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Troubleshooting and repair

Changes do not show on the site, how to clear the right cache

Clearing the cache

A fast site stores a ready made page and serves it to the next visitor. That is exactly why a change does not show immediately. There are three layers and they are cleared from different places. Clear the wrong one and nothing happens, which makes the situation look worse than it is.

In short

  • Test in a private window first, that rules out your own browser.
  • Clear the layers in order, first the site, then the server and last any proxy service.
  • If the change still does not show, it probably was not saved where you think.

1. Rule out your own browser

Open the page in a private window or on another device. If the change is there, everything is fine and only your browser is showing the old version. Clearing the browser cache resolves it.

2. Clear the site cache

Your performance plugin has its own purge function. Use it, and if the plugin offers a per page purge, clear the whole cache rather than one page. A partial purge often leaves the front page and the menus untouched, which is exactly what people look at.

3. Clear the server cache

On Nordweb hosting the server stores finished pages in the LiteSpeed cache. That matters a great deal for speed, but it also means clearing your browser is not enough. In WordPress the server cache is emptied with Purge All in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. If the plugin is not installed, ask us to purge it.

4. Remember the proxy

If the domain runs through a proxy or a content delivery network, it keeps a copy of its own. Clear that too. You recognise the situation when the site shows different things in different countries or networks.

5. If the change still does not appear

Then this is not about caching. Check that you saved the right page. Many sites have both a page set as the front page and the theme's own front page template. Check also that you did not edit a draft waiting to be published. If you edited files directly, make sure you uploaded them to the right directory.

6. If the old version comes back on its own

That is a different symptom. Something is writing over the page, most often a scheduled restore from a backup or two environments syncing with each other. This is worth tracing immediately, because work is lost every time.

What not to do

Do not disable caching permanently just so that changes show up instantly. The site slows down noticeably, and slowness costs more than a few minutes of delay. The relationship between speed and caching is covered in our guide on why a WordPress site is slow.

If you would rather not do it yourself

We find out which layer is holding on to the old version and fix it so changes appear without hurting site speed. If the cause is something other than caching, we tell you that too.

See how we repair a broken site »