Although I have operated my eShop for some months now, recent difficulties have highlighted the fact that I don’t really understand the function of page caching. I have read the epages help page on the topic, but, as is often the case, it provides such bland generalities that it is of little real value. I have a few specific queries.
1. I have page cache activated and my settings for ‘Product detail view’ are 1 day for ‘Validity’ and 1 minute for ‘Browser cache.’ What exactly is the function of the cache and what are my settings of 1 day and 1 minute doing to affect the customer’s experience and/or the effectiveness of my web site?
2. When I make and save a change to a product - for example, to the price - I see a red flash at the top of the page with the words ‘Page cache: Update now.’ When I click this flash, then, as far as I can tell, the change goes live and the updated page is available to all users. Is this true and if so, what function does the page cache have in this case?
3. Not all pages exhibit this ‘red flash – update-now’ feature. When I add some content to the HTML head area (to get yahoo verification) and save, then no red flash appears. Initially, I assumed that the required change to the home page had gone live after the save process – there is no other ‘update now’ feature on this page. However, after repeated failures of the yahoo verification process, I checked my home page HTML source and discovered that the change to the head area had not in fact occurred. I got round this by making a trivial change to a product, and hitting the resulting ‘Update-now’ flash – yahoo problem solved. I since realise that I could have used the ‘Update immediately’ button on the ‘general settings / page cache’ page. Question – why do some changes get page-cache warning flags and not others?
I could muddle on without any deeper understanding than I have now, but I feel I might be missing something. So if anyone can provide some answers or explanations, I'd be grateful.
Peter
www.qgifts.co.uk
