If you're just getting a wall of text or one of the modes is not working for you, read this

[EarlG]

Some members have experienced an intermittent issue with the site suddenly losing all its styling, so it just appears as a long list of unstyled text and links. Other have experienced an issue with one of the additional modes not working. These issues are likely related, and are to do with files failing to load correctly.


What you can do to resolve this most of the time

If you are on a device with a keyboard, in most cases the fix is to simply hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click the Refresh button in your browser. That will forces your browser to fetch new files from the DU servers.


If that doesn't work

You can manually visit the DU stylesheet files for the mode you're having a problem with at the links below. If you click on them, you should see what looks like a wall of code.

Default Mode: https://www.democraticunderground.com/du4css/du4.css

Night Mode: https://www.democraticunderground.com/du4css/nightmode.css

Skinner Mode: https://www.democraticunderground.com/du4css/skinnermode.css

If you see that wall of code, try hitting Shift + Refresh (if you have a keyboard) or just refresh the page if you're on a tablet or phone. That should give you the latest version of the file. When you go back to DU, hopefully it will be working normally.

If you just get a blank page at any of the links above, it means the CSS file did not load. In that case, your best bet is to try clearing your browser's cache. There are instructions on how to clear your cache on all devices here:

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-clear-your-cache-on-any-browser


If it's still not working

Please contact me at [e-mail] so I can try to assist you with your specific issue.

The solutions above are temporary workarounds while we try to nail down this bug, but they should apply to any situation where you're not getting the correct view of the site.

[underpants]

1. Thanks.

I cleared my browsing history on my phone and that put it back in Skinner mode.

[highplainsdem]

2. Thank you! I want to add that it's probably necessary to clear only recent history/cookies/cache, which

is what I did - just the last 24 hours. That took care of the problem with Skinner mode not being available, and I was still logged in.

[2naSalit]

3. Thank you!

[intrepidity]

4. Bookmarking, but only so I can go peek under the hood

I haven't done any website work in many years, so curious to see what all you have to do to accommodate all the variables that exist these days...

[MagaSmash]

5. On my mac; it was Command + Shift + R

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Much less frequent now, only had one in a month a few days ago. . . . nt

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Holding down the shift key and refreshing did the trick.

Glad you had posted that fix.

[LeftInTX]

8. Thank you! The shift/refresh worked!

[W_HAMILTON]

9. That worked, but you may want to post it in General Discussion and sticky it or post it somewhere prominent.

Given the issue, it was hard as hell for me to even navigate to this forum to see if others were having the same issue (and it looks like lots of others have been).

My initial thought was just to check the General Discussion forum to see if anyone was having an issue, and I didn't see anyone posting about it in there...

[ShazzieB]

10. Thanks for this!

This has happened to me a couple of times, and I had no idea what to do. Each time it was back to normal the next day, but I'm glad to know there's something I can do other than just wait uf it happens again. Bookmarking!