What is the best way to force the client to reload webpage?

Question

I have made a simple web-page including a couple of static pages, a css file, and a couple of images.

After I changed the css the page looks strange for those who cached the page from earlier visits.

After googling I realized that there are at least two different techniques to force visitors to load the page (found here):

Are there better ways?

Thanks!

Hi mister downvoter, please feel free to write a comment on why the question is bad. — AD - Stop Putin -, Jul 02 '15 at 15:26

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:43

2

Put a query string on your link rel tag and change it each time you update your css

in short

<link rel="stylesheet" xhref="http://www.yoursite.com/style.css?version=1" type="text/css" />

change to

<link rel="stylesheet" xhref="http://www.yoursite.com/style.css?version=2" type="text/css" />

when you update your css.

Don't know about best but this way it's only refreshed every time your css changes.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:43

Community

answered Mar 24 '12 at 12:21

Beeblbrox

Thanks Beeblbrox, but wouldn't that mean that I must update each page whenever I change the css? – AD - Stop Putin - Mar 24 '12 at 12:26
yeah there is that drawback, depends on the scale of the project and how you're managing your html files, if you're manually managing dozens of html using the same css this isn't useful, if you're using a CMS template or similar it's great! – Beeblbrox Mar 24 '12 at 12:29

1 Answers1