Baffled by my browser

I restored a recent backup of a site on my local computer and for some reason, Firefox will not display anything. There are no error messages in the apache logs or PHP logs. I went through my usual diagnostics - emptied cache and cookies, restarted the browser, turned off all extensions. And, it has no problem viewing the live site.

After uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox (on Ubuntu 24.04), I still haven't found the problem. To eliminate the server settings, I opened up another browser - several in fact - and they can view the local site without any problems.

Next, I installed a fresh copy of ImpressCMS and copied the modules from the production site in, and installed them without any problems. Change the database the site pointed at - blank page.

I've emptied the sessions table in the restored database - no change.

Any other things you can think of?

I'm still baffled, but I have a way to view this local site with Firefox. I changed the hostname in mainfile.php from localhost to laptop-steve.local {(the computer name).local} and it worked. ??? Other sites on this same laptop don't have to be addressed this way (the fresh install of ImpressCMS I used to troubleshoot didn't).

I seem to recall a long time ago, I had similar behaviour on Chrome at that time (several years back). Does it work if you add a slash '/' at the end of the address?

What is the exact version of ImpressCMS you're having the issue with?

Adding the trailing backslash didn't have any impact in Firefox and the other browsers didn't care.

It is an older version - but not too old - 1.3.11. I did a completely new install of the core, then added the module folders, themes, and uploads. At that point, Firefox would open the site when the URL was localhost. Once I switched to the site's database, Firefox wouldn't load the site when the URL was localhost/xxx. Copies of other sites opened up just fine.

There has to be something in the data stream that comes from the db that Firefox just stops loading the page (all pages on the site - so in the header). Unless the URL is changed to computername.local/xxx for this site only.

There are better things to figure out and I'll just adjust and move on for now.

1.3.11 dates back to 6 years ago https://github.com/ImpressCMS/impresscms/releases/tag/v1.3.11 so it might be considered ancient in web terms.

But you're right, there are better things to do with the limited time we have available.