How to Clear Away the Cookie Crumbs!

by1Rudy1

1.7K followers

3 years ago

As we work on our websites, you will find that some plugins help you with cleaning the cache, compress images, etc. You can do this by automatically in the settings, or set a schedule for clearing out the residue.

Yet, we run into problems when we post a new blog or add a new image, and the old one appears.

No matter what we do, refresh the page (that DOES help sometimes), clear the cache of the website, or simply start over.

Raise your hand or nod if you have ever sent any pages/posts to the trash and started over (I have the magic mirror and can see all of you raising your hand or nodding…).

Here is something I want to share with you.

I use the Firefox browser. In my settings, I have the box marked to delete cookies and data history every time I go offline.

Contrary to belief, that is not absolute.

If that were the case, I would never have to do the following steps.

For you Firefox users:

Open your browser and loo at the top left of your screen. In the upper left, you probably see commands: File, Edit, View, History, Bookmark, Tools, Help

If not, right-click the empty space to the right of the tab, and select ‘Menu Bar’. You will see a flicker and the menu bar appears above the tabs.

Hey, some people don’t know this exists…I don’t know what that isn’t a default…but anyway…

Select Tools and a new page opens.

Here is where you can do some deep cleaning.

In the left column, select Privacy and Security. To the right, you will see options you can select or de-select to customize your security and browser privacy.

Scroll down and you will see Cookies and Data. You can select to delete cookies and data each time you exit Firefox.

To the right, you will see three blocks, Clear Data, Manage Data, and Manage Exceptions.

Click on ‘Clear data’.

A Drop-down box appears with an alert to your actions when deleting.

Clearing all cookies and site data stored by Firefox may sign you out of websites and remove offline web content. Clearing cache data will not affect your logins.

Cookies and Site Data (0 bytes)

You may get signed out of websites if cleared

Cached Web Content (2.3 MB)

Will require websites to reload images and data

Clearing cache data will not affect your logins.

To emphasize, clearing cache data will NOT affect your logins because they are held in a secure block on your computer.

Now skip down to your History.

There are two ways to clear history. One is through the History tab in the address bar at the top of your browser page, the second one is this History.

Both can be effective.

My history is not saved. It says so where I clicked the box to remove after exiting Firefox.

My history is also removed once I exit Firefox (go offline).

The history tab is excellent for when you are working on your website, and you want to see the final result of your work, not snippets of the same thing you tried to delete and replace 50 times…

Clear your history by using the history tab. A drop-down will appear with the option to clear recent history. Select clear recent history, and another drop-down menu appears.

On this menu, you have the option to choose how much history do you want to remove, last hour, last two hours, last four hours, today, and my favorite, Everything.

Here’s what you will be able to select when clearing your history.

All selected items will be cleared. This action cannot be undone.

History

Browsing & Download History

Active Logins

Form & Search History

Cookies

Cache

Data

Site Preferences

Offline Website Data

(Note: This is copied from my word doc, the tiny selection boxes did not paste with text)

Select the options you want to delete when you clear your history.

I select all except for Saved Logins.

Then click OK, and if you see a popup line graph appear, that means you are seeing the removal of history.

I find it amazing how much smoother my computer runs after clearing out the history and cache.

Now, when I work on my website, I can see the new changes I made, new posts added, even the new uploaded images. They are all in place.

The next time your computer is running slow, ask yourself when the last time you emptied the trash, including the recycle bin, your history, and your cache.