Best way to let browsers refresh from cache on a live website?

Question

It's about making changes in design (css-files and images) on a website which is already online and in use. I wonder what is the best-practice to make sure that visitors see the changes without clearing there browser's cache manually. Things that came in my mind:

• change meta-tag - dismissed because I do not want the site to be ALWAYS loaded from the server
• include the css-file with a parameter (like timestamp) after made a change
• change the names of included images so that they are reloaded - means also change names in the files where images are included
• ?

What else could achieve the loading from server? Did I forget some advantages/disadvantages?

Answer 1

Possible duplicate of this post: How to control web page caching, across all browsers?

My favoured solution is to set a random number after you call the file e.g.

css/styles.ccs?628454548

images/sprite.gif?8356484894

You could use javascript/php or whatever to set those random numbers every time the page is called to the browser.