Theme development - CSS caching annoyance

Hi - we have been using Elgg since 1.0 and are just now upgrading our test system to 1.5. I want to apply our own theme to 1.5 (in it's own plugin of course), but it is taking me much longer than anticipated as every time I make a change to my plugins CSS file, the changes are not shown unless I disable then re-enable the plugin.

As you can imagine, this is adding a huge amount of time to the task and wondered if there was a workaround for it? I presume this is to do with some caching features that have been added to 1.5 as it was not an issue in previous versions?

Anyone else struggling with this?

  • I just read on the documentation wiki that you can run /upgrade.php each time to refresh the CSS, but this still takes a while. Is there a way of disabling the caching for development purposes?

  • Trying looking at the Idiots guide to changing the elgg theme...

    http://community.elgg.org/pg/pages/view/43474/

    A quicker way of showing the changes is explained on each page.

  • Yes, there is an option under Site administration to turn off simplecache.

  • Thanks guys - disabling simplecache in the admin menu worked perfectly :-)

  • Hello all,

    I have to say the idea of caching the themes and js is great but a
    pain in the a** when developing your theme. I tried all the
    suggestions above and I just want to know where elgg pulls the cache
    from? the database? I went to the point of deleting my css.php file
    from the theme I am developing and lo and behold the page still loads
    like it is there. I tried rearranging the plugins, disabling and
    enabling and disabling cache, running upgrade.php, and deleting the
    folders and file under the data folder on the server. Any suggestions,
    ideas?

    Thank you,
    Deon

  • like my updated theme. ;) Only if google would update the ads, it would look great.

  • @Dhrup - I had deleted the folder views_simplecache and the file view_paths, ran upgrade.php and still its pulling from somewhere. Once again I still have my css.php file deleted off the server and still shows all the code. So it is storing it somewhere and have searched but I can't find it. Still looking for any help or anyone else who has issues with trying everything and still no good?

    Thank you for any help.

  • Hi Deon,

    I think either you are looking in the wrong data directory or your caching problem is unrelated to Elgg. Your server may be running Squid or it may just be brower caching.

  • @Kevin - I have version 1.2 running on the same server and there is no issues there, so I am not sure if that invalidates the squid suggestion. The server is running on GoDaddy and I couldn't find any mention of squid. I clear my browser cache all the time. There is only one data folder for Elgg and like I said I have cleared that. I also use the web developer toolbar and i can see the link to the cache and then the old css tags being loaded. The link to the cache though provides no details as to where it is being loaded from. I hate to start again with a clean install and then go from there but I do not see any other way right now.

    Thanks.