Why Can’t I See the Latest Website Update? Probably Caching

It is most likely a caching issue and will resolve itself very quickly. Cache is a process of saving copies of files with the purpose of speeding up web page response times.

Caching has become ubiquitous and can have many layers to it:

• On your website. If you have a WordPress website you may have a caching plugin installed.
• On your website hosting server. Many hosting companies have built in caching systems.
• On a CDN (Content Delivery Network) system. Your website may be using a high speed and on CDN service, such as Cloudflare, where by copies of your site files are kept at various locations around the world so they can serve local users more quickly.
• On your computer, tablet or phone. If you already have the files downloaded then why wait for them to be downloaded again? So browsers typically operate a caching regime unless you have changed the normal settings.

If everything is working as it should website updates will be seen after a short interval, typically 30 minutes to refresh all the server based systems.

However, your own computer, tablet or phone may take longer especially if you just visited that webpage before it was updated. You may speed up the process by:

• Refreshing the web page, or if that doesn’t work,
• Clearing your browser cache.

Or using a different browser or different device. It is quite common to see an old version of the web page on one device and the updated version on another. This depends on when you last visited the page on the device and the caching regime. You are not going mad!

But, don’t worry, your experience is not typical of your other site visitors. They aren’t usually aware of an update and are not visiting the site often watching for it!

If you have waited for an hour and refreshed your devices cache but still don’t see the update then it is likely something really has gone wrong.