We've all experienced this. You're out in the world trying to load a web page on your smartphone, and you get the message: "Server not available." Here's the fix that works practically every time.

Turn off your WiFi.

That's right. Our mobile devices are adept at grabbing any network that happens to be in our vicinity. That's great, except that often those options are not functional for us. Even the pervasive Xfinity WiFi is a hit or miss option. So you've hitched your wagon to a horse that's going nowhere.

Since our phones tend to give WiFi priority over cellular, our connection to a funky WiFi network often leads to, in reality, no connection at all - except that we don't realize it. So we can't load that web page or access that service, and we don't know why.

Sometimes you need to turn off WiFi for better connectivity.

On an iPhone, go to Settings > WiFi and turn it off via the top slide button. This forces your phone to use the cellular network, and your web page or online service should now load seamlessly (granted that you do have cellular connectivity in that location).

Once you're done with the session, remember to turn WiFi back on, so it's available when you return home or to a useable connection.

You can share your thoughts at the TDS Facebook page, where I'll post this story for discussion.