Reactivated Products not displaying (caching issue?)

[lesliekirk]

After adding a few new products to a store, they get deactivate until the store is ready to use them.

FYI - they are activated to allow the entire store team to review them and the product inventory levels are set to zero to prohibit ordering.

When the store owner goes back in and re-activates the products, they do not display on the category pages they are assigned to. I'm speculating that they are victims of the new server-side caching that was introduced with 9.7. While I did not have a chance to manually clear the cache using the Delete Cached Product List Entries in the Scheduled Tasks. The store owner reported that the products did appear after about 2 hours. That would indicate some sort of caching to me.

I did notice that while configuring the products for the store it would seem that if I unassigned and then reassigned the product to the category, the product would appear as soon as I refreshed the page.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Does it get fixed with the current update? The store hasn't been updated to 9.8 yet.

[razertip]

It is the cache: Store Settings - Scheduled Tasks - Delete Cached Product List Entries. Mine is set to run every 4 hours (Default, I believe). In 9.08.01 If you make a product active you have to manually "Delete Cached Product List Entries" or wait for the scheduled tasks to run. Also, I tested that unassigning and reassigning a product to a category that does make it appear "instantly" on a page refresh.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Front side "no-cache" should work just fine. (I actually run it on my main browser at all times...granted, i'm on 1GB fiber, but I think its worth the slight wait so one doesn't get a distorted view of how fast one's site is.

[lesliekirk]

It is the cache: Store Settings - Scheduled Tasks - Delete Cached Product List Entries. Mine is set to run every 4 hours (Default, I believe). In 9.08.01 If you make a product active you have to manually "Delete Cached Product List Entries" or wait for the scheduled tasks to run. Also, I tested that unassigning and reassigning a product to a category that does make it appear "instantly" on a page refresh.

This particular store is set to run the schedule task every 1 hour.

Bruce, it's definitely not browser side caching. That was the first thing I checked for.

[lesliekirk]

I am still having a problem with this. I have reactivated a number of products, gone in and manually run the Store Settings - Scheduled Tasks - Delete Cached Product List Entries. I've even waited a couple of hours after reactivating the product and it's still not showing up. This is very frustrating. It will probably show up tomorrow, but I need it there today.

[Eric Foresman]

I am still having a problem with this. I have reactivated a number of products, gone in and manually run the Store Settings - Scheduled Tasks - Delete Cached Product List Entries. I've even waited a couple of hours after reactivating the product and it's still not showing up. This is very frustrating. It will probably show up tomorrow, but I need it there today.

Hi Lesliekirk,

Edit the “Delete Cached Product List Entries” and make sure that it is deleting all of your cached product list and not just the expired ones.

See screen cap.

-Eric

cached_product_list_ST.png

[lesliekirk]

I tried that too and it didn't make a difference.

[Leanne]

I have a store with this same problem. In this case, it has been several days and no matter what we have tried, we cannot get the products to show on the category lists.

[jsdva]

Yep. Been there, done that. Kind of makes you wonder if you're crazy.

[Leanne]

Did you ever figure anything out, Jamie?

[jsdva]

Sorry, Leanne. Sure haven't. Eventually, the products do appear. How or why I am not sure.

[Rick Wilson]

From Dev:

• reactivated products are not redisplayed until the cache expires
• there's no possible way for us to know which cache entries they would have to be added to
• deleting all cached product lists should fix the problem, I think leslie is doing something wrong
• she was working with eric and wayne on this earlier this week

If you're having this issue, make sure you contact support (and if you get stuck ask to escalate to Eric).

[lesliekirk]

From Dev:
I think leslie is doing something wrong

It would appear that I did do something wrong. This particular product didn't originally have Inventory Variants, so it's Inventory level had been set in the Inventory. The product became available in two sizes so it had variants generated and inventory quantities set for each size. I never even thought to check the global level Inventory which had been set to 0.

Now here is the most interesting part - the inventory is set to hide out of stock products at the global level which explains why I could never get the product thumbnail to display on the category pages, why was I able to pull up the individual product page? Was it because of the Inventory Variants having inventory levels?

[Eric Foresman]

It would appear that I did do something wrong. This particular product didn't originally have Inventory Variants, so it's Inventory level had been set in the Inventory. The product became available in two sizes so it had variants generated and inventory quantities set for each size. I never even thought to check the global level Inventory which had been set to 0.

Now here is the most interesting part - the inventory is set to hide out of stock products at the global level which explains why I could never get the product thumbnail to display on the category pages, why was I able to pull up the individual product page? Was it because of the Inventory Variants having inventory levels?

Hidden is not the same as deactivated. When deactivated you cannot reach a product even if you go directly to the PROD page with the product code. However, if the product is merely hidden you can still access it by going directly to the PROD page.


-Eric

[Leanne]

That was it! I got so hung up on the idea that it had something to do with caching the product lists that I forgot to check the basics. Inventory tracking was turned on for the product, and the inventory was set to 0 so per the store settings, the product was hidden from the category lists.