sandman

Trying to update our staff intranet which uses IIS4.

I created the pages using ASP and extensive VB and Java script.

IIS was working fine for the longest time but now all of a sudden if I make changes to a page and try to refresh it from my browser IIS still shows the old page...

Anyone know how I can force IIS to refresh the pages?

sandman

Things we've tried that haven't worked:

Refreshing the client browser
Refreshing the browser on the server
Disabled IIS cache

Note - we're trying to avoid rebooting the machine.

stef_nz

i don't know if you are doing this already but one of the first lines in your asp code should be....

Response.Expires=0;

i use iis5.1 on xp pro but my web host is using iis5 on win2000 and i have never had that problem.

i also use javascript as opposed to vbscript but the line above should do the job....if you're already using "expires" then we'll have to go back to the drawing board........

sandman

Got it!!! (but i haven't got a clue how!!)

I actually had the refresh set to 60, but I had tried putting 0 in to no avail as well.

Here's what I did. Why did it start working again?

On the server I had 2 copies of the website as well. I moved the folders off the server onto my local machine and all of a sudden it started working again!!!

Would the server have been looking at those files in the backup folder for some reason instead of the current ones? Why if we didn't change anything would it start using the backup folder?? As soon as I moved those folders off the machine it started working 100%... too weird...

Thanks for you help! Maybe you can answer that one now!

stef_nz

the only thing i can think of - and i got caught with this once or twice too, is that maybe the site was set up fine but you were actually editing the files in the backup folder instead of the "live" ones????

you know? like sometimes you might go to the backup folder to look at a copy of an old file and your editor then uses that directory as its new default?? so then next time you save your updated files, they actually get saved to the backup directory instead of the live one, without you even realising...... you could easily find out if that was the case by looking at the saved file dates and times to see which were more recent......

if thats not it, then maybe its a special microsoft "feature" hahaha and we should just be grateful that its all going again eh?

sandman

Damn straight man!!

No - i know for sure i wasn't editing the backup files. I think it had something to do with the virtual folders set up on the machine. I didn't do the initial setup so I haven't got a clue as to how they were set up or what kind of properties they have.

Oh well, like you say, just be gratefull it's working!!

stef_nz

unfortunately you are right, but for those of us nutters who choose to work in this industry, iis is almost unavoidable now, let alone in the forseeable future.

sadly apache is still seen by a lot of corporates as being a throwback to unix - and who wants to remember the command line eh? (actually i DO! ) i know apache's strengths but its a tiny percentage of the corporate market compared to iis.

in defence of iis, it is getting better, ms is at least starting to pay attention to the security issues now......it is easy to set up and maintain and it scales very well. i also like the fact that i can write dynamic (asp) pages in javascript (which i already know)instead of having to learn a whole new scripting language like php.... plus, i tend to think i can keep "average joe hacker" out just as well as i can with apache - neither technology is able to prevent someone who truely knows what they are doing, from getting in.

sandman

xactly!! As well with the environment we're running here we have pretty much no choice. That and I have no say in what systems are being run. All I get to do is work on em..