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Courses
Courses
Choosing a course is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make! View our courses and see what our students and lecturers have to say about the courses you are interested in at the links below.
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University Life
University Life
Each year more than 4,000 choose University of Galway as their University of choice. Find out what life at University of Galway is all about here.
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About University of Galway
About University of Galway
Since 1845, University of Galway has been sharing the highest quality teaching and research with Ireland and the world. Find out what makes our University so special – from our distinguished history to the latest news and campus developments.
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Colleges & Schools
Colleges & Schools
University of Galway has earned international recognition as a research-led university with a commitment to top quality teaching across a range of key areas of expertise.
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Research & Innovation
Research & Innovation
University of Galway’s vibrant research community take on some of the most pressing challenges of our times.
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Business & Industry
Guiding Breakthrough Research at University of Galway
We explore and facilitate commercial opportunities for the research community at University of Galway, as well as facilitating industry partnership.
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Alumni & Friends
Alumni & Friends
There are 128,000 University of Galway alumni worldwide. Stay connected to your alumni community! Join our social networks and update your details online.
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Community Engagement
Community Engagement
At University of Galway, we believe that the best learning takes place when you apply what you learn in a real world context. That's why many of our courses include work placements or community projects.
Workarounds
Sometimes, it takes a while to resolve a problem but, in the mean-time there is something you can do to mitigate the problem.
Any such work-arounds will be outlined here.
Browser not showing recent changes
If changes have been made to the site's images, JavaScript or CSS style sheets, they may not appear on your browser immediately. This is because modern browsers like to remember (aka 'cache') the parts of the website that don't change often for faster loading.
A hard refresh is a way to clear the browser's cache for the current page.
This is usually enough to force the most recent version of the page to load but sometimes you need to clear the cache and then reload your page.
I cleared my cache recently and now I have to do it all the time.
What is Browser cache?
Browser cache is a small bit of storage space, ready to be filled up with images and supporting files, used by the webpages you visit in your browser. The idea is that these files can be loaded faster from your hard disk, the next time you visit that webpage, than if you were to download them again.
Why does it exist?
This feature was very useful when we connected to the internet with dial-up modems, at speeds of 0.01mbps, but now that connection speeds of 250-500mbps are common, it's not needed as much. Seeing an old version of a page is now an annoyance - web content changes so quickly, now, you don't want to see the page as it looked the last time you visited!
Modern browsers still use cache - but mostly for the files that don't change all that often on your site (e.g. images, css rules, javascript), and then, only if it has space (the space the browser reserves for it cache is quite small [up to 80 MB] so it fills up quickly).
Why do we have to clear it sometimes?
If a change is made to a website, in one of the pages that browsers normally cache, then you won't see the change until the browser decides to delete the cached version and reload it from the source - this could be days or weeks. So to speed things up, you are sometimes advised to clear your cache. Then, you'll get the most up-to-date version of the webpage you visit afterwards.
Can clearing the cache cause problems?
When you clear your cache, the browser will begin caching everything it encounters until the cache is full agailn - so if you immediately visit pages that you plan to visit often, parts (or all) of these pages will be cached by the browser. And, the next time you visit the page, those cached parts will be shown by your browser instead of the latest version of the page. This is supposed to speed up page loads but sometimes this helpful feature is more of a hinderance.
The last thing you need, as a web editor, is for your browser to cache a page on T4. If this happened, you could make a change to some content and click Update & Approve but, instead of making a round-trip to the CMS server (to save your changes), your browser would show you the version of the next page that it has in its cache. To you, it would look as though your changes had saved but, in reality, the browser had never told the CMS to save your changes!
How do I prevent that from happening?
After you clear your cache, browse through, say, the RTE news site for a while so that your browser will fill its empty cache space with images from there instead. This will stop pages you visit often from being cached.
Cache considerations for web editors
Some websites, use images to show information (e.g. the SUMS timetable). If that image changes regularly, the web editor needs to ensure it has a different filename every week - otherwise the chances are high that last week's image (cached from the last time they visited) will be shown in everyone's browser. This can happen even if your cache is full (browsers can make space in the cache automatically, at any time, so you never know when it will cache an image).
How to Clear your browser's cache
Warning: Clearing the cache can have annoying consequences. After clearing your cache, you should browse a news site for a small while to fill up the browser's cache space that you just cleared down. If you don't do this, your browser may cache parts (or all) of pages you visit regularly - and if this happens, your browser will begin showing you those pages as they looked the day you cleared your cache - instead of showing their current contents.
Desktop Browsers (in descending order of popularity):
Chrome: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Select ‘Cached Images and Files’ (only) (3) Click ‘Clear Data’.
Safari: Option + ⌘ + E or else Right-click on "Safari" on the top left of the screen and select "Empty Cache".
Firefox: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Select ‘Cache’ (only) (3) Click ‘Ok’.
Edge: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Select ‘Cached Images and files’ (only) (3) Click ‘Clear Now’.
Opera: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Change ‘Time range’ to ‘All time’ (3) Select ‘Cached images and files’ (only) (4) Click ‘Clear Data’.
Brave: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Change ‘Time range’ to ‘All time’ (3) Select ‘Cached images and fields’ (only) (4) Click ‘Clear data’.
Vivaldi: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Change ‘Delete Data for:’ to ‘All Time’ (3) Check ‘Cache’ (4) Click ‘Delete’.
IE: (1) Ctrl-Shift-Del (2) Select ‘Temporary Internet files and website files’ (only) (3) Click ‘Delete’.
iPhone:
Safari: (1) Open Settings (2) Scroll down (not very far) to Safari & click on it (3) Scroll down to the bottom & click 'Advanced' (4) Click 'Website Data' (5) Click 'Remove All Website Data' Confirm by clicking 'Remove Now'.
Chrome: (1) Open Chrome (2) '...' Menu (bottom-right) (3) Settings (4) Privacy (5) Clear Browsing Data (6) Ensure 'Cached Images and Files' is ticked (7) Click 'Clear Browsing Data' (8) Confirm by clicking 'Clear Browsing Data' (9) Click 'Done' (top-right).
Android:
Android Browser: (1) Tap the menu. (2) Tap 'Settings'. (3) Scroll to Privacy Settings. (4) Tap 'Clear Browsing Data'. (5) Check the boxes for 'Cookies and site data' and 'Cached images and files'. (6) Tap 'Clear data'.
Chrome: (1) Tap the 3-dot Menu (top right). (2) Tap History > Clear browsing data. (3) Check the boxes for 'Cookies and site data' and 'Cached images and files'. (4) Tap 'Clear data'.
How to perform a Hard Refresh
The easiest way to perform a hard refresh is with the following keyboard shortcuts:
Windows:
Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi: Ctrl + F5 or else Ctrl + Shift ⇧ + R
IE, Opera: Ctrl + F5
Mac:
Safari: (1) Option + ⌘ + E (2) Refresh the page (⌘ + R)
Chrome, Firefox, IE: ⌘ + ⇧ + R
Opera: Option + ⌘ + R
Mobile:
All Browsers: (1) Clear the cache (instructions above). (2) Reload the page.
Why do I get an error when I save a course I have edited
The Error
When editing a course, you may encounter the following error, when you try to save it:
This is because the course was last edited in version 7.4 of the CMS. We are now on version 8.3, which is far less tolerant of editing rule breaches.
Whenever you encounter this error, you know that someone put more than the maximum number of characters into one of the course fields. Version 7 let them away with it but the latest version (which lets you know that your text is too long as soon as you move away from the field) expects to already know about any problem fields by the time you try to save. If it hasn’t detected the problem (because you never went near the field that has the too-long text, while you were editing), the save fails. At this point T4 knows that something has gone wrong, but it is not sure why – hence the strange error that says nothing.
How to find the problem
To identify the field(s) with too-long text, do the following:
- Edit your course content type
(If you’ve just encountered the error, you’re already editing it – so just scroll up to the top) - Click into the first field (‘name’)
- Click into each field in turn - do this until you notice the background of one of the fields going light-red, when you leave it. You’ve found a field that contains more text than there is space for.
- Correct the problem (for more information on this, see below).
- Continue to click into each field until you get to the bottom (just in case there are more errors)
- Save and approve your changes.
Fixing the problem
Now that the problem field has gone light-red, you’ll notice some red text at the bottom. E.g.: 
This tells you the maximum number of characters for that field.
Reduce the text length to below the limit – the red background colour will disappear as soon as you do.
Tip: If you wish to count the characters quickly, install the bookmarklet we provide on your browser (see item #5 on this list: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/t4/bookmarklets/#useful)
What to do if the site structure won't load
If the site structure won't load (and all you see is a 'Loading - please wait' message), wait a full minute.
If it loads eventually, make sure you don't have too many sections expanded - click their minus sign icon to collapse them. This will make your site structure open quicker, next time.
If it still hasn't loaded after a minute, then follow these instructions.
