Cached Pages . . . from TWO YEARS ago

[rocknbil]

This is the weirdest situation ever. I have a dynamic script for signup for a client. Over the years, it's undergone major revamps. Although I'm using "price" as the example, there are many other attributes of what he's seeing that indicate he's getting a cached page that hasn't existed for two years or so.

At first there were hard-coded valued in the script, two years ago these were taken out and put into administrative site settings.

To clarify:

Before: "Signup now for $39.95"

After: "Signup now for \$$signup_value"

Where $signup_value is extracted from a database setting.

However, every now and then, this client gets output from the script that was eliminated over two years ago. It's not just price - verbiage, a TOS, many other things that no longer exist - he's seeing them. He even sent me source code the other day - it showed a tabled layout, and the tabled layout itself was eliminated a long time ago!

The old version is not physically on the site, it has been long since replaced.

This is a dynamic script, and is output based on user input.

I've gone over and over with him about clearing the cache, I'm 100% sure he's doing this.

He's an IE user, currently IE 7 (even his browser has changed since then.)

I KNOW this (should) be impossible. But it's happening. Does anyone have any ideas?

[pageoneresults]

I KNOW this (should) be impossible. But it's happening. Does anyone have any ideas?

I see more topics about cache these days. :)

Could this be some sort of proxy cache? I know I see this on occassion and its a proxy cache of some sort. AOL is notorious for this and so are other commodity ISPs. I'm just guessing. And, when discussing cache, me "Tin Hat" is always donned. :)

[Demaestro]

The only thing I could offer as a possibility is an intermittent internet connection.

When the connection goes out for a few minutes IE7 goes into 'offline mode' sometimes without telling the user.

It is possible that IE has that old stuff marked somehow as "the offline" version of the site.

Next time it happens have him do a Google search with a misspelled word right away, or some other method of checking that his Internet connection is stable.

I know it is a long shot but it is possible.

[pageoneresults]

It is possible that IE has that old stuff marked somehow as "the offline" version of the site.

That would be a good guess too. But, two years old? Whew.

Is it also possible that there is an old copy of the site somewhere? On his local system? On the server? Somewhere?

[g1smd]

I'm going to revisit some of the "Historical Supplemental" results that I wrote about in 2005/2006 and see what i can dig out in Google SERPs.

[rocknbil]

Could this be some sort of proxy cache?

This is my speculation at this point, but it's weak at best (two years?) I'm on satellite and get this all the time, rarely more than a few minutes or an hour at worst. He's on Qwest DSL.

It is possible that IE has that old stuff marked somehow as "the offline" version of the site.

When you clear cache and check "delete offline content" does anyone know if IE fails to do so? If it does, it's a possibility, otherwise, I've had him delete offline content (he doesn't even know what that is for.)

A bit of info I've left out, his setup is three dedis, a web server, data server, and mail server in a 1/4 rack at a reliable Portland ISP, not a cheapo-hosting solution.

What about DNS? Let's say the OLD ISP he had still has stuff stowed somewhere and his Internet backbone hits the old ISP before his, could it serve up those pages even though his current ISP has everything correctly configured?

I know, I'm reaching . . but this is bizarre. And it's not repeatable.

[encyclo]

The intermittent nature of the problem means that DNS as a possible culprit, as you suggest. If his old ISP is still storing the files, and that ISP's DNS server is still configured with entries for the domain, just conceivably those pages might be served if the DNS request was received by the old ISP's DNS server. This shouldn't happen in normal circumstances though.

[SkoolBussDrvr]

have you been able to resolve this issue? when/if you do, i'm curious to know what it was. maybe his isp never deleted his files from a machine they moved him from -- that happened to me last year -- i could access my files on old server even after move to new server via ip address of old server. similar to when you set up new domain name and have to enter ip address to work on website until dns entry propagates.

FWIW, i'll just put my 2cents in here. if you need to see how different isp's have the dns for your site cached. i don't want to be banned by posting link, so here's how to find a tool to do that:
google on:
ISP Cached DNS Lookup
there are several different tool sites which will come up (not cheap!, but they have 21 day trial, which should give plenty of time to work out problem)

since you said that the client uses Qwest, then looking where their own servers go for cached info for qwest.net
cached answer for qwest.net (from their own servers):
US: Qwest #1 A=204.147.80.81
US: Qwest #2 A=204.147.80.81

nslookup 204.147.80.81
Canonical name: www.uswest.net

if i understand what that means: in the rare event that qwest can't pull info from their own dns servers, there is a cached version at uswest.net that they use. that should be very rare (intermittent?) I'd suggest testing that dns server(204.147.80.81) w/ his domain name to see if they have cached old location.

you could run the ISP Cached DNS Lookup report on your client's domain name and look under the entry for Qwest's name servers. if it shows no cached entries then, it is likely a local cache issue. We used to have a firefox plug-in which displayed where a particular site resolved to. don't remember the name, but that could help "resolve" the issue.

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, SkoolBussDrvr, and thanks for such a detailed and helpful first post.

[rocknbil]

WOW, thank you! Probably exactly what's happening. No, never really did solve it, however, sadly, I am no longer in contact with this client.