Reload / Refresh / Cache (?) Issue

[canadianrodder]

I have scoured the internet and have found bits and pieces relating to similar (if not the same issue) going back years.

Version 3.8.8

The issue: a few days ago (and never before that), my forum started requiring a refresh in order for new threads, new posts to show up, new posts results in "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms." even after I added two test posts. People have been experiencing login issues where they appear to be logged in then not, etc.

This is happening at all levels: forumhome and down.

I also experienced this: "Your submission could not be processed because the token has expired. Please push the back button and reload the previous window."

Nothing has been disturbed or touched setting-wise at my end.

Any thoughts? I have read all kinds of threads on this in various places but they all end without any conclusive help.

This forum has been running trouble free since 2003.

Thanks for any assistance you might offer.

[Wayne Luke]

vBulletin 3.8.x doesn't have a lot of internal caching in the system. It has what we call the datastore which allows quicker access to options, phrases, and some other things. However, the datastore wouldn't cause the issues you're experiencing. Did you start using a caching system like Varnish or Cloudflare? These would cause problems like the ones you're describing. If you're unsure if you're using one of these systems, you'll need to talk to your hosting provider to find out.

[canadianrodder]

Wayne, thanks for looking in. "I" didn't start using anything new. Maybe they did. Had an online chat with a support person today and, after explaining the issue, he suggested reverting to a backup if you can believe that.

I see over at VB.org, another person posted this: "Hey guys, A few of my forums (all on the same hosting account) are not updating unless you manually refresh the page. And even then, if you come back to the forum after a few hours, it won't even reflect the time you were there hours earlier...it will be from even earlier.

For example, you could first visit the forum at 9am, shut down your browser for 2 hours and then go back to the forum, and it will still say 9am. If you refresh, it will say the proper time (which would now be 11am).

If you leave again for 5 hours, and come back, it will say 9am again."

They followed up with this: I've been going back and forth with them all day, and they're no help at all. They just keep telling me that they don't help with custom coding (vbulletin), that they can only help if its a server-related problem. This just started happening yesterday, and I havent done anything to any of my forums in weeks. They keep saying they havent made any changes to the servers.
This really sucks, it's obviously a problem on the host's end, but they won't help at all.

Well, I clicked 'yes' under "Add No-Cache HTTP Headers" in the options, and so far it seems to have worked for now.

Any idea why I would have to do that all of a sudden? Is there a downside to having this on?"

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I'm wondering if we have the same host??

[Wayne Luke]

Sounds like the hosting provider is using some sort of caching system. The no-cache headers will increase your bandwidth requirements and may cause pages to take longer but shouldn't cause many other adverse issues.

[canadianrodder]

I've posted on their peer support forum and asked about the caching. I'll see where that goes. Something has just changed in the last few days. The tech support person was useless.

[canadianrodder]

Wayne, someone at the peer support site told me they have the same issue and that I should put this in the "php header file" pending resolution
No idea what that might be relative to VB.

header('Expires: Sun, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT');
header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate');
header('Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0', FALSE);
header('Pragma: no-cache');

He also said:
"I don't use vbulletin software, I wrote all my own php pages. In my site, I have a header file that gets loaded with each page of the website. I put those 4 lines of code in my header file so each time any page loads, the code basically tells the browser to go get the latest data from the server. This is not something people should have to do but it got my website back running without issue until they fix the server.

I don't know anything about vbulletin or the file structure, but you want to locate a way to insert those 4 lines into whatever page loads on every page within the site. Usually a header file or config file."

[Wayne Luke]

He is basically adding the No-Cache headers that you turned on.

[canadianrodder]

Despite turning that on Wayne, still getting weird results. e.g. New Posts yields "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms." Same for Today's Posts in Quick Links.

[mikewaters]

I am having the exact same issue, with the same timing. Just started in the last few days. I haven't changed anything w/ the forum software in years actually. The "today's posts" is not updating. On different browsers on different computers, it is coming up with the exact same posts, with the exact same number of replies (which are now inaccurate, there are more replies). So it's "frozen." "New Posts" isn't working either. I have gone into the options and changed the no-cache headers, but that didn't improve anything. I have of course no idea why this suddenly stopped working.

[Paul M]

Sound like serverside caching, something like Varnish. Speak to your host.

[mikewaters]

The host fixed it with a server "purge." Thanks.