What does it mean to "clear your cache" and why does it have to be done?

Question

I frequent a website where the content is updated daily. However everytime I go to see the new stuff, it doesn't show up at all on my computer. A friend told me to hi F5 and "clear the cache" and when I do this, it works and I can see everything. Why is this happening and how can I fix it? It's annoying to have to keep hitting F5 all the time. Is it something I can fix or something the website needs to fix? THANKS!

Answer 1

The cache is your computer's copy of the info it downloaded. You can set your browser to clear that cache automatically. If you take that option you will always have a new fresh copy of info but it will take longer if you go back to a site that hasn't changed because you won't be able to take advantage of the stored identical copy - you will always be starting from scratch.

Answer 2

Cache is basically the location where some temporary internet files are stored. When you go to a website and do something that requires loadings, then the files that are loaded are stored in the cache. Then you can access the files when needed, and you won't have to load them again. This system is good for dial-up users, because loadings on a dial-up connection can be slow.

After the files are stored in the cache, the loading(s) in which it belongs to will go faster. Clearing the cache will erase those files, and you will have to load everything again. But for content that changes a lot, you will have to clear the cache, so the new content can be written.

Answer 3

If you’re having problems with your browser and someone says, “You need more cache.” They’re not talking about the green stuff with a President’s picture on the front -- even though having that helps when dealing with computers.

They’re talking about your disk cache or memory cache. What is cache?

Many browsers come with this feature. Each time you download a page, the browser saves the pages on your hard disk so that you won’t have to download frequently accessed pages each time you visit that URL. This feature can also cause you to get an older version of the page shown on the screen and that’s why some pages say to press your “Reload” button to see the newest version. I’ve been told that your browser is supposed to detect changes in the new page and download it if there are changes....but this doesn’t always happen. It will on a “Reload.” I’ve even seen where you have to hit “Reload” several times to get the newer version -- but not always.

Select Internet Options from the Tools pull-down menu.
Click the General tab.
- On the middle of this page is the Temporary Internet Files section.
- Click the Delete Files button.
- You will then be prompted by the dialog box, Delete files.
- In this dialog box, you are asked if you wish to Delete all files in the Temporary Internet Files folder.
- Click the OK button.
- On the bottom of this page is the History section.
- Click the Clear History button.
- You will then be prompted by the dialog box, Internet Properties.
- In this dialog box, you are asked if you wish to Delete all files in your History folder.
- Click the OK button.
- Click the OK button on the General tab screen.

Answer 4

Your browsers cache is a trace back to all the sites you've visited over a period of time and it includes a gazillion little tidbits of garbage collected along the way. Clearing the cache, history and even cookies keeps your system from bogging down, avoids the irritation of not being able to view additional sites in their entirety, etc. This is particularly noticeable in systems that have hard drives that may be nearing capacity or that have x number of space set for a PageFile.

You can set your browser to automatically clear all of these things for you...FireFox can be auto dumped by going to Tools/Options/Advanced Tab where you can set the size of your cache, the lower you set it the less junk you can collect. Under the Privacy Icon you can set the number of days you want FF to maintain your history (pages you've visited) as well as dictate whether you want it to delete all of your Private data from each session as well. I have mine set to auto dump every time I close the browser...this saves having to remember to dump the cache (I'm lazy :)

Good luck

Forgot, IE will have a similar approach to FF however I believe that it's configuration section is located under File/Preferences...don't use this one much for anything other than checking my website designs, so going for memory which is a dangerous thing sometimes.

Answer 5

The Internet cache is a holdover from the days of 2k modems, where it could take you 20 minutes to download one page from the Internet. As you download, the computer actually makes a copy of the web page on your computer. If you return to a page you have already looked at, rather than spend several minutes downloading the page again, your computer will go back to the version of it that is saved on your PC. Clearing the cache gets rid of all the saved web pages on your computer.

There are ways to keep your computer from caching web pages, but if you do then it will run much slower on the Internet then it does not.

Answer 6

It means to delete the temporary files from downloads and other things. Are you using Internet Explorer? If so, that is the problem. Try to switch to mozilla firefox instead. Hope this helps!! :-)

Answer 7

Your puter stores files you download in a temp folder aka a cache. Find it, empty it.
In explorer it's in tools>internet options>

Answer 8

you might have a really old computer.

If browsing one website is telling you to clear the cache everytime... it means you need an upgrade.