Incorrect versions of remote site

To the members of this Forum:

I prepared the message below to be sent to the Macromedia Dreamweaver Support Center. But, before sending it, I decided to submit it to you guys; I'd appreciate any help. Patricia.

Follow the message:

Gentlemen:

We?ve purchased the Macromedia Dreaweaver MX Software last year.

Since then, we?ve built a website in our local view.

Last month we reserved our domain name (brokerabuse.com), secured a host place at our IP and sent our Website files to the remote site, using the FTP connection. In order to connect to our remote site, we've been using America Online (AOL).

The original site was successful, namely, users would access the website and navigate through all links without any problem.

After that first launching, we started revising the site?s files, to include different images and correct the text. We did that quite a few times. By doing that, we replaced the original set of files with the revised ones. Currently, in my computer, both the local and the remote sites reflect updated material only. Let?s call those sites the Latest Version of the Website.

Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing the following problem: we are noticing that different visitors to our site are getting, at random, different versions of the previously revised files, but never the Latest Version of the Website.

In order to fix the problem, we've contacted our IP and host. They were 99% sure that the problem was created by the fact that earlier versions of our website could have been stored in some cache memory(ies), either our local or AOL's ones. They said we should clear the cache memory at our computer and then contact AOL and ask for instructions how to clear their (AOL's) cache memory. We got rid of all of our cache memory and contacted AOL.

AOL's representative instructed us how to clear all AOL's cache memory, which we did. But, at the same time, he said that the clearing would not solve our problem. He said that we should change our Internet Access Settings and that the Macromedia Dreamweaver MX software should provide us with tools to change those Internet Access Settings.

So we ask you to kindly

EITHER

1 - Tell us how to change the Internet Access Settings and which settings should be changed.

OR

2 - If you think that the change of the Internet Access Settings would not solve our problem, please tell us what to do

Please, do not use too much Website lingo in your reply - we are REALLY beginners!! We need clear STEP BY STEP instructions from beginning to end in English language, not in Website language.

Thanks and regards,

Patricia Praca
pp Jorge A. Lopez, PA

PS.: We've accessed the Dreamweaver Forum (General Discussion section) explaining our ordeal. We got a reply from Alan Ames, as follows:

Quote
AOL caches webpages on their end---

you can try to force a reloading of the page by tacking ?something onto the
end of the url..

http://www.brokerabuse.com/mypage.html?blahblah

the questionmark is for a dynamic script- even if the page isn't dynamic
calling it this way may force aol to fetch it fresh from your site.
Unquote

We do not know how to ad that question mark to the URL and our Website is not dynamic. Furthermore, Alan Ames? solution looks like a ?band-aid? that will come off at some point later precisely because our Website is not dynamic.

Patricia

Patricia:

When you connect to the site using DW (or any FTP program for that matter),
which version of the site's files do you see there?

POSSIBILITY 1
If the versions of the files that you see there are indeed the latest
version, then any problems that your visitors are having *MUST* be related
to the domain's host cache, or to the visitor's local browser cache. If the
former, then you can control that by contacting the host, and insisting that
they remove the page caching from your domain. If they refuse then simply
change hosts to one who is more responsive to their clients. If the latter,
then Alan's solution is the correct one.

POSSIBILITY 2
If the versions of the files that you see on the remote site are NOT the
current versions, then there has been an *operator* error in not PUTting the
correct files to the remote site. Please do so, and your file version
problem (as far as the remote site goes) will be solved. If either of the
exigencies mentioned in possibility 1 occur, however, you will still have
problems, as discussed in that POSSIBILITY 1 paragraph.

Note that neither of these problems are in any way related to Dreamweaver or
its functionality as an HTML authoring system. I doubt that you will
receive any help, then, from Macromedia's technical support other than the
assistance I have provided above.

--
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Dreamweaver MX
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"Dinosaurus2" <webforumsuser (AT) macromedia (DOT) com> wrote

To the members of this Forum:

I prepared the message below to be sent to the Macromedia Dreamweaver
Support Center. But, before sending it, I decided to submit it to you guys;

I'd appreciate any help. Patricia.

Follow the message:

Gentlemen:

We?ve purchased the Macromedia Dreaweaver MX Software last year.

Since then, we?ve built a website in our local view.

Last month we reserved our domain name (brokerabuse.com), secured a host
place at our IP and sent our Website files to the remote site, using the FTP

connection. In order to connect to our remote site, we've been using
America Online (AOL).

The original site was successful, namely, users would access the website
and navigate through all links without any problem.

After that first launching, we started revising the site?s files, to
include different images and correct the text. We did that quite a few

times. By doing that, we replaced the original set of files with the
revised ones. Currently, in my computer, both the local and the remote
sites reflect updated material only. Let?s call those sites the Latest
Version of the Website.

Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing the following problem: we are
noticing that different visitors to our site are getting, at random,

different versions of the previously revised files, but never the Latest
Version of the Website.

In order to fix the problem, we've contacted our IP and host. They were
99% sure that the problem was created by the fact that earlier versions of

our website could have been stored in some cache memory(ies), either our
local or AOL's ones. They said we should clear the cache memory at our
computer and then contact AOL and ask for instructions how to clear their
(AOL's) cache memory. We got rid of all of our cache memory and contacted
AOL.

AOL's representative instructed us how to clear all AOL's cache memory,
which we did. But, at the same time, he said that the clearing would not

solve our problem. He said that we should change our Internet Access
Settings and that the Macromedia Dreamweaver MX software should provide us
with tools to change those Internet Access Settings.

So we ask you to kindly

EITHER

1 - Tell us how to change the Internet Access Settings and which settings
should be changed.

OR

2 - If you think that the change of the Internet Access Settings would not
solve our problem, please tell us what to do

Please, do not use too much Website lingo in your reply - we are REALLY
beginners!! We need clear STEP BY STEP instructions from beginning to end

in English language, not in Website language.

Thanks and regards,

Patricia Praca
pp Jorge A. Lopez, PA

PS.: We've accessed the Dreamweaver Forum (General Discussion section)
explaining our ordeal. We got a reply from Alan Ames, as follows:

Quote
AOL caches webpages on their end---

you can try to force a reloading of the page by tacking ?something onto
the
end of the url..

http://www.brokerabuse.com/mypage.html?blahblah

the questionmark is for a dynamic script- even if the page isn't dynamic
calling it this way may force aol to fetch it fresh from your site.
Unquote

We do not know how to ad that question mark to the URL and our Website is
not dynamic. Furthermore, Alan Ames? solution looks like a ?band-aid? that

will come off at some point later precisely because our Website is not
dynamic.

Patricia

You've misunderstood me-

my suggestion to use http://www.brokerabuse.com/mypage.html?blahblah to
force a refresh of the page was for YOU to be able to check that the current
pages was uploaded. You don't change any links on the site to add the
?blahblah.

you simply view the site in your browser- then in the Address Bar of
browser, click in past the present url, and type ?something and press "go"

That will force a reload of the page. Simply for the purpose of You checking
that the current page has been uploaded to the server. The ? question mark
at the end of the url string forces YOUR aol connection to go directly to
your website, instead of pulling a copy of the page from AOL's cache system.

On the rest of the questions-
It's difficult to say what's going on.
Are you absolutely positively sure that all old files have been deleted off
the server??
What's the nature of the differences in the page content other people are
seeing?

I tried to do a google search- to see if google had indexed some older
pages-
However there's no entry at all in google for that domain name.

Off Topic-- One possible reason for this- is that the entry page to the
site is a bunch of Dreamweaver timelines. With javascript off- (which is the
way the search engine spiders work) there's No Links- just a static image
with no way into the site. What you could do- is to use the <noscript> tag
to insert a link into the actual site. Also- Looking at the first real
page- suggest doing some graphics optimization and compression- the pages
will take a long time to load for people using a dial up connection.


You can add these lines to the source of the files, in the head section- to
try and control the cacheing behavior.


<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0" />
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />

That will work in most cases.
It will not fix the problem if the old files actually exist on the webserver
and people are looking at old orphaned pages

Quote
AOL caches webpages on their end---

you can try to force a reloading of the page by tacking ?something onto the
end of the url..

http://www.brokerabuse.com/mypage.html?blahblah

the questionmark is for a dynamic script- even if the page isn't dynamic
calling it this way may force aol to fetch it fresh from your site.
Unquote

We do not know how to ad that question mark to the URL and our Website is not
dynamic. Furthermore, Alan Ames? solution looks like a ?band-aid? that will
come off at some point later precisely because our Website is not dynamic.

Patricia

--
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Dreamweaver
Certified Dreamweaver MX Developer

You can add these lines to the source of the files, in the head section- to
try and control the cacheing behavior.


meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" /
meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0" /
meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" /

That will work in most cases.

Alan

AOL's proxy servers only read the HTTP headers - they do not read HTML. So while this would work in most cases it has no effect on AOL's cache.

--

Dave
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If I were half as smart as people think I am...
I'd be twice as smart as I was before I forgot everything.
(Official victim of CRAFT Syndrome)

Alan

AOL's proxy servers only read the HTTP headers - they do not read HTML. So
while this would work in most cases it has no effect on AOL's cache.

I know- but it may have an effect on the site visitors who Don't use aol.

The problem isn't really defined well enough to know what's going on.

--
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Dreamweaver
Certified Dreamweaver MX Developer

Ahhh... I didn't think about the non-AOL visitors. Good point.

--

Dave
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If I were half as smart as people think I am...
I'd be twice as smart as I was before I forgot everything.
(Official victim of CRAFT Syndrome)
"Alan Ames" <blu (AT) formdude (DOT) com> wrote

Alan

AOL's proxy servers only read the HTTP headers - they do not read HTML. So
while this would work in most cases it has no effect on AOL's cache.

I know- but it may have an effect on the site visitors who Don't use aol.

The problem isn't really defined well enough to know what's going on.

--
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Dreamweaver
Certified Dreamweaver MX Developer