Safari can't open page...

[CloudWatcher]

5. no idea, but some suggestions

Thanks. Fyi it just worked fine for me on my Mac with the latest Safari (version 15.0) on macOS 11.6 (Big Sur).

I tried both http://freep.com and https://freep.com and both worked ok (the http URL redirects to https). This was with and without an ad blocker enabled that I use (pi-hole).

I'll second the motion of installing a second browser on your Mac, that will let you see if problems are browser specific or something more generically wrong with your Mac.

So if I were you, I'd try these things (in order of difficulty) :

1) Reboot your Mac (or just turn off/on your networking). This can reset the domain name lookup cache and could clear a temporary error.

2) Download Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) and then see if it works with the failing sites. If Firefox works then there's an issue with Safari. If it fails, then Safari is in the clear and there's something tbd wrong with networking on/from your Mac.

If it's specific to Safari, I would:

3) Reset Safari -- note this will clear your logged-in status for many sites and require you to login again and do the 'do you trust this browser' dance with everyone again too.

a) reset Safari's history (main menu, "Clear history..." )
b) reset Safari's cache (Preferences / Privacy / Cookies and website data / Manage Website Data... / Remove All)

If it's still failing, then as a last resort, you can enable some debugging in Safari:

c) Enable Develop mode by checking this: (Preferences / Advanced / Show Develop menu in menu bar).

Then under the Develop menu, "Show Javascript console" and see if there are some error messages that might give a hint.

Hope this helps, if the problem persists please include the exact message being displayed by Safari when it fails!

Good luck