How to Access Websites That Would Not Load
What Do Website Error Codes Mean?
Have you ever clicked on a link or bookmark and instead seen an error page? It can be extremely frustrating when a site won't load, so is there a trick you can use to access a busy website with heavy traffic? Do you know how to open a crashed website? What if it contains blocked content?
Fortunately for you, there are a few ways to access web pages that won't otherwise load, and they are.
1. How To Access Websites With Google Cache
Google Cache is a quick way to view troublesome pages. Search engines cache content when indexing websites, so by accessing it, you can see a snapshot of what Google saw the last time it crawled the site. Many main webpages are cached daily, but older articles that aren't updated sit unchanged in the cache folder.
You can access Google Cache by entering the name of the page or site you're trying to visit into the search engine. Click on the down-arrow by the relevant search result then on Cached. Images can occasionally be problematic, so you could filter the resulting page by clicking on Text-only version in the gray bar at the top.
You can otherwise view a specific page by typing cache: into the search box, immediately followed by the address of the webpage you want to access.
Google obviously isn't the only search engine doing this. For instance, you can use Bing's Cached by clicking on the down-arrow.
The cache feature also tells you when the snapshot was last taken. You can then infer whether an update will have replaced any material.
2. How To Access Online Content With The Internet Archive
This is better known as The Wayback Machine, a non-profit library of pages from times long past. It's like taking a trip in a time machine and browsing the internet.
The Internet Archive takes "captures" of websites on a regular basis depending on the popularity of the site and how often it's updated. That means some pages are harder to access, but a trip to the Wayback Machine is rarely wasted.
Enter a URL, page heading, or keywords in the Archive's search function. Find the page you're looking for and it'll tell you when captures were taken. You can browse through calendars and decide what you want to look at.
This could be the very latest, right from its first instance, or somewhere in between. You'll probably see when sites have changed formatting themes and read news from yesteryear. This will even work when a website is experiencing high traffic or is in maintenance mode.
Beware, loading captures can take some time, so patience is definitely required! Nonetheless, it can act as a good busy website opener.
3. Do Browser Extensions Stop You From Accessing Websites?
Browser plug-ins can really enhance your online experience, including Chrome extensions which protect your security. But some might also be stopping certain sites from loading.
First, check parental controls aren't turned on and are stopping you from accessing a page. Service providers in the U.K apply some of these legal but frustrating restrictions. If you're the adult in this situation, you should know the relevant details to unlock content, then you may need to talk to your mobile network server to lift regulations.
Some security suites offer parental controls, so you might have to tamper with these through your antivirus or firewall.
Otherwise, some sites will restrict access if you have an ad blocker installed. Uninstall or switch off these plug-ins before trying to load the page again.
4. Do You Need A VPN To Access Restricted Content?
Don't let the above issue put you off using plug-ins. Most won't negatively impact browsing. In fact, using a VPN extension can speed up site load-times, and by installing one, you could access region-restricted material.
So what can you do if your ISP, employer, or country blocks the content you want to enjoy? A VPN masks your address, so it looks like your device is in another region.
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