Twice in the last week, clients have said:

I got your email that you made the requested changes to my site but when I visit it, they aren’t there.

After confirming that the changes were in fact on the sites, I told my clients that they were most likely looking at a page from their cache or history and they need to force the page to refresh. And, here’s how you do that:

Every browser has a refresh or reload button on it’s toolbar. The simplest way to force a page to refresh is to hold down the shift key when you click that button with the mouse. Most of the time, this fixes the problem.

When you’ve tried the above and you are still not seeing the latest and greatest a page has to offer, you will have to delete your browser’s history. In Avant (Avant is our browser of choice but it’s in the same place in Internet Explorer), this is done by going to Tools > Internet Options > General. There you can clear out your Temporary Internet files by clicking the Delete Cookies… and Delete Files… (don’t forget the offline content) buttons. You should also click the Clear History button in the History section.

There are ways for us as designers to force a page to refresh or reload or to give the site’s visitor that choice by clicking a link. There is code we can add to a page to make this happen. This should only be used on pages within your site that change often, like a blog or news page. If this is something you’d like added to your site, just let us know.

That should do it. Happy browsing!