HTML force refresh

Question

I've just finish a redesign/reskin of a website that's been up for over a year. New html, new css, new images.

How can I force all visitors to refresh their cache so they don't try to look up last year's assets and get a broken page?

I've read about META refresh but this doesn't seem like the right solution. Is this my only option?

Answer 1

simply adding a query-string to the include will make the browser think that its a new file and you won't have to change the name or even update it on all pages at once.

example

   <script type="text/javascript" src="myfile.js?v=123"></script>
   <link href="cssfile.css?v=321" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />