Can't view sales and wants ads

I can no longer view sales and wants ads - I get the listings and click on the links but just get the title and no content. It used to work fine. Do I need to do something different?

I suppose you have tried logging on again?

David

Not sure what would cause that. Logged out I get the description, and logging in reveals the contact details as well. The server is working OK for me (Windows 10 & Firefox) at the moment.

There doesn't seem to be anything special about wanted and for-sale ads. As far as I can tell they're hosted on this website in the same way as ordinary posts, so it's unlikely an Ad Blocker or Anti-virus software knocked them out.

The only thing I can think of is a cache is corrupt. To increase Internet performance all the computers involved keep temporary copies of pages to hand so that repeat requests are served locally from memory rather than the whole page retrieval process being repeated in full. Much quicker for the browser to display a page it stored on your computer rather than exchange a bunch of messages with a remote web server to get a fresh copy.

The mechanism is called caching and it can go wrong. Although self-correcting in that cached data is time limited and will eventually be replaced automatically, this can take a while. May be worth taking steps likely to force flush caches, for example, in increasing order of bothersome-ness:

• Shutdown and restart the Browser. (Clears per session cache)
• Clear the Browser's History and Cookies. (But this will cause it to forget other stuff you might want to keep like passwords.)
• Try a different browser.  (It might use a different cache or recreate a common one from scratch.)
• Log out from the website and don't create a remembered login. (Forces refresh on login and possibly a clean up on log out.)
• Shutdown and restart your computer. (Forces the computer to clear out all it's caches. In theory! Unfortunately Windows 10 and 11 don't do this - to speed up booting and login, they always cache what happened last time and use it again. To force Windows to clear caches, start in Repair Mode, login, and then log out without doing anything. (Before attempting a repair, Windows resets all the caches in case they are corrupt.) Then login to Windows as normal.
• Shutdown and restart your Router. (These also cache data causing very odd symptoms if a cache is damaged.)

The old advice 'have you tried turning it off and on again' works because it forces the computer to rebuild a multitude of buffers, caches, queues, stacks, lists and other structures it needs to manage the system's internals. But note what I said about Windows - customers want fast reboots and don't care how they're achieved!  (Until it goes wrong...)

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 26/05/2022 12:07:27

Thanks,

I'm using Firefox 100.0.2 with Ubuntu 20.04.4. No cookies or history saved, and no logins or passwords remembered. Machine gets restarted at least 6 times a day because it boots so quickly, so no reason to leave it switched on when not in use. Everything is up-to-date, but I still can't view the ads. I've tried opening the links in a new window, but the same thing. Otherwise, the rest of the site is fine, but I will load up a Windows machine and see if the problem persists with different browsers.

This seems to be a recent thing.

Ah!......Since you mentioned it, I just disabled ad blocking entirely and everything is now working. The odd thing is I was getting ads anyhow, as the site was allowed so never gave this a thought.

Contradiction in terms with Windows. These are quite separate actions if Fast-Startup is enabled (which it is by default but can be turned off **)

- Shutdown saves most of the machine state (including Windows and perhaps other caches) then turns the machine off. A subsequent boot uses the saved machine state (Fast Startup).

- Restart dumps the machine state and reboots the machine from scratch.

** most people wouldn't but may be necessary if a boot-manager is used.

Glad you pinned it down to the adblocker.

I'm normally on Firefox 100.0.02 and the latest Ubuntu (22.04 as of last week) with AdBlocker Ultimate. I normally allow ads on this sight but they happen to be blocked at the moment because of the recent upgrade. My blocker has no effect on the forums for sale or wanted, all OK here. Odd!

Gold star to Peter for spotting my misuse of the term 'restart'. I meant power off and on again at the mains, not an OS restart.