Force cache refresh for members after upgrade

[fishinsa]

Just did a v3 to v4 upgrade, but no recurring member can see the forum index unless they do a full cache clean.

F5 and normal reloading doesnt change anything (for windows browsers like Chrome).

Where is the setting to make IPB force reload content without caching?

Its a serious issue because all members will not know why the forum index is not displaying.

[fishinsa]

It seems that things like cache control settings are missing from the v4 IPB. Is this like the rebuild tools, i.e its automated?

[bearback]

It's now in the adminCP support option

Go to adminCP Support option and use the option "something not working correctly " that will check your install for errors and clear your cache

 

[bfarber]

The OP is talking about browser caches rather than server-side caches.

There is no way for you to "force" a cache reload. By its nature, if a browser has something cached and was told to cache it, it won't even make a request to the server for that object. Instead, we adjust an MD5 hash in the URLs when things change (e.g. the actual URL to a CSS or javascript file) which is also known as "cache-busting". If this isn't working for some reason on your site following an upgrade, and running the support tool above does not fix it, please submit a ticket.

[fishinsa]

I fixed part of the problem (i hope) by moving the location of the forum to a different url, then using a htaccess redirect to force the user to the new forum location, thus causing a browser side reload. Now users report having access to the forum index.

But users still report that new IPB menu links are taking them to outdated locations.
For example, the root url of the site is now a content homepage, but users who visit it just see the forum index, despite the forum having been moved to site.com/forums/

I think I will take up that offer of adjusting the MD5 hash... or are you saying that IPB should already do this automatically?

[fishinsa]

All these issues only occur for users who, until recently, were visiting the v3 forum. Something in the v3 forum browser cache is not letting the v4 site load correctly after the upgrade.

[Dll]

You're not running cloudflare are you? If so, make sure you're not setting it to cache everything or to ignore any hashes, and flush the cache on their side. 

[fishinsa]

No Cloudflare.

Maybe I should get Memcached enabled which may trigger some change.

[bfarber]

Memcache won't solve this. I assume if the users do a hard refresh (or clear their cache manually) then the site works as expected? If so, your easiest solution may be to just put up an "Announcement" on the forum from the ModCP advising users to do this if they are experiencing issues. Technology and techniques have changed quite a bit since v3 was developed and it's possible the way items were cached then means they're not clearing out immediately and automatically now that you've upgraded. You shouldn't have issues moving forward.