Clearing your browser cache and cookies

If a site looks outdated, a form won't submit, or you're stuck in a login loop, clearing your browser's cache and cookies fixes it more often than you'd expect. Your browser stores old copies of pages, images, and scripts locally so sites load faster on repeat visits, and it holds cookies that remember your login sessions and preferences. When either goes stale or corrupted, you see the symptom on the site, but the fix is on your machine.

This is different from server-side caching. If you're troubleshooting a site you host with us and changes aren't showing up after a clear, the issue may be DNS propagation or a caching layer in front of your site rather than your browser. See what is DNS? Nameservers, records, and how the internet finds your site for how that chain works.

When to clear cache vs. cookies

They solve different problems, so it helps to know which one you actually need:

• Clear cache when a page shows old text, old images, or a broken layout after a known update. The browser is serving a saved copy instead of fetching the current version.
• Clear cookies when you're stuck logged in as the wrong account, hitting a redirect loop, or a site says your session expired but won't let you log back in. Cookies store session tokens and login state, and a corrupted or expired one causes exactly this kind of loop.
• Clear both if you're not sure which is causing it, or if a site is behaving strangely across the board. It's the standard first troubleshooting step before assuming something is actually broken server-side.

Chrome

1. Click the three-dot menu, top right, then Settings.
2. Go to Privacy and security > Clear browsing data.
3. Pick the Time range. Use All time if you're troubleshooting, not just the last hour.
4. Check Cookies and other site data and Cached images and files.
5. Click Clear data.

Faster route: press Ctrl+Shift+Delete (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+Delete (Mac) to jump straight to this dialog.

Firefox

1. Click the menu button, top right, then Settings.
2. Go to Privacy & Security.
3. Scroll to Cookies and Site Data, click Clear Data, and check both boxes (cookies and cached content).
4. Confirm with Clear.

Same shortcut works: Ctrl+Shift+Delete or Cmd+Shift+Delete opens the clear-data dialog directly.

Safari

Safari splits this across two places:

1. For cookies: open Safari > Settings > Privacy > Manage Website Data, then search for the site and click Remove, or Remove All to clear everything.
2. For cache: enable the Develop menu first if it's not visible (Safari > Settings > Advanced > Show features for web developers), then use Develop > Empty Caches.

On iPhone or iPad: Settings app > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. This clears both cache and cookies together, and it's site-wide, not per-site.

Edge

1. Click the three-dot menu, top right, then Settings.
2. Go to Privacy, search, and services.
3. Under Clear browsing data, click Choose what to clear.
4. Check Cookies and other site data and Cached images and files, then click Clear now.

Ctrl+Shift+Delete works here too.

A faster alternative for one-off checks

If you just want to see whether a page has actually updated without wiping your whole browser history, use a hard refresh instead: Ctrl+F5 or Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac. This forces the browser to re-fetch the page and its assets, bypassing the local cache for that one load. It's the right first move when you're checking whether a site update went live, before you reach for a full cache clear.

Private/incognito windows are also useful for isolating the problem: they start with no cache and no existing cookies for the site, so if a page loads correctly there, you've confirmed the issue is local cached data, not something wrong with the site itself.

If clearing cache doesn't fix it

If you've cleared cache and cookies, tried a hard refresh, and even confirmed it in a private window, and a site you own with us still shows outdated content, the cause is more likely upstream: DNS still pointing at an old server, or your domain's nameservers not fully propagated yet. If you recently moved a domain to us or changed nameservers, see changing nameservers at GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Cloudflare and can I use a domain I already own? for how that setup works and how long it takes to settle.

If none of that explains it, open a ticket from Support in the portal. Support is real humans, no phone tree, and they can check what your domain is actually resolving to from our end rather than guessing at what your browser is caching.