I'm asking this because when I edit my website's code and styles, I like to test and see the changes I make immediately.

Whenever I make a small edit (like changing a color), my browser doesn't seem to "notice" the changes right away (not until about 15 min. or so have passed, and this applies to both IE and FF, so I didn't think it was a browser related issue).

Check the server Content Expiry headers.

Never heard of those before.

Do we check this through the server control panel (cpanel) somewhere? I looked at the installed perl modules, and this is what I found related to HTTP:

HTTP:: Daemon::App (0.0.9)HTTP:: Daemon::SSL (1.02)

Honestly though, I have no idea where to look for those...

If you turn your browser cache off while making changes, that might make a difference too.

I have cleared the cache, cookies, temp int files, all of them to no avail.

What I'm thinking your suggesting here is to go to (with FF):
Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Cache

Then change the "Use up to" setting to 0 MB. Would I be correct?

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/....html#sec14.21

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_expires.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/eff...acceleration/4

Try using Ctrl+F5 to refresh the page, it will (should) override the Expires header.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Try using Ctrl+F5 to refresh the page, it will (should) override the Expires header.

Didn't override for some reason.... (Or it did, but the changes I made to the code weren't affected by it or something, as it still looked like the original styles.)

I think I'm in way over my head with this Expires Header directive. I've checked out those links, but they don't say "where" to modify the time, or what I would need to override it for the time being.

Am I just suppose to insert code like this into the webpage being edited itself?

<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="(the date I want)" />

Yep, that would work. Set the date and time to be Now()

or in htaccess use;
header set Expires "0"

put it inside a FilesMatch directive to affect only certain extensions.

Bearing in mind it will put the production server load up a bit as every request will serve the files rather than the UA using it's locally cached version.

Check to see if your server has a caching proxy installed (like squid).

I contacted my host and it seems like they don't have anything like that installed, they recommended I use a site like this to test out whether my ISP had the proxy cache or not:
http://pagewash.com/

If they are style changes or similar, append a version number to the end of it.
Example,

 <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.website.com/css/stylesheet.css?v=1" type="text/css" media="screen" />

And just increment the number when you have made changes and would like to force a fresh copy.