Ever felt like you’re going slightly totally crazy?

You upload a nice new custom image header.  Or you rename your blog categories!  But when you visit your blog site these new changes haven’t appeared and you see the old version of your blog.

Rest assured you aren’t crazy!

But until you understand the culprit lies with your browser’s cache and learn how to clear your browser cache it will drive you crazy.

What Is A Browser Cache?

When you visit a web page for the first time web browsers such as Internet Explorer, FireFox, Flock and Safari save a copy of that page and its graphics on your computer.  The next time you visit an ‘already visited web page’ it grabs the saved copy of the page from your computer’s hard drive. This makes the page load and render faster because it doesn’t have to grab all the information from the web server that hosts the web page.

This ‘saved copy on your computer’s hard drive’ is known as your browser cache.  It’s normally a good feature unless you need to view the latest version of a web page.

How To Clear Your Web Browser

Web browsers do vary in terms of what method you use to clear their cache.  However the fastest method is to use the shortcut key Ctrl + F5 (press and hold the Ctrl key while pressing F5).  This will reload the web page you are viewing while clearing the cache for most web browsers on Windows including FireFox, Flock and Internet Explorer 7.

On a Mac the short cut keys to reload and clear cache are CMD + R (press and hold the CMD key while pressing R) – thanks Patrick Malley for realizing I had forgotten instructions for Macs.

So the next time you make changes to your blog’s design and are still seeing the old version of your blog remember to try clearing your cache.

Image by fjom licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!