We realize clearing cache can be tricky business so we put this article together to go into a bit more detail about the options you have available to you in the WordPress dropdown menu.
When you are working within the WordPress admin area you will notice this dropdown menu available to you:
It's important to know that selecting any of these options will NOT harm your website, cause data loss, or break your site. Rest assured, all the options are safe to use.
Why not provide one single cache-clearing option?
The reason is that clearing the cache extensively can use more resources and potentially slow down page load times until the cache is rebuilt. By providing multiple options, we can offer more precise control over cache clearing without affecting the entire cache at once.
Available Cache Clearing Options
Let's go through each option:
Clear Cache for Entire Site (Including Images and CSS/JS)
This option will clear the cache for your entire website including all your static files. If you've made visual changes like altering your CSS or if you've re-uploaded images to overwrite existing ones then you may still see the previous version of that image — so these are good examples of when to use this option.
Clear Cache for This Page Only
This option will only clear the page cache for the page you are currently looking at. It will leave all other existing page caches alone.
Clear Cache for Specific URLs
This is a very useful option when you want to clear the cache from Cloudflare CDN for a Specific URL or a file. You can simply copy the entire URL and add it in the dialog box (one URL per line) it will clear the cache.
If your website is using our WordPress Speed Optimization services or any service that integrates Cloudflare Enterprise on your website, the "Clear Cache for Specific URLs" option enables you to efficiently clear a specific set of URLs/files without the need to mention the entire URL. Instead of individually listing each file path, you can provide a common path, and the system will clear all cached items associated with that prefix.
For example, if you need to clear the cache for the following URLs:
In this case, you can provide each of these URLs in a new line inside the "Clear Cache for Specific URLs" section, but there is a better way to do this for you (this is quite helpful when you want to purge multiple files inside the with the similar prefix URL). As all the above-mentioned URLs have https://www.example.com/wp-content/themes/demo-theme/css/ a part in common, instead of mentioning all these file names separately, you can just enter https://www.example.com/wp-content/themes/demo-theme/css/ in the clear cache for specific URLs section and the plugin will purge the cache for all files that have URL part as a prefix.
If you are ever unsure, using the first cache clear option will ensure your changes will be visible, but it's best to avoid it if not necessary.
For any issues or questions about cache clearing or WordPress in general, please contact our support team for prompt assistance!