Table of Contents
Managing the amount of data moving around your website is crucial. “Caching” is a method used to store pages for faster loading in the future. However, this data may sometimes become outdated, making users see an older site version. To ensure you always see the most up-to-date version of your site, it’s important to clear the cache in WordPress.
There can be significant consequences if changes are made to a page without clearing the cache. End users may not see the latest content as they view an older cached site with outdated content and images.
Therefore, this post will discuss how to make WordPress clear cache and guide you through three different methods to find and delete cache and cached content from your web browser.
What Your WordPress Site Cache Is (And Why It’s Vital For Browsing the Web)
Many data shuttles exist between WordPress, your database, and your server. Moreover, having a speedy site with fast load times is paramount to good SEO rankings on top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Given this, a method of ‘saving’ this data without loading it every time to help improve user experience needs to be developed.
Enter caching. In a nutshell, this takes the pages and saves them on your computer. When you next load the site, pages from the cached version get served, keeping page load speed optimization.
Caching can be straightforward by saving whole pages as ‘static HTML’ files. It can also cache specific elements of a page or minified CSS, for example, and you’ll find all complex caching across the web.
While caching is usually necessary, it sometimes falters and can require troubleshooting. It happens if your computer serves older cached data than the live site. At times like these, you’ll need to clear your cached files – although there are different types of caching to consider.
How to Clear Your Browser’s Cache
Your browser cache can be a common cause when you read about clearing a cached web page version, which makes sense, given the previous section.
Many browsers can clear browsing data and cache manually. Of course, each browser is different, but the general steps are:
- Open your browser’s preferences panel.
- Locate your privacy or security settings.
- See whether you can clear your cache, cookies, and browsing data.
In most cases, there is a way to do this. If you’re experiencing issues with your site, it’s a good idea to clear your browser cache first. Once you determine it’s unrelated to your local computer, you can look at your server-side caching.
How to Clear WordPress Cache (In 3 Locations)
As we noted, you can clear the page cache in a few places. The following tutorial will only help keep your site’s cached pages current.
As such, your visitors will still need to clear their browser’s cache, like when using Google Chrome or Safari, to see the latest version of your site.
1. Clear From Your Hosting Provider
For the unaware, caching has two sides: client-side and server-side caching. Clearing your browser cache is client-side, and everything else is server-side.
Even so, a few different ways exist to clear a website cache from the server side. Since you store your site’s files there, your WordPress hosting will have its cache.
While every host is different – some may not even have a cache to clear – the step-by-step process will be similar:
- Log into your web hosting control panel or cPanel. You cannot do this via FTP.
- Find the caching options.
- Click the clear all cache button or delete cache button.
If you’re unsure how to clear the cache, we recommend consulting your host’s documentation for their caching solution. The steps could vary, although many hosts make the process easy.
Most hosts will offer a plugin to help do this from within WordPress. Regardless, third-party caching can be as good.
2. Clear From Your Chosen Plugin
Most popular caching plugins have good functionality and a clear cache button. If yours doesn’t, we suggest swapping it for a better solution.
The good news is that it’s simple and similar to most plugins to get the job done. In this example, we’re using the popular WP Super Cache plugin. Regardless, you can transpose these steps to other plugins like WP Fastest Cache, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache Plugin, or similar.
First, head to your WordPress dashboard. Once logged in, there are a few places to look for a ‘cache clear’ option or button. The most direct place is in the WordPress admin bar at the top of the screen:
From here, click the link and wait for WordPress to reload. At this point, you may see a success message. Either way, your website cached images and files will have cleared, although you load a front-end page to test
3. Clear From Your Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Finally, if you use a CDN, it also has its caching. It will make sense if you’ve followed along so far. Because a CDN stores the state of your site for users, it may also need to clear the cache.
We’ll use CloudFlare for this example, given how ubiquitous it is. Log in and head to your site’s dashboard to find your cache settings page. From here, click the Caching panel:
This screen gives you a few ways to purge all caches, among other options. For this post, we can stick to the Purge Cache panel. Here, you can choose to clear the entire cache or pick and choose certain elements:
The process is a snap; you can clear the cache within seconds. It’ll be the same with other CDNs, too, although, as with your host, you may need to find the correct steps for your CDN.
Wrapping Up
A modern website has many moving parts; the WordPress website is no exception. Caching helps optimize page load speed and prevent website performance from spiraling out of control. Sometimes, though, your cache will serve an older page than the current one.
This post has looked at how to make WordPress clear cache. There are three places you can do this:
- Within your hosting control panel.
- Through your chosen WordPress caching plugin.
- From your CDNs (like Cloudflare) dashboard panel.
Has your WordPress site’s cache required a clean, and if so, how did it affect you? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!