Today we start a new series called “How to…?” with Dave from Divi Engine. The first installment is how to clear your cache for your Divi website. Watch the video below and some further reading under that if you require more information.
What is cache?
Website caching can be one of the best and most annoying tools you can have for your website. In short cache makes your website quicker. Cache can be seen as memory, it remembers images and scripts so next time the visitor comes to your website it does not need to download them again (or make it much quicker) so therefore the page load becomes significantly quicker.
What types or cache are there?
When working on your Divi website there are a few different types of cache to think of.
1) Browser cache
The browser cache is what your, or your visitors, browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc) stores. It will remember for example the CSS file so next time you visit the site it will load this CSS file much quicker.
To clear the cache you will physically have to go into the browser settings and clear it (see video) – but what happens when your visitors come to the site, how do you show them the latest CSS file for example without asking them to manually clear the cache? We show you have to setup a dynamic child theme which will force the browser to clear the cache when a new version of the file has been uploaded or saved.
2) Page cache
So page caching is quite clever – what happens is when visitor “A” comes along, the request is sent and the website is built in the browser. When you have page cache running, the content is then saved on the server so that when the next person comes to visit the site, it will serve this cached version. When visitor “B” comes, the page cache sends the previously cached version so the website does not need to be built from scratch again.
There are a number of plugins that help you with page caching, our favourite is WP Fastest Cache. As you can see in the video there is a setting to clear or purge your cache. This will clear the stored version of the website so that it will need to be re-built again.
3) Divi builder cache
The third form of caching that you might come across is the Divi builder cache. When using the builder to change the appearance of your site, for example changing the colour of your buttons, the Divi builder will create a cached version of your settings. This cached version will then be served to the visitor.
To clear this cache you need to go to Divi > Theme Options > Builder > Advanced and clear the “Static CSS File Generation”. We disable this as we, and many of our customers have the same problem, have seen issues where it won’t serve any of the appearance changes you made until you clear the cache in the settings. This is obviously not ideal as it could be days before you realise. We therefore disable this but you can leave it on if it is working for you.
In closing
There are still more examples of cache which we did not talk about in the video such as server and CDN cache but these are for another day and have not experienced many issues when moving sites and needed to clear the cache to see the changed domain or changes.
We hope this has been helpful and like always, any questions please let us know.
I’m seeing this same issue. I used to see updates immediately. I’ve tried the solutions provided but it still can take days before I see the updates on my site. What changed?
Have you come up with a viable solution?
Try disable “Dynamic CSS” in Divi > Theme Options > Performance
The Divi Builder Cache needs improved. Frankly find it useless. It’s unpredictable. Needs an overhaul for sure. Turning it off is the only solution currently. It’s also in a bad place it needs to be in the header bar in builder mode unless it can behave. You can individually turn it on/off on pages in a pages settings but it needs to all be at hand.
Agree there are some issues – please contact ET about this 😀
I asked my hosting company to “Rollback” one 1 day. My site was up to date. I am using a child theme, created Presets for Headings and Buttons, and did some other customizations. Funny enough on some stuff it is still there. Now they are all gone after the rollback today. I did do all these caching options but still, they are all gone. Now I asked the Host to bring it back to today’s version but even now its still all gone. Any Idea what happend here?
Having this freaky issue all the time with this divi cache. No chaching tool at all, empty browser cache (several browsers), empty page cache – only the divi cache ist nerving. Disabled the static button, using always a child for changes. Costs lot of time, cause you never know if you just made a mistake or there is whatever in the divi cache. 🙁
Is it CSS code that you add that causes this?
Where are you adding your CSS?
I am having the same issue, I disabled the Divi CSS caching but it is still not showing may changes, maybe I have to wait a while.
Where are you adding the CSS?
Thanks!!! the DIVI Cache was giving headache!
Pleasure, glad it helped!
There is a CSS class I need to edit. When I look at the page source, it is found within the style area et-builder-module-design-cached-inline-styles. Where is this CSS being pulled from and how can I edit it?
I think this is in the Divi > Theme Options > Custom CSS section
Hello ! Finally, I found the answer here of all my troubles when updating “global” modules at Divi without any effect at the lay-out of my pages and posts. Yes, just clear your cache at Divi. Many thanks.
Pleasure! Have a great week
I disabled divi caché as you said and I solved my problem, thanks, I only found this solution here.
Great, happy to help, thank you for the comment.
Thanks buddy, clearing this DIVI cache fixed the issue I have had for days. The developer of the theme didn’t even offer my this suggestion. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate it
Does the Builder Cache affects the Custom CSS when minified as well or just the builder?
Are you referring to custom CSS added to Divi > Theme Options > Custom CSS? If so, no the builder cache does not affect this. However you can have this minified in Divi > Theme Options > Minify CSS (this will minify your custom css added in the theme options) – does this help/make sense?