Any Wordpress Gurus Out There?

Dan,

I had 2016, I am now vague on flushing the cache, but the option came up for me when I added or removed plugins. It also might be an icon up top, but not at all sure of that.

Aside from going into the table of contents in the left hand column there is something you need for the .htaccess. Basically you need to add expire headers. You can find the code on YT somewhere, then look up the site offered for the code, copy and paste. Add expire headers would be a set of permanent entries that overrode the cache, so that images would down load quickly for your viewers from cache. By using further out dates the cache is there more consistently over the months.

Perhaps you were addressing this?

Dave

using the .htaccess file leverages the browser's caching. It's your browser's cache that would need to be cleared to see the changes.

I use a plugin and able to clear it from my dashboard everytime I make a change.

Most likely you told the server to send all those files with a 1month expiry timer, so browser will not try to refresh before that time runs out.
On your own browser you can force a refresh with Ctrl-Shift-R, but for all other visitors the only thing you can do now is get rid of the long expiry, and after that change urls/filenames.

Thanks to all.

Dave, not on the dashboard for ver. 4.7. Don't know which version it was removed, but unless I overlooked it (and I looked long and hard) it is not there.

John, correct. Expiry is on the server. And trying to instruct site visitors to refresh their browser is useless let alone ill-advised. I can set expiration to one week, but somewhere along the line I read shorter than one week is not advised.

I think what I will need to do is find a plugin that plays nice and that I can use only as a flush utility. Thereafter, whenever I update a page, post or image, I'll just flush the cache.

Again, thanks all.

The plugin I use on my Wordpress site is Autoptimize. It may be compatible with your theme or not. You just have to check everything after installing just in case. Even though a plugin may be compatible with your site, it may not be compatible with other plugins as well. I used others at first, but they were not compatible with other plugins.

Best

Kevin OConnell
http://www.kogalleries.com/

Thanks all.

After additional research, ultimately it appears the best path is to remove the caching in the .htaccess file and install a plugin. The .htaccess method is better, faster, has lower overhead and is better for seo, but the pain incurred flushing cache and what is needed every time a post is made is just not worth it.

Kevin,

I always research every plugin carefully, but you're right. The number one problem with wordpress installs usually involves plugins. And in addition to that, nothing is guaranteed. Over time developers can abandon their projects and a once excellent plugin can kill a site. You do the best you can because tracing down plugin problems is a PITA.

Edit:

Kevin,
I looked at your Autoptimize plugin and it looks good. It is compatible with ver 4.7.1, and crunches html, scripts, style sheets, and so forth. However I could find nothing about it caching images, which to me would be critical for an image-based usage in art. Plus, the 2017 theme utilizes multiple full screen images which really need caching. But perhaps I overlooked it. Looking further. Thanks.

If this is any help to someone...

I decided on Comet Cache.

WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache have been the long time kings of the hill, but Comet Cache appears to be the rising star and is gathering praise. I got the Pro version which is currently $31 (discounted), and includes free lifetime updates and 3 years of support. The Lite version (free) works, but the Pro version has many added advantages for Apache driven sites which is the majority of you. Hope that helps.