CC TIPS
Monthly suggestions and recommendations to help make your Crimson Circle experience smoother and easier!
If the Website Is Fine, Why Doesn’t It Work?
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Have you had this frustrating experience?
You open a Crimson Circle recording, click the play button, and nothing happens. Or perhaps the e-reader stops turning pages, a button seems inactive, or a download won’t work. You contact Customer Service, and when we test the same content, our reply is something like: “It’s working from our side, please try the following troubleshooting steps…”
What does that mean? If we see it working, why isn’t it working for you?
First, it doesn’t mean that we doubt what you are experiencing. The problem is real. It only means that we cannot replicate the problem and that the content is working normally for others.
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The website is only part of the journey
Imagine that the Crimson Circle website is a house you are visiting. Your browser, such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge, is the road that takes you there. While the house may be open, the utilities working, and the kitchen is spotless, there might be something blocking the road you’re using to get to the house. It could be a fallen branch, road construction, or an old sign pointing in the wrong direction.
The same can happen online. The Crimson Circle website may be working perfectly, while something saved in your browser, your device, or your internet connection prevents you from reaching the page correctly. This is also why one class may work while another does not. Different pages can use different stored information, just as two roads leading to the same house can have different conditions.
Your browser remembers the road
Each time you visit a website, your browser remembers parts of the journey. It keeps small pieces of information that help it find the way back, open pages faster, and remember that you’ve already signed in. You can think of this information as a map of the road to the CC website. The map can be helpful, but instead of working out the route again on every visit, your browser decides to follow the directions it already knows.
But websites change, pages may be updated, the sign-in process may change, or part of the route may be rebuilt. Your browser may still try to follow its old map, even though the road is now slightly different. It might lead you to an older version of a page, miss a new turn, or just stop where the road used to continue. This is sometimes called a stale browser session. It simply means the browser is holding on to old information when it needs a fresh start.
This can cause some confusing situations, such as:
- A page only opens halfway.
- A button appears but does not respond.
- A video won’t play.
- The e-reader gets stuck.
- One page works while another does not.
- Something that worked yesterday no longer works today.
Signing out and signing back in may not solve the problem because the browser can continue using the same old map. To receive fresh directions, you may need to close the browser completely (which means actually quit the application, not just minimize it), or remove the information it has stored for the Crimson Circle website.
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Your browser can also get tired
Your computer, tablet, or phone has a limited amount of working memory. This is the space it uses to keep everything running at that moment. Imagine a kitchen counter. You can easily prepare a meal when only a few items are on it, but if the counter is covered with dishes, groceries, papers, and appliances, you eventually run out of space to work.
A browser can experience the same problem. Every open tab uses some of the device’s working memory. Videos, e-readers, social media pages, and websites with many images can use even more.
So, if you keep many tabs open or leave the browser running for several days, it may begin to struggle, just like the kitchen counter running out of space. The browser may not tell you it has run out of room. It may simply freeze, load slowly, or leave some controls inactive. This doesn’t usually mean that your computer is broken or something is wrong with the website. It may only need a chance to clear the counter.
Three simple things to try
If a Crimson Circle page is not working, begin with these steps.
1. Close and reopen your browser
- Completely close (quit) thebrowser, reopen it, return to the Crimson Circle website, and sign in. To do this:
- Windows: Ctrl + Q
- Mac: Command + Q
- Restarting your device also helps and should be done every few days at minimum. When you restart your device – or, even better, fully shut it down, wait a minute, and power up again – it clears some of the temporary work clutter your device has been carrying.
2. Try a different browser
If you normally use Chrome, try Firefox, Edge, or Safari instead. Open the second browser, visit the Crimson Circle website, and sign in to your account. You are not changing your Crimson Circle account or purchasing anything again. You are simply taking a different road to the same place.
You can also try a private or incognito window. Despite the mysterious name, this is simply a temporary browser window that does not use much of the information saved during your previous visits. If the page works in a different browser or private window, this is an important clue. It tells you that your access and the Crimson Circle content are fine. The interruption is likely connected to information stored in your usual browser.
3. Give the page a fresh start
Open the page that is not working, then press:
- Windows: Ctrl + Shift + R
- Mac: Command + Shift + R
This performs a hard refresh, which tells the browser to ignore its old directions and check the road again.
If that doesn’t work, clearing your browser’s cache goes one step further by throwing away the old map so the browser can create a fresh one the next time you visit the website. To learn more about how to clear your browser’s cache, please visit our Service Center.
Why take these actions?
These steps are not random. Each result gives us another clue.
- If the page works in another browser or in a private window, the original browser is probably holding outdated or conflicting information.
- If the page does not work in any browser on one device, but it works on another device, the interruption is connected to the first device.
- If the problem continues in several browsers and on more than one device, Customer Service may need to look more closely at the product, your account, or your internet connection.
- Each test helps us narrow the search. It is like checking the lamps in a room. If only one lamp doesn’t turn on, the electricity to the house is probably still working. We can then look at that lamp, its bulb, or its plug.
If you still need help
If the problem continues, please send Customer Service as much specific information as you can, including:
- The name of the class or product
- The session, video, page, or file that is not working
- What you selected
- What happened after you selected it
- The type of device you are using
- The name of your browser
- The words of any error message
- A screenshot, if possible
- Whether you tried another browser or device, and what happened
Instead of writing only, “The video does not work,” you might tell us something like:
“I am trying to watch Session 3 of Master Up on my Windows computer using Chrome. The page opens, but nothing happens when I click on the video link. I restarted Chrome, performed a hard refresh, cleared the browser’s cache, and tried Firefox, but the video still does not play. I also tried on my tablet and had the same result. No error message appeared. I have attached a screenshot of what I see.”
That small amount of detail can save several rounds of questions and help all of us find the solution much faster.
When we say that something is working from our side, we are not saying that there is no problem. We are saying that the main door appears to be open, so we need to look more closely at the particular path between the website and your screen.
Most of the time, a fresh browser session, a different browser, or clearing your browser’s data is enough to open that path again.