Troubleshooting
Known issues and fixes
The problems that come up more than once, and what each one actually is.
Licence activation fails on Windows
Windows Firewall can block a new application from making outbound connections, which stops activation reaching the licence server.
Allow FEWD on both Private and Public networks. It may not be listed by name — look for a string of numbers.
The preview shows a stack trace
Usually a dev server that has lost its project: it answers every request with an error page, and that page loads, so for a long time nothing treated it as a failure.
FEWD now reads the page and says the dev server is serving a different folder in plain words when every file it names sits outside your project. Stop the server and reconnect the project.
An error in your own code is left alone to be read as written, which is the other thing this might be.
The preview is empty
If nothing is answering at that address, the preview says No dev server is running at that address and offers a Start the dev server button. Take it — it uses the terminal you already have open.
If it still does not load, check that terminal: the server may be failing to start, or may be on a port FEWD could not follow. The poller gives up after a minute and says so rather than retrying silently.
A dev server is still running after I closed the project
Fixed. FEWD remembers the port as well as the path, so a server whose project folder moved while it was running is still stopped.
Servers you started yourself in the terminal are still yours to stop.
A file opened as code instead of in Creative Mode
If it is a .njk, .liquid, .hbs, or a Hugo-style layouts/*.html, this is
deliberate. Creative Mode rebuilds a file from its structure tree, and template
syntax does not survive that.
FEWD detects eagerly on purpose. Opening plain HTML as code is annoying, visible and reversible; rewriting your template is silent and the work is gone.
Push is refused
You are behind your remote. Get changes first.
An update never arrives
See Updates — there is a specific fault affecting 1.9.2’s feed, and a one-time manual download that clears it.
A project opens empty
Its folder has moved or been deleted. The welcome screen marks it Moved or deleted; clicking it asks where the folder went.
Astro project creation fails on Windows
Your project folder is inside a WSL filesystem. It is always this.
Windows setup has the explanation and the fix.