Clearing Caches in WordPress Print

What a cache is, in plain terms

A cache is a stored, ready-made copy of your website, kept so it can be served quickly instead of being built fresh every time. Caching is a good thing, it is one of the biggest reasons a site loads fast, as our article on speeding up WordPress explains. But it has one confusing side effect that trips people up constantly, and that is what this article is really about.

The problem caching causes: "I changed it, but I don't see the change"

Here is the scenario that brings most people to this article. You edit a page, update a price, change an image, and then look at your site, and the old version is still there. You edit it again, still the old version. It looks like your change did not save.

It almost certainly did save. You are looking at a cached copy, the stored old version, rather than the live page. The fix is not to edit again, it is to clear the cache so the stored copy is thrown away and rebuilt from your current site. Once you understand this, a whole category of baffling "my changes won't show" problems simply dissolves.

The catch: there are several caches, in layers

Your change might be hidden behind any of several caches, stacked between your site and your eyes. Clear them from the one nearest you outward:

Your browser cache

Your own browser stores copies of pages to load them faster on repeat visits. This is the most common culprit, and the quickest to rule out. Do a hard refresh: Ctrl+F5 on Windows, or Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac, which forces the browser to fetch a fresh copy. Or view the site in a private or incognito window, which ignores your browser cache entirely, a fast way to see what a real visitor sees.

Your caching plugin

If you use a caching plugin, and most optimised WordPress sites do, it keeps its own copy of your pages. After making changes, clear the plugin's cache: look in your WordPress dashboard for the plugin's "clear cache" or "purge cache" button, usually in the toolbar at the top or in the plugin's settings. This is the step people most often miss.

Server-level caching

Some setups also cache at the server level for extra speed, for example systems like LiteSpeed. This usually clears itself sensibly, but if you have cleared your browser and your plugin and still see the old version, server caching may be holding it. If you cannot find where to clear it, that is a fine moment to ask us.

A sensible order when a change won't show

1. Hard refresh your browser, or check in an incognito window.
2. If still old, clear your caching plugin's cache from the dashboard.
3. If still old, the change genuinely may not have saved, go back and confirm you saved it.
4. If you are certain it saved and it still will not show, open a support ticket and we will check for server-level caching holding the old copy.

Nine times out of ten, step one or two solves it.

When to clear caches deliberately

Beyond chasing a missing change, it is worth clearing your caches after any significant work on the site, a redesign, a batch of updates, a big content change, so that visitors see the new version promptly rather than a stored old one. Making a change and clearing the cache should become a natural pair in your mind.

Good to know

Caching is a friend that occasionally looks like an enemy: the very thing making your site fast is what shows you a stale copy of your own work. So before you ever conclude that a change did not save, that the site is broken, or that something has gone wrong, clear your caches first, it is the explanation far more often than anything actually being wrong. If clearing every cache genuinely does not show your change, then it is worth investigating properly, and a support ticket gets us looking at what is really happening.