Website problem, any webmaster guru here?

binarysoul

I'm helping a friend with a website. The site is supposed to load "index.htm" by default. But what it does, it loads an older version of the "index.htm" unless you go and type www.mysite.com/index.htm. I even deleted index.htm, the site still brings up the old file. Tried on 2 PC's, cache, cookies deleted. It's the same problem. Also, tried ipconfig /flushdns.

So in other words, www.mysite.com/index. htm and www.mysite.com bring up two different pages. He called the hosting company and they told him it works on their side.
The web server is Linux enterprise.

dynamik

Are you sure it's supposed to load index.htm and not index.html or something else? You can configure web servers with a list of files to try as the default file, so maybe there's another file that has higher precedence that's being loaded instead. What happens if you delete all the files?

binarysoul

Thanks Dynamik. Guess what? I just used an anonomous proxy (http://www.httpsurf.com) and it loads the correct page! I suspected there my ISP cache server may be pulling the data and it was. It's a lazy ISP

Strangely enough, I did delete "index.htm" and an hour later was presented with the Apache welcome page telling me I need to upload my file. But when I uploaded my index.htm, it still brings up an oder version of index.htm.

JDMurray

Yes, your ISP is using a Web-page-caching transparent proxy server. The proxy will only hold the page for the expiration time specified in the HTML (a value of -1 indicates that no caching should be performed). Check if your ISP has a setting to disable use of the proxy for your account. If not, put the following meta tags in each of your page's header:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">