WordPress for Cowork

I changed something but the live site
still shows the old version (cache invalidation)

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You asked Claude to change something, the change appears applied in wp-admin, but the live site still shows the old version. The fix is almost always cache invalidation — a layer between your visitor and WordPress is serving a stale copy.

Check in this order

1. Browser cache

Easiest to rule out. Hard refresh the page: Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows / Linux) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac). Or open the page in a private / incognito window. If the change shows up there, your browser was caching.

2. Page caching plugin (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache)

  • WP Rocket: Top admin bar → WP Rocket → Clear cache.
  • LiteSpeed Cache: wp-admin → LiteSpeed Cache → Toolbox → Purge All.
  • W3 Total Cache: Top admin bar → Performance → Purge All Caches.
  • WP Super Cache: Top admin bar → Delete Cache.

You can also ask Claude: “Purge the page cache.” The plugin recognises common cache plugins and triggers their purge functions if they’re active.

3. CDN cache (Cloudflare, BunnyCDN, KeyCDN)

If you use Cloudflare in front of your site, the change might be on your origin but Cloudflare is still serving the old cached copy:

  1. Cloudflare dashboard → Caching → Configuration → Purge Everything.
  2. Or selectively purge a single URL: Custom Purge → URL and paste the page URL.

4. Server-side OpCache (only relevant for PHP changes)

If Claude installed a new plugin or mu-plugin and the change isn’t taking effect, PHP’s OpCache may still be serving the old compiled bytecode. Most managed hosts auto-reset OpCache on plugin changes; for self-hosted, restart PHP-FPM (sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm or your host’s equivalent), or use a plugin like “OPcache Reset.”

5. WordPress transients / object cache

Rare, but: some plugins cache REST API responses in WordPress transients. Ask Claude: “Flush the WordPress object cache and delete all transients.” The plugin runs wp_cache_flush() and clears the transient table.

Order matters

Always purge from the outside in: browser → CDN → page cache plugin → OpCache → transients. Otherwise the outer layer keeps re-populating from the still-stale inner one.

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