Help:Caching
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Heroes Wiki eases its bandwidth and server load requirements by using caching.
Browser caching
The main means by which Heroes Wiki uses caching is by allowing users' internet browsers to keep a cache of its articles and other pages on the users' local machines. Many browsers have an option to store pages in a local cache for later viewing and may also refer to that cache instead of the wiki itself on previous viewings depending on the browser's settings. Depending on a user's browser, clicking "refresh" or "reload" on the browser may normally bring up the latest version of a Heroes Wiki page. Browsers often include options for how page text content is stored, but do not always have options for images, audio files, and software scripts. For those browsers, bypassing or clearing the cache completely may be the only way to immediately access an updated image or audio file. Wikipedia has instructions for doing so for the main types of browsers.
Changes to software scripts on Heroes Wiki pages also often require clearing the browser cache, and sometimes a restart of the browser itself as the code may still be running in the browser even after the cache is cleared. Heroes Wiki uses a scripting called cascading style sheets (CSS) to add default style formatting to Heroes Wiki pages. In addition, Heroes Wiki uses JavaScript to add other features such as collapsible tables.
Server caching
Heroes Wiki pages can use multiple templates and multiple categories meaning the server has to compile information from multiple sources in order to completely display a page. To lessen the load this would normally imply, the Heroes Wiki server uses caching such that whenever a page is saved on the wiki, a complete copy of the page is put into server cache. Subsequent viewings of the saved page then refer to the server's cache of that page until a portion of the page is re-edited or that page's cache is purged.
There are a couple of exceptions to that description of server caching. One of the extensions Heroes Wiki uses is Dynamic Page List (DPL). This extension uses it's own form of markup on a page to create a dynamic list using the content and names of other pages in a wiki's database. There is an option in DPL to access content from the server's cache, and that option has been set to be always on at Heroes Wiki.
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