Bypass, or Clear, Your Local Cache

In every Blogger forum I read, you see occasional complaints

I just made changes to my blog. Other folks can see my changes, but I can't. What is the problem?

The buttons on my Post Edit toolbar / my Navbar won't do anything. Help!!

The problem is quite simple. Portions of your blog, and of every other website that you've accesed recently, are stored locally, on your computer. The next time you access that blog or website, your computer won't have to waste your bandwidth downloading the same files. Have you ever noticed that the first time you visit a new website, you computer seems to run slower than subsequent times accessing that same website? This is not your imagination.

In some cases, as when you make changes and can't see those changes immediately, this is not a good thing. Until a file reaches a certain age (sits locally on your computer for a while), your computer won't even bother to check for its update. Your friends will see the changes, but you won't.

The cache is the local content of the web pages themselves. Many web pages also store settings locally on your computer, in cookies, that control how you use those web pages. Cache and Cookies complement each other, but don't confuse them - they are not the same.

Cache can be an issue depending upon how you login, and also what web address you use to access blogs.

There are several solutions, to make sure that what you see on your computer is up to date. They vary widely in effect. Understand the differences.

I. Clear Your Cache
The most drastic step is to clear your cache. This will remove all temporary Internet files, for all web sites, from the cache being cleared.

As you revisit each web page (not just the current one) in the future, each previously cached file must be reloaded. Depending upon the size of your cache, this may make a significant difference in your browsing speed. If you do a lot of web surfing, you will learn not to clear your cache, except when you truly need to do so.

If you're working on a problem that involves non-BlogSpot addressing (aka DNS issues), such as problems involving publishing to custom domains, you may also find it helpful to clear DNS cache.

II. Refresh This Web Page
Or, you may force a refresh of this page. Hit the F5 key, or hold down the Shift key and hit the Refresh button in the browser toolbar. This will delete just this web page, and all files associated with it, and reload each again into cache.

III. Dynamically Call The Server
Finally, you can temporarily ignore what's in cache, by adding a "?" to the end of a target URL. You might access this web page, for instance, as (I added a space in the middle of the URL, to allow the string to line break, and avoid another post / sidebar alignment problem).

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/ 2006/08/bypass-or-clear-your-local-cache.html?

When you add a "?" to the end of the URL, you are forcing your browser to make a dynamic call to the web server. Dynamic calls (aka active server code) are not cached, they have to be evaluated, each time that you load the URL, by the browser contacting the web server. This may or may not reload all files associated with the web page. It won't change what's in cache, everywhere.

The latter may be a significant point to you. If your ISP caches web content locally, to improve performance for its customers, and you reload your cache or a single page (procedure I, or procedure II, above), you may reload from your ISPs cache. If you reload your entire cache, after dynamically reloading one web page, you could reload an older copy from your ISP. If you saw a new web page when dynamically loading the page (procedure III, above), you'll take a step back in time when you load the ISPs cached copy.

Try each solution, and find out what works for you. But be aware of the differences, and only clear what you need to.