The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Cache flow problems

“I keep getting these notifications that you've updated your site,” said Dad, “but when I check, I keep seeing the same page over and over again.” This was about the fourth or fifth time this topic has come up over the past few months. And each time I tell Dad to shift-reload but that doesn't seem to work for him, although the page eventually does change, after awhile.

Sigh.

I suspect I know the problem. Sometime in the past year I changed the configuration of my webserver to allow browsers and web proxies to better cache the content here:

ExpiresActive  On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 day"
ExpiresByType  image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType  image/gif  "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType  image/png  "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType  text/css   "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType  text/plain "access plus 1 month"

Images, style sheets, plain text files, all can be cached for a month (heck, they can probably be cached indefinitely for my blog—the content has never really changed all that much), but the web pages (in addition to the various feed files) can only be cahced for 24 hours.

And I think that's the issue.

Dad's ISP is known to aggressively cache the web (I won't name names, but it's initials are 'A', 'O' and 'L') so I may need to adjust my methods for caching values.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.