If your site looks fine to you but broken to visitors, a stored (cached) copy is usually to blame: visitors get the stored page, you see the live one.
What it means
You're seeing the live, current version. Visitors are getting a cached copy - an old version stored by your caching plugin, CDN, or browser cache. The cached version might have broken links, old content, or errors that are already fixed.
Why it happens
Caching is supposed to speed things up, but when a page gets cached in a broken state (during an update, a plugin conflict, or a temporary error), it keeps serving that broken version until the cache expires or is cleared.
What to do
- Purge all caches - caching plugin, CDN (Cloudflare etc.), and server-level cache.
- Test in an incognito window to bypass your own browser cache.
- Check if the cached version is actually broken or just outdated - visitors might see old content but not errors.
- If a specific page is cached broken, exclude it from caching or set a shorter cache lifetime.
- Check CDN settings - sometimes the CDN caches error pages (404, 500) and serves them to visitors.
Still stuck? Cache-related display issues are usually a purge-and-verify fix - we can identify which cache layer is serving stale content.
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