User picks up old version of page

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User picks up old version of page

nomis5

5:15 pm on May 29, 2013 (gmt 0)

Newbie question because I only sell a few items on my website and they are all via Pay pal single item shopping cart.

Background is that I aim to sell all items cheaper than anyone on Amazon and Ebay. I adjust the prices up or down to ensure I am always the cheapest by a few pence.

The other day a major competitor backed out selling at their low price and I was able to increase the price of one of my items by Ł4 on my site (and Ebay as well) still remaining the cheapest.

24 hours later I get and order for 5 of the items at the previously lower price (via my website). I assumed at first that the purchaser used a cached version of my page to make the order but he tells me he ordered the item on his mobile using Firefox.

Can Firefox use pages 24+ hours out of date for something like that? Any thoughts?

Marshall

7:32 pm on May 29, 2013 (gmt 0)

Pages are frequently cached in hubs to speed up load times. To help avoid it, you can use no-cache tags in the <head>.
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="Mon, 22 Jul 2002 11:12:01 GMT">

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive" >
<meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive" >

If you are using asp:
<% Response.CacheControl = "no-cache" %>
<% Response.AddHeader "Pragma", "no-cache" %>
<% Response.Expires = -1 %>

Not sure what the equivalent is in php.

Marshall

lorax

8:24 pm on May 29, 2013 (gmt 0)

I'm not sure how the order was placed but if you're using a script to process the orders wouldn't it pull the prices from a database or flat file? Is there any data checking being done?

lucy24

9:28 pm on May 29, 2013 (gmt 0)

I assumed at first that the purchaser used a cached version of my page to make the order but he tells me he ordered the item on his mobile using Firefox.

How do you get from A to B? That is, how does "mobile + Firefox" translate to "can't have been cached"? Caching doesn't only happen within a physical browser. It can be done at several points in transit, including the user's ISP.

The important thing is that the server doesn't know a particular page should not be cached-- unless you tell it. And then you have to hope the ISP pays attention to this directive. (I trust the browser more than the ISP in this regard.)

piatkow

9:44 pm on May 29, 2013 (gmt 0)

Back in the days of 28K modems caching by ISPs was pretty well standard. With mobile connections I would not be at all suprised if this is coming back.

lucy24

11:57 pm on May 29, 2013 (gmt 0)

One of the local ISPs is notorious for caching everything in sight-- up to and including login pages with all boxes filled in. Apparently if you're enrolled in the higher price ranges they are more likely to serve you fresh pages.

nomis5

10:30 am on Jun 3, 2013 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the comments, nocache will be implemented on the order page soon.