings to set a relative value e.g. expires in 3 days.

[feemish]

You can use htaccess settings to set a relative value e.g. expires in 3 days.

Ah can you? How do you do that?

Am I the only one worried about this? What do other people do?

Am I right, that without some kind of solution, regular customers might never see your newly added items?

[feemish]

The more I have looked into this the more I am realising that could be quite a problem, especially for sites with lots of returning customers.

It seems quite possible for repeat visitors to your site to never actually see your newly added stock!

Typically files will stay in the visitors browsers cache until space runs out. This can be a lot of space. Meaning that people could visit your Sellerdeck site again and again and never reload the page.

I'm wary of adjusting the htaccess file without being entirely sure what I am doing as I fear I could easily make the situation worse.

[guccij]

There are some helpful hints which show you how to add this to your .htacess - here's one https://uk.godaddy.com/help/enabling...g-account-6908 (ignore the fact it's Godaddy please!) or https://www.en.advertisercommunity.c...p/1088158#M427

Google quite likes this kind of thing I believe.

[feemish]

Thanks Jules.

[Mike Hughes]

It seems quite possible for repeat visitors to your site to never actually see your newly added stock!

I'm not sure this is really the case.

As I understand it, if your server doesn't issue any instructions for cache lifetimes then the browser falls back on two aging mechanisms:

1. A heuristic (i.e. problem solving) approach. Which can be as simple as being 1/10th the age of the file. i.e. if you download an html file that's 10 days old then discard the file from the cache after 1 day.

2. An even blunter approach. Discard it from the cache after the browser session closes. i.e. closing your browser and then starting it again (typically when you reboot the next day).

[Buzby]

In order to test how much of an issue this is I have added a generated date to the footer of my site.

I will check daily on each of my computers to see if the date is cached, or refreshed in the browser.

[feemish]

From what I've googled It seems to be down to browser settings and how large the browser cache is set to. If its large (and some people ramp up their browser cache size) files could stay in there until pushed out by new activity, but that could be a long time.

I have had customers calling because they couldn't see my new stock. Of course a 'browser refresh' fixes this, but lots of people still don't seem to know what 'browser refresh' is.. and are not aware they might need to do it.

[feemish]

I think implementing 'leverage browser caching' as suggested by Malcolm and Jules will sort the issues anyway (if there is one)

[gail]

If you think that's tricky try explaining to a customer why they have been able to place an order for an item that is no longer in stock.