[SFSkol]

(No need to yell, dear.)
The most common user comment I received as IT support was: “It worked for me yesterday, but now it’s not. And I didn’t do anything!”

And yes, you most likely did not. There are so many background updates; operating system, security patches, anti-virus suites, mail portal, browser, Ad blocker filters, browser plug-ins, social networking add-ons, etc, that may come unannounced to your equipment. True, TOTV is using an older vBulletin system, version 4, I believe, not updated since 2010 (5.1 is out now), but it is an older tried and true (ugly) interface. I’ve never seen one littered with soooo many ads. This type of BB system either works or doesn’t. Isolated issues that particular users have must be related to their equipment, otherwise, everyone, thousands of casual users, would be having problems. For your free usage, it works quite well.

In regards to your four mentioned, I believe unrelated issues.

1. Suddenly, no classifieds – likely due to a filter installation/update for your browser. Or some sort of Malware / Adblocker protection. Could be a browser update. All these utilize some sort filters to protect you from going to bad sites. Anti-virus suites include a web protection feature, again a set of filters. Most people don’t realize that web protection filters have ad blocking features and usually reply that they don’t have a blocker installed. SpyBot is a package that comes to mind that installs web filters directly on your PC to a primary Windows system file and effects all your network connections, browsers included, other security protection software do the same. AdBlocker filters must be installed for each browser and can be disabled for specific domains/websites.

( Wasn’t this a good thing; suddenly no ads? TOTV sometimes took minutes to load before, now seconds. I install it on all my client PCs, but I also explain how to disable it)

2. and no contact page. - Likely a coding error on a web page, HTML document Possibly due to not applying a software patch to some element of vBulliten by TOTV. Or an incompatible HTML document version. It was eventually fixed.

3. I'm fairly certain they can do the same for the classifieds – A completely different issue. A web page is made up of HTML text that instructs your browser how to display the text document. It contains text instructions to go to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, (or AdsRUs.com), internet location and get an ad to display. Blockers and other filters say, no don’t go there, and no ad appears. These major ad database internet locations don’t change too often, (difficult since billions of web pages have them hard coded already) so it’s easy to block them, Occasionally the ad providers change their location (they despise blockers) and the blocking filters need to be updated.

The issue with TOTV classified ads is although the pictures are located locally, you can see a thumbnail, they are also tied into the major ad providers and then get blocked. See 4 below. (I’ve only taken a cursory look at their HTML code.)

4. Also, I am suddenly getting classifieds on my Facebook page from TOTV – Welcome to the world of targeted advertising. It appears that TOTV has shared their classified ad database with Facebook. The facebook web bots have finally connected you World with you The Villages.

In summary, there is no reason for TOTV to fix anything, as nothing is broken. The complaints should be a to why they haven't upgraded to a more user-friendly version.

BTW – I am not affiliated with TOTV, or The Villages, but have been in the computer world since the 70’s. Over the years I’ve also maintained a couple of small Bulletin Boards. Just trying to clear up, or add to any confusion.