Curious. How did you delete the topics? Was this using the forum tools?

Yellow Swordfish said
Curious. How did you delete the topics? Was this using the forum tools?

Using the pop-up admin toolset menus, by clicking on the icon that appears on the forum list then selecting “Delete this topic.”

Thanks…

I figured it out – it was the doing of the “WP Super Cache” Plugin, which by default has a very long interval between comparing cached pages to reality.  I changed it to update the cached page whenever the page changes (advanced settings tab, 6th checkbox from the bottom) and all is good.

Why would any cache routine keep displaying a page it knows is wrong? 

that is just it…. It does NOT know the page is wrong…

simple press displays ALL of its forum content on a single wp page… we dynamically generate that page on each load… the appearance of multiple forums/topics/pages is simply rewrite url black magic…

so as far as the caching plugin knows, there is just one wp page so it caches it… it has no idea that content is dynamically generated… which is why wp caching plugins dont work with simple press and other plugins that use dynamic page generation…

you really should just tell wp super cache not to cache the wp page the forum appears on… there is an exclusion list of pages you set up in wp super cache settings to tell it to ignore the forum…

I tried WP Super Cache once and had nothing but problems with it.

You really shouldn’t need a cache program if your web host is providing good service, though many will point the finger at your WordPress installation.

Seen so many web hosts that totally blow, with GoDaddy being #1 on the list of crap web hosts!

I too have tried one or two – noticing no performance increase but plenty of other problems.
My own experience suggests most plugins that ‘boost’ performance often actually have a negative effect overall.