When you visit a place on the internet, your computer stores a copy of the site for later. If you return before changes have been made to the live version, your computer displays the stored copy instead, to save you the time of re-downloading the entire thing. This is referred to as "caching".
Sometimes however, computers do not do a good enough job of checking whether the live version has been changed, and will erroneously display an out of date stored version. This is referred to as a "caching error". There are a number of things that can be done to correct this.
How to Refresh a Publication on the Content Delivery Network
The Akamai network used to host Zmags publications consists of hundreds of thousands of machines across the world. Content is stored in a redundant fashion, so that even if several machines go down, customers can still reach your content on the network.
This does have an occasional downside, however. There are times rarely when some servers will become out of sync, and may get stuck with an out of date version of your publication. This will almost always sort itself out over time (less than 15 minutes), but you don't need to wait for that! Here's how you can manually push through the latest version to all servers:
1) Log into the Zmags Publicator and go to the "All Publication" list.
2) Click the checkbox to the left of problem publication(s).
3) At the bottom of the list, click "Refresh on CDN...".
4) Click 'OK'.
The process will take a few minutes (typically around 10 - 30) to complete.
How to Clear Your Browser Cache
Sometimes, as described above, the "old version" that is stuck is present on your own local machine. To resolve this, simply clear the browser cache:
Internet Explorer:
- Press Ctrl+Shift+Delete on the keyboard simultaneously.
- Ensure that "Temporary Internet files" is checked.
- Click "Delete".
Mozilla Firefox:
- Press Ctrl+Shift+Delete on the keyboard simultaneously.
- Ensure that "Cache" and "Offline Website Data" are checked.
- Click "Clear Now".
Google Chrome:
- Press Ctrl+Shift+Delete on the keyboard simultaneously.
- Ensure that "Empty the cache" is checked.
- Click "Clear browsing data". You may then close the "Settings" tab.
Apple Safari:
- Press "Alt" on the keyboard. Menus will appear at the top of the window.
- Click "Edit" and then "Empty Cache".
- Click "Clear".
Network Caching
If you have already tried refreshing your publication on the network and clearing your own browser cache, but are still seeing an out of date version of your publication, there is still another possibility.
In the same way that your computer stores local copies of websites, your office network may have a cache of its own. If you have any IT personnel on hand, try asking them if they can clear this for you. If not, this sort of cache will clear on its own after a certain amount of time, usually once every 24 hours.
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