Use of META "Refresh" Tag to correct a problem?
I use Hitbox to track traffic on one of my sites. I have the Hitbox code on every page.
It seems that there is still some traffic going to a page that is no longer posted on the web, as the statistics for that retired page still show slight usage. It is the domain's index.html page. When I re-did the code on the index page about a month ago, I changed the hitbox identifier in the code, so I know I am still seeing traffic to the old, non-existant page.
I suspect this is because some users are seeing a page from their browser's cache, and not the intended page on my server.
Does this make sense?
Could I avoid future instances of this problem by using a META refresh tag to force browsers to load a more current version periodically? If so, how is it used?
[This message has been edited by Ted (edited 01 June 2000).]
John Pollock posted this at 20:05 — 1st June 2000.
He has: 628 posts
Joined: Mar 1999
A refresh tag may do it.. seems like it would work, it would be:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="2;URL=http://www.yoursite.com">
Be sure it is the first tag after the <HEAD> tag.
Also, you can try the "expires" tag, giving a date that has passed already:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" content="Fri, 1 May 1997 12:00:00 EST">
As for whether it will keep the stats from coming back is hard to say. Anyone who downloaded an old copy to their HD to look at later might still load it up, and the old code with it.
This will help a little though hopefully.
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