Browsers loading old CSS files

[dgreene]

My browsers (IE, Firefox & Netscape) are loading old versions of a CSS file that I have updated on my webserver. I have tried deleting all browser temporary internet files and cookies. I have rebooted my PC. I have even removed the CSS files from the webserver to ensure it wasn't grabbing an older version somehow. This didn't start happening until after I integrated SMF's community board into my website. The new software doesn't access this CSS file though. Any ideas on this issue would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[toicontien]

Some web servers cache static files. So the file you upload may not be the file the server is sending the browser. It's really annoying and my college used to do that. I wonder if installing the new SMF community board changed your server config?

[dgreene]

Could be. I'm checking with them now to see there are any configuration changes in the install.

[Charles]

I've gotten in the habit of always appending the revision date to the name of my CSS files. It seems the only way to be sure that the current version will be used.

[toicontien]

We started doing something similar at motortopia.com. Our server admin set up a mod rewrite of some sort so we could name our CSS, JS and image files normally, and then link to them in HTML with a version number. We have it all plugged into PHP so simply changing a config variable dynamically changes the file names in the resulting HTML file a browser downloads. Very handy.