How to force a browser to refresh a cached version of a webpage

Question

I have a website that because of an ill-prepared apache conf file has instructed users to cache a website URL several years into the future. As a result, when a person visits the site, they often make no attempt to even request the page. The browser just loads the HTML from cache.

This website is about to get a major update, and I would like for users to be able to see it. Is there a way for me to force a user to actually re-request the webpage? I fear that for some users, unless they happen to press F5, they may see the old webpage for several years.

Answer 1

There are several options to achieve this First In the section add meta tag:

<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" /> 

Basically the browser won't cache the page.

Another option is to set sessions, this will force the browser to a new session each time they go, and thus make the browser get the page from the server instead of the cache

<?php session_start();  $_SESSION = array(); session_destroy();  ?>  

You can add this to your website for a couple of days and then remove. I really don't know if it will do, but perhaps you will find it useful

Answer 2

Use different URLs. If the main entry point to your website (like the main index file) is cached, then you're screwed... maybe you should register another domain name?