Have you ever gone out of town to a conference or on vacation but you just can't seem to get on the WiFi? There is a reason and a solution. Many hotels, restaurants and coffee shops use something called a Captive Portal. The Captive Portal collects information from you, such as an email address, a phone number, or sometimes credit card information in order to access their WiFi. There is a built-in feature in macOS that is supposed to display the Captive Portal when you connect to an establishment's WiFi, but it doesn't always appear when it should. The work around is to open Chrome or Firefox and go to the website https://captive.apple.com
Sometimes the Captive Portal appears like this:
All you need to do is open Chrome or Firefox once you have connected to the establishment's WiFi and visit https://captive.apple.com
After entering https://captive.apple.com into a Chrome or Firefox the captive portal will appear like this:
In some instances you may have to wait a minute or two and reload the page before the Captive Portal appears.