Sitecore clear cache setting

Sitecore has extensive cache settings. You can add caching at the rendering level so it affects all instances of that rendering. Or you can add caching at the component level on a particular page via the presentation details. This is all good when you are setting it up, but once this goes to production, the way caching is supposed to work is that the cache should get cleared after an item is published. So after an item is published, any associated cache should also automatically get updated.

In our case, we saw that once we went to production (with extensive caching enabled) our pages loaded much faster. However when the content authors were updating content, the updates were not making it to the delivery servers. The content seemed to be stuck in the cache. We noticed that we had to do one of the following to see the updated cache.

1. Go to the admin cache page [SitecoreSite/sitecore/admin/Cache.aspx] and click the "Clear all" button. This is not viable long term solution but helps to troubleshoot if an issue is related to the cache.
2. Uncheck any cache settings you have placed on either renderings or pages level components. 

The above steps would help determine if your issues is related to the cache not cleared after each publish. We noticed that in our Sitecore.config file, after the publish:end event, the default site name is set to be "website". Our site was not called website, so after updating the site name, we noticed that caches were getting cleared after publishing. Phew! Hope this helps someone else out there.