Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cache

Can I disable Firefox cache per-domain?

odinsdream — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:26:29 -0800

How can I set Firefox to not cache any pages from a certain domain? I have to use a crap ticketing system written in .NET which doesn't work properly in Firefox.

If I clear cache between page views everything works fine. Once the site is loaded, the URL at the top never changes no matter where you navigate or what actions you perform, so I'm guessing Firefox doesn't know the page needs to be reloaded.

Is there an extension to Firefox that will let me set one particular domain so that it does not create cache items at all?

Web Dev - How to inform browsers to update their cache?

LoopyG — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:25:20 -0800

I am developing a website that has a moderately-sized user base. I am going to be rolling out a new version of the page soon. In my testing, I have noticed that my browsers don't notice that there are new versions of some of the CSS files available on the servers, and renders the page with the old CSS files. This causes display glitches. How do I let browsers know that new CSS/Javascript files are available and to update it's cache?

Google Analytics not tracking?

serunding — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:35:38 -0800

Did clearing my cookies and cache prevent Google Analytics from tracking my blog? I have a fairly new blog and I installed Google Analytics about 3 weeks ago. This morning (Tuesday), it showed that there no visitors to the site yesterday (Monday) which I know is not right because there were a couple of comments posted yesterday and previous stats show that the blog does have a small number of regulars.

I am wondering if clearing all my cookies and cache (in order to install a widget) which I did on Sunday night caused this aberration, i.e. Google Analytics could not track the statistics due to the clearing. And if so, what I can do to enable Google Analytics again? Google Help didn't, erm, help. If you can't already guess from my language, I am not totally tech-savvy, so please be gentle :) Any help is appreciated - thanks!

User problems with the browser cache

davcoo — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:12:00 -0800

A commercial Web-based product our university purchased to provide student account summaries and collect tuition payments works well for 98%+ of the users. It only works for the rest, however, if they first clear their browser cache. I've surfed the Web for years, visiting hundreds of commercial sites, and have never had to clear my cache in order to make a site work for me. With this product, users open the first page of the site but sometimes get only a white screen with "Done" at the bottom of the window.

Why is this cache clearing necessary? A flaw in the code/design or a fact of browser life?

Some technical details if they matter: The product is Java-based, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and serving jsp pages with Tomcat. Most users use IE (IE8 users are instructed to press IE8's "Compatibility" button). The first page has "no-cache" directives.

What might be changing these HKCU registry keys?

aydeejones — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:21:13 -0800

What might be changing these HKCU registry key values? On our corporate domain we've increasingly been encountering bizarre, odd-ball problems where the solution is to change the "Cache" values in these registry keys:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

The "Cache" value contains "C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files" (a throwback to the Win98 era, I believe) and should contain "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files"...as you could imagine, pointing the IE/Explorer browser cache to a non-existent folder can cause all sorts of havoc with the various dependent apps out there.

I haven't seen anything in any of our in-house scripts that can be changing this. We're considering a login script to kludge-over the problem so that we never see it again, but would like to understand it better, hopefully avoiding the process of proactively monitoring the registry across the network to look for the next user profile that gets tweaked. It's not a widespread problem that affects multiple machines at this point. The latest affected machine was just re-imaged due to a completely different issue, and there's no indication that this setting was inherited from the default user registry key.

Just curious if anyone has seen this happen and has any suggestions. I'll try to see if I can gather any more information...we're still running IE6 due to some proprietary apps, and it seems IE6 has become increasingly flaky lately, probably due to the fact that it's an IE7/IE8 world (with a constant flow of security fixes) and Microsoft is increasingly less keen on bending over backwards to support IE6 while fixing security issues in Windows/Office/IE7/IE8.

Running short on cache?

Aanidaani — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:46:27 -0800

Hard drive issues: Frequently when I attempt to open a folder on my Windows Vista partition I will have to wait 5 seconds or so for the drive to spin up (I hear it). Is there some way I can fix my cache or otherwise set up the drive so that it doesn't need to spin up every time I access files on my root drive? I recently installed a new SATA drive to replace my failing IDE drive. I've divided it up into two partitions, one to store documents and another to hold my Windows Vista installation. Accessing files on both partitions is fine, it's just that there is a long delay (~5 seconds) whenever I try to access the Vista partition in Windows Explorer or through a save/open dialog.

I'm wondering if there is some way to increase the cache size so my hard drive doesn't need to spin up constantly or if there is a completely different issue at fault here that I don't understand. Any help would be appreciated.

Why am I getting an old webpage in Chrome?

Maastrictian — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:12:24 -0800

When I browse to Talking Points Memo with Chrome from work I see the page as of Sept 24th. At home, with Chrome, I see the page as of today. At work in IE7 I see the site correctly. No other websites are affected. The entirity of the Talking Points Memo site looks like it comes from Sept 24th, not just the main page. This includes pages that I don't remember ever browsing to!

I tried clearing my chrome cache by going to clear browsing data and emptying the cache for all dates. This may be a bug in Chrome, but it seems more likely that the problem is between the keyboard and chair...

How to see expired posts on Craigslist?

MrZero — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:52:01 -0800

I did a Google search and came up with a link to a Craigslist posting, but the post is expired. Obviously, Google has the text of this because it shows me snippets of it in the search result list, but there is no "Cached" link for me to see it. How can I get this info out of Google or Craigslist? Or, alternatively, is there a website that has cached versions of Craigslist posts? The post in question is ten days old.

Do burglars read AskMeFi?

DB Cooper — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:09:19 -0800

What is your most ingenious hiding place for valuables? I am looking for suggestions for where to hide items such as cash, jewelry, spare car keys, etc. I know about hollowed-out books and fake cans of shaving cream, but I would like to hear some other creative examples that are not so well-known.

Cached Web Pages

kjl291 — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:15:01 -0800

Is there any way to find a cache page of a website that was taken down within the past day? I have tried the major search engines with no luck... The site is fileinc.com. fileinc.biz is the same site and is still available, but I'd like to get the .com page as well. Any google-fu ricks that I am nt aware of?

Use up to ___ MB of space for the cache

wastelands — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:08:41 -0800

What is the ideal size for a browser's disk cache? I've searched for the answer to this but have never gotten a straight answer. Is there an ideal size for the disk cache? For example, if a browser sets the cache to 50 MB by default, should I leave it like that? If I have a big, fast hard drive, why not allocate 500 GB to the cache? Or does the cache get fragmented or otherwise difficult to search through, so that a smaller size is best?

I suspect the answer is probably, "It doesn't matter much." But, dang it, I'm curious!

Force IE7 to use cache?

CaptApollo — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:19:12 -0800

Force IE7 to use cache? I have a javascript preloader that loads a bunch of images used by my client's image-heavy web site. On Firefox and older IE, this works fine, but IE7 seems to ignore the fact that the images were preloaded, and this results in a very ugly load sequence with parts of the page appearing in patchwork fashion.

Can I force IE7 to use the images I just preloaded? I know about meta and http "no-cache" but what about the reverse?

Also, I am aware that individual cache settings are in play here.

Domain Not Resolving through my ISP

jurczyk — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:18:32 -0800

My domain is resolving for others to see, but not me ! HELP! One of my domains, CLIKT.com, is registered at GoDaddy and now hosted at Hostgator.

When I enter the domain's URL in a browser (Firefox or IE - doesn't matter) I see an old screen with the cash parking page from GoDaddy even though the nameservers have been updated. When I ask others to look at the site, they report no problems and the site renders as it should. (Right now I've left the site empty so all that should be displayed is the directory listing.) I've waited days and not seen the actual site as I should. I've tried clearing my browser cache as well as running CCleaner to remove any trace of the incorrect pages.

I've also had the same issue when I had the domain hosted at another provider. (The site looks like the cash parking page on my end, but looks fine to others or if i view the site through Proxify.)

And the strange thing is, I have about 25 domains registered with GoDaddy and hosted at various spots, but this is the only one that is affected.

My ISP is AT&T (I have a DSL account that I use and through which I am seeing the old site). I am not sure if the problem is with them or GoDaddy (since I have other domains registered there that are hosted at HostGator and other places without issue). A tech at GoDaddy reported that he could see the site so the problem was probably with the ISP (AT&T) but I'm not sure about that and why other domains wouldn't be affected....

So is the problem with the ISP or with the registrar ?

I'm half-tempted to transfer the domain to another registrar to see if that solves the problem, but that doesn't tell me what the cause is, only the source....

ATT version: http://www.joejurczyk.com/CLIKT-ATT.jpg
Proxify version: http://www.joejurczyk.com/CLIKT-Proxify.jpg

Sorry for babbling on....thanks for listening

Any way to load a short list of sites locally from the harddrive?

genial — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:03:40 -0800

Is there any way to cache a set list of websites so they load from the hard drive instead of dynamically? My setup: Satellite "broadband" in which what they really mean to advertise is "Faster than dial up but still slow enough at basic browsing to make you want to pull your hair out." We have a wireless router running DD-WRT.

Obviously I've looked into maximizing what I have for the time being because DSL isn't out here and it doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon. I've got Fasterfox running for whatever little good that might do. I block ads. I've even tried a paid service that would resample images to make the web a little less pretty but load quicker, but found it not worth the $5/mo. So here I am onto my next scheme.

The idea: There are certain sites I go to almost everyday that haven't changed in FOREVER. Google (my homepage), Gmail login page, and a few others to name a few. My biggest lag even when these sites are cached is the amount of time it takes for the computer to say to the site "Anything new? No? Alrighty, I guess I'll load now." I figure if I can localize certain sites so they're running off the hard drive it would speed up those specific page loads.

Am I way off the bat here or am I on to something that will possibly make my non-dynamic browsing a bit less teh suck?

How is Facebook doing its queries?

bonaldi — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:49:41 -0800

How does Facebook handle or simplify the presumably complicated DB queries involved so that me loading my page doesn't bring it to its knees? When I pull up my homepage on Facebook, it pulls status updates for a subset of my friends, and recent bits of their activity. It filters out the ones that are related to people who have blocked me (hopefully none!) and then shows it all to me.

This information is all very specific to me, so presumably caching won't help much with it. But it seems like a hell of a lot of DB queries. If that's so -- it may merely be my "SELECT *"-level understanding of SQL making it seem that way -- how do they do it efficiently?

(I'm particularly interested in how the 'blocked user' can work: would it really pull a status update like "Matt Haughey and Jessamyn West are now friends", then pull Jess's block list to see if I'm on it? That's two hits for a one-line entry!)

vacation compatible RSS: how can I cache one month of feed items?

nolnar — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:58:01 -0800

Say that I will go travelling for one month without internet access. For my email that poses no problem. All incoming mails wait for me in gmail when I get back. But how can I similarly avoid missing content in the many RSS feeds I regularly read? Can some online service cache all the feeds for me? Some of the RSS feeds contain only a few new items every month so for those feeds I will get all those items when I get back. But many other feeds have a much higher throughput of items. Some have 100 or more items every day and the feed itself only includes the latest 50 or so items. For those feeds I risk missing out on almost 3000 items!

How can I remedy that? Is there some neat web service that allows me to cache all items in some feeds for a period of time? Or at least one that continually and automatically lets me filter some feeds for certain items and cache all matches? Is there even a site similar to archive.org for RSS?

What I've looked into already:

I could set up a server at home, run some RSS reader in it and write a script or change some setting so that the reader checks the feeds for new items several times every day. But I have no home server at the moment so it seems both like much work and as overkill as far as solutions go. I hope there is some alternative online solution.

I've found several online services that combine or mashup several feeds into one. Yahoo pipes, http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ for example. But I haven't found one that cache one month of RSS feed items, mashed up or not.

There are several RSS to email services (see http://ask.metafilter.com/70159/RSS2Email-Headaches ). But I haven't found one that allow conversion back to RSS later on. But maybe I just haven't searched enough? If there is some solution that reliably can do these steps then tell me about it: RSS >>(through some online service)>> email >>> gmail account >>(one month later, through some online service)>> RSS >>> locally installed RSS-reader. I definitely want the items back into my regular feed reader since I very often do searches on the locally downloaded feeds (I've set the reader to not remove old downloaded feed items) and I want to avoid having to do those searches at several places (feed reader and gmail) if possible.

I would most of all prefer some service that simply takes an OPML as input, cache all items in those feeds and then let me grab them easily later.

can't get webpage to see its stylesheet

luser — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:30:52 -0800

When I go to espn.com from work, I get a page that is completely unstyled. I can't make it refresh to see its stylesheet. I've cleared cache and flushed dns. At home, it's fine. Also, from work imdb.com always brings up a page that says "no prefetching allowed" and offers a "continue" link, which brings up the same page. The only way to get to imdb is ctrl-F5. This doesn't have any affect on espn.com. Not sure if these two experiences are related. What's going on?

Cashy My Apache

jasondigitized — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:49:24 -0800

I am attempting to configure caching on an Apache server. I have it right for the most part, but.....I would like to prevent browsers from even checking the server once files like images are in the browser cache until an expiry date is exceeded. As an example, I am placing this in my httpd.conf file:

Header add "Expires" "Mon, 28 Jul 2014 23:30:00 GMT"
Header add "Cache-Control" "max-age=31536000"

mod_expires and mod_headers are turned on. According to Firebug, all of my images are 'caching', but my browser is still checking the server, and is receiving a '304 Not Modified' message. The is good, but not good enough. How can I prevent the browser from checking the server. Once that image is in the cache, I don't want my browser checking the server until after the expiry or max-age is exceeded. Is this possible? According to this article, "You can prevent the contact with the server from happening at all by using the Expires header and the Cache-control header."

Rebuild Vista icon cache?

phaded — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:18:12 -0800

Why is Vista showing the wrong icon for Windows Photo Gallery? This is a question that really amounts to nothing more than cosmetics, but it's still nagging me, and so I am choosing to burn my question for the week by asking it. I had previously asked about changing the default program for video playback. That question was answered rather quickly, but it came with an unwanted side effect: the icon for Windows Photo Gallery in Vista's Set Default Programs screen has been replaced by a generic one, as can be seen in this image. The same icon is shown if I go to the Set Associations screen.

In XP, I'd just fire up TweakUI and rebuild the icon cache, which would fix problems like this. I don't know what would do that in Vista, though, and while it's not hurting any part of my system, it's bugging me, and if there's a way to fix this, I'd love to know what it is.

What is filling up my local hard disk?

DZ-015 — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 03:56:04 -0800

Does Windows create temp files on the local disc when copying a large file from an external drive to a network share? I'm trying to copy a large Windows Backup file (65Gb) from my external USB hard drive to a network share on my employer's network. I reckoned this might take a while so I left it overnight. When I came in to work this morning, my local (C:) drive was full. I'm not copying the file to C:, so does Windows create some kind of temp file when copying from an external drive to a network share? When I cancel the copy, my hard disk returns to 10Gb free......

Why aren't my php files caching locally?

twine42 — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 06:22:45 -0800

Why aren't my php files caching locally? I'm using:

$offset = 3600 * 24;	

header("Expires: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time() + $offset) . " GMT");

header('Cache-Control: max-age='.$offset.', must-revalidate');

header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", $date_cache)." GMT");

None of my php files are being cached in the browser while the js and image files are all getting cached just fine.

I'm using a default install of WAMP5 to put PHP from Win2003.

Cached out!

mzurer — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:55:28 -0800

How come my L2 and L3 cache is disabled? Am I taking a performance hit? Dual 1.42 GHz G4 FW800 Powermac. CHUD reports my L2 and L3 cache is disabled, and it won't come back on when I try to change it to be enabled in the processor prefs. I've got third party memory, as well as USB2 and SATA adapters in the machine. Am I really cache-less? Is it making me pokey?

How can I recover my deleted Froogle list?

scottreynen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:22:35 -0800

How can I recover my deleted Froogle list? I once had a lengthy (20-30 items?) shopping list on Froogle, here. I pointed people to this list as recently as December and it was full then. It now appears the entire list is gone. The items for myself aren't that important (if I can't remember I want it, maybe I don't really need it), but I used the list to keep track of gift ideas for others, and I'd really like to recover those. I've searched for an older cache on the Wayback Machine, Google, and Yahoo, with no luck. And I can't find any means of contacting Google for help.

How can I prove that a mistake existed on a website six months ago?

roll truck roll — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:32:13 -0800

How can I prove that a mistake existed on a website six months ago? I so apologize if this is a double. I searched and couldn't find anything. It was kind of asked in April, but no one bit.

I'm in a small dispute with a student records department, and this small dispute is currently keeping me from getting my Master's degree that I earned.

The specifics are convoluted and obnoxious, but the crux is this: in August of 2006, there was a glaring error in the course schedule page. The error was corrected (I'm guessing) sometime in late September.

Here's the page in question. The class at the bottom of the list had only the Tuesday session listed, as opposed to Tuesday and Thursday.

I've checked the Internet Archive. Every version they have is either too old or too new. Google Cache only has the corrected version. And of course, our quaint little art school doesn't have printed schedules.

Am I missing something in how I'm searching? Is there any way, aside from Internet Archive and Google Cache, to find an old version of a page? If you find it, I'll be your best friend.

Is it possible to write a program that uses only physical RAM, and not the swap/pagefile in Windows?

torpark — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 04:26:56 -0800

Is it possible to write a program that uses only physical RAM, and not the swap/pagefile in Windows? I am trying to write a program that won't leave any traces on a computer after it is run. As it currently stands, it leaves lots of signatures in the swap file. Terribly annoying.