Member Avatar for kwinscher

Hi,
I designed a website for a small magazine. I put all the files on their server and their web person was the one to upload everything to GoDaddy. Anyway, so I had made changes to the contact page and those changes wouldn't show no matter what we did.

I had her delete the file on her computer and GoDaddy before downloading the updated file from the server. Then I changed the name of the file, relinked everything, put all updated files on the server. Had her delete all affected files from her computer and GoDaddy (and all old image files that were used in the original contact page) before she downloaded the new files.

I have no idea why it would still be showing the old page when there are no files left for the site to link to to show the old contact page.

Oh and she's linked a completely different html file to the contact link and it showed that page. I'm so confused.

Any ideas. I'm completely stuck and don't know what to do.
the site is

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!!

Kim

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Brief technical checklist to track down a stale page after uploads (builds on the suggestions from and ).

First, inspect the HTTP response headers from the server to see whether a cache or proxy is serving an older copy. Run something like:

curl -I https://example.com/path/to/contact.html

Look for Cache-Control, Expires, Age, ETag, Via or X-Cache and any Location redirect. An Age header > 0 or an X-Cache: HIT usually means a caching layer (CDN, reverse proxy, host-level cache) is returning a stored copy. See the Cache-Control spec for details: Cache-Control header.

If headers do not show caching, check these less-obvious server issues that commonly cause mismatches after a successful upload:

  • Virtual host / document root mismatch: the domain may point to a different folder or account than the one you updated. Compare the IP returned by DNS with the host you uploaded to (use dig +short example.com) and confirm the file contents in the hosting file manager.
  • Rewrite or redirect rules: an .htaccess or server config may rewrite the contact URL to a different file or to a cached endpoint.
  • File-name case sensitivity: local Windows edits can use Contact.html while the Linux server needs contact.html.
  • Symlinks or shared assets: the site might reference a shared location that still contains the old files.
  • Host/managed caching: some hosts auto-cache pages (Varnish, NGINX microcaches, host control-panel caches); these often need a purge from the host side.

Quick practical order: fetch headers with curl, confirm the domain resolves to the server you updated, view the actual file contents via the host control panel or SSH, then ask the host to purge any server/CDN cache if headers indicate a cached response. These steps will pinpoint whether the problem is client, network, or server-side and save time versus repeated re-uploads.

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Member Avatar for JasonHippy

umm....This may sound a bit obvious, but have you tried clearing your browsers cache/history?

If the new versions of the HTML files have been uploaded to the server, then it's pretty certain that your changes to the site have actually been made.

Which means it's most likely that your browser has cached an older version of the site, so when you go back to the site, it's the cached version that you're seeing. So when you click on the contact link it's taking you to the cached contact page rather than loading the newer version.

Try clearing your browser cache/history and then go to the site again and see what that does.

I just took a quick look at the site and clicking on the contact link from the main page takes me to a page called talk_to_tft.html. Is that the page you are expecting to see?

Cheers for now,
Jas.

Edited by JasonHippy because: n/a
Member Avatar for kwinscher

Jason,

You don't know how much I wish that was the problem. It opens the same way from other peoples computers that have never been on the site. The web girl from the other office has made a different page and linked it as the contact page on GoDaddy and that worked. I feel like it might be something to do with the images that are linked to the page?

Kim

Member Avatar for JasonHippy

Hmmm, sounds very odd....I'm stumped!

What about your local version of the website? i.e. the version you have on your PC from when you were editing/developing the site..
Does that function properly? Do all of the links work as expected?

If not, then it is almost certainly some problem with your HTML code. In which case you need to take another look at your code. Perhaps there are some links that you needed to update or something else which you missed.
But if your local version does work properly, I think I'm out of ideas!

Cheers for now,
Jas.

Member Avatar for pixelpaintr

Did you confirm that the site was deleted from the server after the other person removed the files by visiting the page? I just went through something similar, and when I tried to confirm that, the page was still there - turns out when I had Dreamweaver push the files, it created a subdirectory for the new ones. Once I saw that I was able to correctly upload everything.

Another thought - since you are not the one posting the files, have you checked that the other person is A) getting the correct files from you (make sure you are not sending an old .zip etc by accident) or B) posting the correct version of the files? They should be checking the files locally to see your changes, confirming that they have the updates.

One last thing - If you know that you changed some of the content names, did you try to open one of those (new) files by linking to it directly in the browser window? If you know the location, try this and verify that it exists on the server.

Good luck. :-)

Member Avatar for kwinscher

Figured it out. It was a problem on the other end. Thanks!!

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