How to Clear File Cache in SMF

Page caching is a must for any web application with some level of static information. It helps us handle more requests and use server resources more efficiently. If you do not know what is caching, let me explain it in a few sentences.

Let’s say you have a blog with 100 articles. You usually don’t update the content on those articles. But, as the blog is a web application, the content of articles is stored in the database. Whenever a user visits a specific article, the server will execute the code and will also execute multiple queries to get the appropriate information from the database. When a second user visits the same page after a minute, the whole process is repeated.

To avoid using server resources to display the same content, caching is used. Caching can be done at multiple levels. For example, At the server level, at application level, at the DNS level. Also, there are many types of caches. But, why do we need to clear the cache? It’s simple, to show the updated content to visitors who might see the old content via cache.

In this tutorial, I will show you How to clear Page cache in SMF. So, Let’s get started.

Clear File Cache in SMF

First of all, login to the admin panel and click on the Admin option given in the main navigation bar.

On this page, you will find a secondary menu. Find and click on the Main -> Administration Center option. See the following screenshot for reference.

Here you will find lots of options. Click on the Forum Maintenance option just as highlighted in the following screenshot.

On the forum maintenance page, click on the Routine option.

Under the routine section, you will find a lot of options. Find an option with heading “Empty the file cache”. It should look like the part of page highlighted in the following screenshot.

Finally, click on the Run task now button given under that section to clear Page cache. It should take couple of seconds only except you have a really huge Forum.

So, this is how you can clear file cache in SMF. If you liked this tutorial, please feel free to share it and also let us know in the comment section if you have any questions regarding this topic. We will get back to you with help as soon as possible.