Copy
Webdancers

Q&APeople ask me for technical help all the time; they might also ask you. The good news is that there’s an answer for everything online. And some questions get asked so often that special purpose websites have been built just to answer them. Here are a few that you can use the next time a friend or relative hits you up because you’re the “techy” person that they know. See if any of these sound familiar.

“Hey, my website is down.”
Well maybe it is and maybe it's not. Sometimes it’s a problem with the person’s internet connection or browser. Send them here:

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com

Give it a domain name and this site will check its website for a positive response. If it gets one, you’ll see the message: “It’s just you. [domain name that you entered] is up.” If it receives an error, you’ll see: “It's not just you! [domain name that you entered] looks down from here. No diagnostics on this site; you’ll have to sort out any problems using other tools.

“My website looks weird.”
A number of website issues can be solved by clearing the browser’s cache. I usually suggest this when what I see is different from what the other person is seeing or when they’re seeing only unstyled text on their site. The problem is that the instructions are different depending on which browser they use. Send them here:

RefreshYourCache.com

This site provides up to date instructions for clearing the cache on 8 popular desktop and mobile browsers.

“What’s a browser?”
For someone really starting at the beginning. This is the quickest way to find out what browser they’re using:

WhatBrowser.org

This Google operated site will display the name of the browser in use and whether it’s the most current version. It also has some basic information about browsers and a bit of a plug for Chrome.

Random question that you can’t believe you were asked.
Don’t use this one unless you’re feeling a bit snarky:

Lmgtfy.com (Let me Google that for you)

This site allows you to search Google (or 5 other search engines) for a term. It then creates a link that you can send to the questioner. Clicking the link takes them to an animation of their question being typed into Google. Clicking the “Google Search” button in the animation takes them to the actual Google search results.

As I said, it’s a rather snarky way of pointing out that they could just as easily have typed the question into Google themselves, rather than asking you about it.

Try it for yourself.

Have any of your own sites that you send people to? I’d love to hear about them. Just click reply to this email and I’ll share any good ones that I get.

Until next week.

Twitter
Twitter
Facebook
Facebook
Google Plus
Google Plus
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Website
Website
Copyright © 2018 webdancers, All rights reserved.


forward to a friend

unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp