To speed up the browsing experience, web browsers save a website’s HTML, CSS, Javascript and image files in your local storage. Now whenever you visit the website again next time, instead of freshly downloading the same files the browsers will load the files from your local storage. This helps in loading the website faster, reduces load on your hosting servers and saves the visitors internet data. This works perfectly fine most of the time and helps make the user experience really smooth.
So why would one want to clear the cache?
The problem arises when you make some changes to your website files. Let it be some images you changed, updated the design of your website or added a few functionalities through Javascript. Until the previous cache expires the user will be viewing your older content.
To make sure this doesn’t happen whenever you make changes to your WordPress website you will have to clear the cache. Mainly the browsers cache and your web hosting cache.
Clearing your browser’s cache
Most of the popular browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox use caching to reduce page loading times and serve the content faster to users.
One simple trick that works for Chrome and Firefox is to use a shortcut CTRL + F5. Most of the time your browser should fetch a fresh copy of the website. If that doesn’t work then you will have to manually clear the browser’s cache.
For Chrome, open the menu and go to More Tools -> Clear Browsing Data. Select the All-time time range and tick the Cached images and files checkbox. Now click the Clear data button and the website’s cache should be cleared from your local storage.
For Firefox, open the menu and go to Preferences -> Privacy & Security. Click the Clear Data button on the right and tick the Cached Web Content checkbox. Now click the Clear button and the website’s cache should be cleared.
Clearing cache of your WordPress caching plugins
Many times WordPress website owners use caching plugins to prevent the servers from running the same code for every new visitor. We will share how to clear cache from two of the most popular caching plugins.
WP Super Cache has numerous caching features and is one of the most commonly used plugins for caching. This plugin makes it very easy to clear cache stored by it. Steps to clear cache for websites using this plugin:
Navigate to Dashboard -> Settings ->WP Super Cache.
Under the Delete Cached Pages section click the Delete Cache button.
All the cache stored by the plugin should now be deleted.
W3 Total Cache is famous for customization options and improving the user experience. It is used by many popular WordPress blogs. Steps to clear cache for websites using this plugin:
Navigate to Admin Area -> Performance -> Dashboard.
At the top of the page, you will see an empty all caches button. Click it to clear all the previous cache of your WordPress website.
If the caching plugin you are using is not covered in this article, then the steps should be similar to the above steps taken. It is very important to delete the cache and load the updated pages many times.