Tech Tips for Writers is an occasional post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future tip.
This tip is about visiting a website you love. Until today, it’s always displayed perfectly. Now, it’s a hot mess. My go-to one-step solution is:
Change browsers.
Here’s an example of a website loading poorly in Chrome (I blurred out the identifying details). It wouldn’t load the Amazon piece, not just on this one post, but every post I visited on the site:
But worked just fine in Firefox:
Problem fixed in five seconds.
Here’s my decision matrix on what to do in cases like this:
–image credit: Deposit Photos
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Man vs. Nature saga, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the acclaimed Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection, Summer 2022
worddreams.wordpress.com 
Thanks for the tip, Jacqui. I am always impatient and clicking refresh 50 times never helps.
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That is a solution I try, but not even in my top ten!
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Lol, I reviewed that book on my site. Hope this wasn’t my page. Although, I know well that Chrome acts up on certain websites and have to change browsers. Plus WP is a beast when it wants to be. 🙂
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Honestly, I don’t remember where I got it. It was just to show how some browsers show it, others don’t, and what an easy fix it is. I don’t know why some browsers don’t show the Amazon ‘buy’ page!
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A technical mystery for sure! 🙂
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Ah! I had certain browser issues a while ago too. Changing browsers definitely helped, although it took some time for me to figure that one out 😀 XD
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It’s amazing how much those simple solutions help. I have another one for next week that I use at least 2x a week. Amazingly.
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Hi Jacqui – it’s important not to get panicked isn’t it … and yes – there are always ways round things – I need to ask, but if I’m sensible … I can usually get some quick tips from friends. Thanks for the reminder – we can usually find a way round. Cheers Hilary
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Because I was always the go-to person for tech problems, it became a game of work-arounds. I started to enjoy solving the myriad of problems!
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I have a few different browsers installed for purposes just like this.
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Me, too. I bet like me you use them all occasionally.
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I do, especially when I’m putzing with a website. Otherwise I have a zillion (I think that’s more than a grillion…) tabs open.
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My husband laughs at the huge number of tabs I keep open at a time.
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Great advice, Jacqui. I hadn’t thought of this easy fix.
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I use it often because it works at least 70% of the time.
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So simple and succinct! Love the flow chart. 🙂
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Flow charts are pretty fun!
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Sounds like an easy fix. Thanks, Jacqui.
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It is easy. I often get teachers who can’t load a page and aren’t aware of this easy option. It’s got to do with lots of stuff I don’t understand, but the solution–fixed!–I do.
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It’s a bit like driving a car to me – as long as it does what it’s meant to do. 🙂
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Thanks Jacqui, great advice. as ever. Still no signal, and crawling speeds, I check next door too. Usually all in trouble.
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Shoot. Well, Elon Musk’s Starlink should solve that. It’s fast but slower than cable, and ‘affordable’–whatever that means. It’s based off satellites so should avoid some of the problems you currently face.
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Good advice, Jacqui – thanks so much for this. Toni x
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I hope it helps you at least once!
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Good advice. I do that too
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Glad you mentioned that. It’s such an easy thing to do that lots of people don’t think about.
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Thanks, Jacqui. Do you recommend one browser over another?
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It used to be Chrome, and in schools, that makes a lot of sense (for those using Chromebooks), but Edge and Firefox do a really good job. I’m preparing to switch (back) to Firefox.
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Great suggestion Jacqui!
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How are browsers in India, Ankur?
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Jacqui, consumer usage is overwhelmingly Chrome favouring, while business usage is more balanced. However, access to the web is mostly through mobilephones. The general wisdom is that one needs to ensure the website is optimized for mobile access if the target is consumers. Desktop access does not really matter.
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That’s interesting. My former website didn’t play well on mobile devices which in America, meant at least half my users would be unhappy. I did finally update it but it didn’t have any difference on viewer numbers. Sigh. Figuring that stuff out is tough.
I’m talking about my business website (https://structuredlearning.net), not this one.
Sigh again.
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Yep, I keep several growers around just for that, although DuckDuckGo is the main one I use.
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That’s my go-to search engine, too. It is so much safer than others, although I hear Opera is making inroads. I’m not a Mac person so not terribly up to speed on that.
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Great tip, Jacqui. I’ve had to do this one before and it’s worked, but I forgot about the solution as time goes by. Thanks for the reminder. And the decision tree is a great graphic. That pretty much sums it up!
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I like decision trees. that’s the formulaic side of me!
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Me too… Those days of writing procedures manuals. Lol.
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This has happened so many times! Thanks for the tip 🙂
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Me, too, which is why I finally added it as a tip. I have another one later this week (or next week) that I do all the time, but it’s not intuitive. We’ll see if anyone likes it!
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Switching browsers almost always works for me, but I find clearing my cache also fixes issues where I cannot get sites I visit often to load. Granted, it makes signing back into everything a bit of a pain, but I think sometimes clearing the ol’ cache is a good thing! :0
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That’s a great suggestion, Jaya. I always forget that one and it’s usually effective. Thanks!
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Yup, you should always have more than one browser available to you. On the Mac I use Chrome and Safari. Browsers get updated all the time and sometimes one works better than another. I use to use Firefox on Mac until it had too many problems then I switch to Chrome. As the problems in chrome are growing, I’ll likely switch to Safari.
Also, sometimes the problem is specific to a certain platform. For example, if it’s not working on your tablet, try the your desk top or phone. I’ve also seen problems between Windows and Mac systems.
and sometimes it just a bad day – take a break, read a book and try later.
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Great suggestion–about switching platforms.
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Good tips! When changing browsers doesn’t work, I DDG a search to see if the website is down for anyone else. Then I can stop beating my head against a wall and check again later or the next day.
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That is really smart, Liz. Sometimes, after I’ve tried everything I can think of, I find it was out of my control. That’s just annoying.
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It took me a while to figure it out. 🙂
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I have much better luck with Firefox. Thanks, Jacqui!
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I’m thinking of switching back. Even Edge doesn’t give me the problems of Chrome.
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A few weeks ago I brought my iPhone to an Apple store because the home button wouldn’t depress. The technician saw that the button was cracked, and thus no longer could work. Turns out there’s a workaround for that — the technician was able to load an icon, from somewhere in Settings, that works more or less like a home button.
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Well isn’t that interesting. Great tip, Neil.
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I wish you lived next door to me so you could straighten out so many website issues for me.
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I love doing it, too. Something about exercising the brain excites me.
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For a site that you don’t know, I like your cautionary stance of do nothing. It’s possible something mischievous is underway (e.g., a hack or malware). Wait and see is the best alternative.
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These hacker folks are getting too darn tricky for us.
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Now that’s the way to fix a page-loading problem!
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It works more often than I would have thought.
Waiting to hear how your move to NY is going. I hope it’s everything you expected.
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Everything here in NYC is great, Jacqui — thanks for asking! Just had our A/Cs installed for the season. (We’re still getting reacclimated to East Coast humidity!) Currently polishing one manuscript and outlining the next one. No complaints!
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So good to hear. It sounds like you’re inspired!
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