Showing Latest Changes to Returning Customers

[paulhesford]

Hi
I seem to be having a problem displaying the latest info to returning customers

When a returning customer comes to my website www.powerbeckonline.co.uk they see the page as it was when they last viewed which, if this displays old links the user will see page not found etc..

I have found this meta tag for resolving the issue
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">

Apparently it stops Internet explorer displaying its cached version of the webpage and shows the page as it is at that moment ensuring the user gets the latest version

This seems to be working but I'm worried that it may be slowing the page display too much and ruining the user experience again

As anyone else encountered this problem what did you do or have you tried the above meta tags

Thanks Paul

[Goz]

I don't think you need both - my understanding is that they will both, in the structure you have displayed, do the same thing i.e. prevent caching.

I've only ever used <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache"> but not very often, and never found the need for the other.

[paulhesford]

No Cache

Hey Goz
Thanks for your reply
It seems to say one meta tag is for secure pages and the other for a non secure connection. They don't stop explorer caching the page the tags just stops explorer looking at its cached version the next time the user visits

I am thinking that this must slow down the user experience

I am looking for feed back on:

1 whether this solution works
2 works without detrimental effects on speed
3 anyone else noticed this problem
4 anyone else used a different solution


I found the meta tags in microsoft article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234067


Sometimes I go into my clients shop to show them some changes. They view the website from their computer it comes up and it looks like 3 and I'm on version 6 - When they refresh their page everything is fine but can you expect everyone to refresh their web browsers every time they visit

It must also be annoying for returning customers who click on a link which is displayed on their cached version but doesn't exist in real time so the user is displayed page not found! click bang gone for ever

When I looked at my web stats their seems a lot of errors
HTTP Error codes
HTTP Error codes* Hits Percent Bandwidth
404 Document Not Found 953 78.3 % 0
406 Document not acceptable to client 186 15.2 % 66.84 KB
400 Bad Request 45 3.6 % 17.24 KB
206 Partial Content 29 2.3 % 437.12 KB
301 Moved permanently (redirect) 3 0.2 % 972 Bytes
302 Moved temporarily (redirect) 1 0 % 289 Bytes



I am just looking for feed back on:

1 whether this solution works
2 works without detrimental effects on speed
3 anyone else noticed this problem
4 anyone else used a different solution

Just had another thought - Maybe a good idea to edit the 404 page to explain to users


Thanks Paul

[Goz]

Hi Paul

Just giving you my experience. Can't really add anything about speed - I've not noticed it to be an issue.

You may also need to bear in mind that the browser can also control how often it looks for new pages (well, IE6/7 - can't say about any others of the top of my head). In Tools > Internet Options, there is a section called Browsing History and a button on there called Settings. This allows the user to define how often it looks for updated versions of pages. I'm not sure how that interacts with these commands, though.

regards

andy

[paulhesford]

Thanks

Hi Goz

Thanks for your help

Paul

[paulhesford]

Just in case anyone was interested

Hi

I found this neat solution for editing the page which is displayed on error 404

http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/sitema...ror.html#CHECK

If you find an incorrect page at this website

http://www.powerbeckonline.co.uk

My custom error page will be displayed
try this dead link

http://www.powerbeckonline.co.uk/nopage.html

Thanks Paul