Have you ever spent time making changes to your online home biz website or blog only to find when you view the final web page in your browser it looks just the same as it did before you made the changes? Don’t despair!

If you have an online home biz and your own domain it is highly likely that you make regular changes or add pages to your website. This can be a time consuming procedure at the best of times and if you have just got your own domain or are new to html it can be highly frustrating when you do not see the changes you have made and simply cannot figure out what has gone wrong.

It does not matter how many times you click the Refresh button, the same old web page still appears and you begin to wonder if you saved the changes before uploading your site. In fact you probably go to the trouble of downloading the site again and repeating the process to no avail.

What is cache?

Every time you visit a web page on the internet, your web browser will store a copy of that web page, including images and sounds in the Temporary Internet Files folder. This is often referred to as the cache. You may well notice how quickly a web page loads in your browser the second time you visit it, if you have not cleared your cache. Conversely, once you have cleared your cache, a site will take longer to load the first time round as it has no previous information to access from memory.

How to fix the problem:

The reason that you see your old web page is because your computer memory is still holding the old cache of your website. To overcome this problem in Internet Explorer open your online home biz website in your browser and hold down the Control key on your keyboard and at the same time click the Refresh button in your browser. This will force your browser to retrieve a copy of your website from the network server without comparing it to your cache. In other words it by-passes the cache in the memory of your computer and immediately your newly changed website should be visible.

How to clear your cache:

It is advisable to clear your cache regularly, not only to prevent your browser from loading out of date information about a site or image but, because cache takes up a lot of disk space and will eventually cause your computer to slow down.

To clear your cache in Internet Explorer 7, simply open a browser, click on Tools, then Internet Options, under Browsing History click Delete and there you will see the options to delete temporary internet files, cookies and history.

You can adjust your settings to automatically clear the cache whenever you close your browser. If you are using IE7, simply go to the Tools menu, and click Internet Options. Click the Advanced tab. In the Settings box, scroll down to the section labeled Security (look for the padlock icon), and click to check the box next to the Empty Temporary Internet Files Folder When Browser Is Closed option. Click OK to finish. This option will clear your cache of other files when you close your browser, but it does not delete cookies.