RESOURCE IWAKU IS BROKEN: A Troubleshooting Guide

  • Before posting a thread, please take a look at the Iwaku FAQs to see if your question has already been answered there!

Absinthe

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Hey peeps!

As a former tech support advisor for a particularly big company, I was kind of suprised to stick my head into the help desk and notice that we don't have a guide to run through when you run into technical trouble on Iwaku!

These tips won't help the site go back up any faster while there's server maintence or if there's an outage - but should fix 90% of problems you'll face - and help us get to the bottom of the other 10% much faster for you!

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Is This A Bug? / My Browser is Breaking Iwaku! / X Feature isn't working for me!

First things first - has there been a site update lately?

I could write a novel on the background of a site like Iwaku and why so many things can break or catch fire... but that's perhaps for a different day. Just know that our admins are doing the best they can to keep things running - and sometimes that means some features will break. Check if someone else has already reported the issue you're experiencing in the post-update Bug thread you will see from Diana and you can report in with the same issue there. There isn't much we - or the admins - can do in this case, other than waiting for the tech gods to smile on us. Throwing tantrums won't do much here - most of the internet is kept running by awesome volunteers building and fixing things for fun after all.

...I'll just put this thing on fire over here with the rest of the fire

No updates, or no similar bugs reported? Let's take a look at your browser.

Let's open up an Incognito / Private Browsing window. If you're not sure how, HowToGeek has a guide here! We're not looking for anything NSFW here - Private Browsing disables all your add ons, customisations, and your browser doesn't ever remember seeing this website before. Great! Head on over to Iwaku and log in as normal, and see if you can replicate the issue you were having.

If everything looks fixed...

Great, it looks like it was an issue with your browser! You might need to clear your cache by following this awesome guide here from Indiana University's University Information Technology Services - it covers all web browsers on mobile and desktop!

It's also possible - but less likely - that it's an add on or extension causing the issue. It's a good time to check what extensions you're actually using, and which are just slowing your browser down. Lifewire has a guide covering the most popular web browsers here! You should be able to disable extensions before you need to delete them. If it's a well known and reliable extension that appears to be causing an issue with Iwaku - it's something worth raising with the team here so it can be investigated!

If It's still broken...
Yup, it's more likely than not an issue with Iwaku! Take a screenshot, using this guide if you're not familiar. Pictures of your screen taken with your phone can be blurry, glare-y and otherwise unreadable - so try to avoid doing it like this. Using Paint/GIMP/your graphics editor of choice, crop out anything you don't want to share or that could identify you.

  • If something's only broken after an update, there will be a special BUG thread where you can post your screenshot, with details of what's broken for you!

  • If something has broken out of thin air - it happens! - you can post up a thread with all the details!

Things to include in your post/thread

  • A screenshot, attached or linked to your post, that shows what's going wrong
  • What browser, and if possible, what browser version you're using. You can get this information at What Is My Browser
  • A description of what's going on, and what you've tried to fix it, or what steps we'll need to follow to recreate it.

Like I said, sometimes we can't fix it, but these steps will help us if we can!

Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?

PS: These are great steps to follow if you run into issues with other services too!
 
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