What is website caching?
Caching is the web server “saving” a complete copy of a page to serve to visitors.
Caching dramatically speeds up the load time of your website because the server doesn’t have to recreate the page on each page load (every time someone looks at it). Instead it serves the “cached” or saved copy.
Without caching turned on, most sites wouldn’t be able to sustain even medium traffic volumes without very expensive server setups.
When you are logged into the dashboard you generally bypass any caching, you are seeing the ‘uncached’ version of the site. That’s why often it can look alright on your computer but others might not see your changes.
Help, I can’t see my changes!
When do I need to clear the website’s cache?
The cache does clear itself periodically and it also should clear itself after pages or posts are saved after editing.
However, it’s not uncommon for page builders (especially Oxygen Builder that we used for some websites in the past) to fail to properly trigger a cache refresh as they are a little more complex in what they are trying to do.
Also lists of items from your WordPress site such as blogs, courses, events or items for sale can sometimes get cached and need to be purged to see the updates.
You might need to clear the caching if:
The site is not showing your recent changes to content, images or design
New or changed content is not showing up for other website visitors or staff members (but it is for you)
The site is showing old content/images on mobile
You added an item to WordPress (e.g. a new product, a course, an event) and the list of items is not showing the latest items at the top
You open another browser where you are NOT logged into the website and the recent changes aren’t showing up (but they are on the browser you were using to make the changes)
It just doesn’t look ‘right’
Someone on your team added or updated a plugin and now things don’t look right
If you experience any of these issues, clearing the caching is the fix 99.5% of the time. If clearing the cache doesn’t solve the issue then get in touch with us support@avoca.design.
If in doubt clear it regularly
It’s a good habit to get into (especially when working with Oxygen Builder) to clear the cache for the page that you’ve been working on once you’ve finished and saved your changes. If you’ve worked on multiple pages make sure you clear the cache for the whole site.
We use a tool called Litespeed to cache your website for super fast performance
You’ll see a diamond logo in the admin bar
Clearing Caching for your website – Litespeed Cache
In Admin “Backend”
Click the diamond icon in the admin bar (top of screen)
Select “Purge all” – this will clear all caching across the entire site
On the frontend of your website
Click the diamond icon in the admin bar at the top of the screen
Select “Purge this page” – this will purge the page you are currently on
OR select “purge all” – this will purge the entire website cache