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 Heads Up About Google Ads |
 Dec 16 2005, 03:37 AM
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#1
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The Ghost in our Machine  Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52  |
Just wanted to post a head's up that we're going to be adding Google Ads to the forums within the next week or so. I know that most people (myself included) really dislike the clutter of ads and I'm going to do my best to keep the disruption to a minimum. That said, the simple fact of the matter is that this site consumes a pretty significant amount of resources at our hosting facility, for which we have been paying nothing. In the past 5 years I think we've made a couple of token payments that may have totalled $150 -- we've definitely gotten our money's worth many times over. I'm going to experiment with these ads to try and help defray the costs that our provider is incurring in hosting our site, and I welcome feedback about this as long as it's constructive.
Thanks. |
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Dec 16 2005, 12:18 PM
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#2
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Running, running, running Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,220 Joined: 18-October 04 From: North Carolina Member No.: 6,769 |
ya know, i have to say that it's been only a day, but until i read this message, i didnt even notice the side bar with them on it. Good job.
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Dec 16 2005, 12:27 PM
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#3
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
Thanks.
In a side note, for those who really don't want to see the ads, you can very easily hide them if you're using Firefox by installing the Greasemonkey extension and installing this script: http://docs.g-blog.net/code/greasemonkey/h...adsense.user.js I would encourage people to keep the ads though, and even to click through to the sponsors occasionally if you see something that interests you. It doesn't hurt, but it could definitely help us out. |
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Dec 16 2005, 01:15 PM
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#4
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,618 Joined: 29-January 03 From: Montevideo, Uruguay. Member No.: 3,992 |
How do they help DSF? Pay-per-click?
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Dec 16 2005, 01:22 PM
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#5
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
Yeah, pay per click. Right now it's in the nature of an experiment since I have no idea how much money it's going to generate or if it's even going to turn out to be worthwhile. We'll see how it goes and revisit it in a couple of months. If it's not generating anything worthwhile, I'll drop it.
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Dec 16 2005, 01:59 PM
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#6
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Running, running, running Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,220 Joined: 18-October 04 From: North Carolina Member No.: 6,769 |
this is a bit of a nitpick, but i just glanced over, and atleast on the current ad set i have, half of them are for D&D, which, well, probably isnt a good thing. Do you have any control over what's ad'd over there? or does the goggle ad just look at the METAtag info and say "yep, RPG.. must be a D&D thing"?
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Dec 16 2005, 02:10 PM
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#7
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Chrome to the Core Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,152 Joined: 14-October 03 From: ::1 Member No.: 5,715 |
It's based on the text of the forums as they are when the ads load up. There isn't much of a way to control them outside of spamming a page with "SHADOWRUN SHADOWRUN SHADOWRUN SHADOWRUN SHADOWRUN" ad nauseum.
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Dec 16 2005, 02:23 PM
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#8
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 932 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Orlando, Florida Member No.: 1,042 |
And there is the fact that a lot of us do play D&D.
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Dec 16 2005, 02:28 PM
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#9
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Running, running, running Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,220 Joined: 18-October 04 From: North Carolina Member No.: 6,769 |
yes, thats true Zen, but the fact remains that it IS a shadowrun board, and is, imo, silly to be supplying funds, indirectly as it may be, to the competition.
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Dec 16 2005, 02:38 PM
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#10
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
We have no control over the content of the ads. Google makes the best match that it can come up with based on the site and page contents and chooses ads accordingly. I have no problem with any of the ads that reference D&D. The fact is, the RPG industry as a whole can use all the help it can get and if people are interested in buying D&D merchandise I'd rather they click through our ads to get there -- that is directly helping Dumpshock.
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Dec 16 2005, 03:21 PM
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#11
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Running, running, running Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,220 Joined: 18-October 04 From: North Carolina Member No.: 6,769 |
touche, i'll concede my point.
i was just so disappointed when i saw "wholesale dragons". i want a pet dragon so badly :P |
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Dec 16 2005, 03:55 PM
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#12
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 6-August 02 From: Kiel, Germany Member No.: 3,071 |
I liked the first color scheme with mathced the rest of the board more, than the currnet red one...
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Dec 16 2005, 04:01 PM
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#13
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Awakened Asset Group: Members Posts: 4,464 Joined: 9-April 05 From: AGS, North German League Member No.: 7,309 |
Yes, the colour. Is it possible to make googles background powder blue or whatever our colour is called? This one hurts my eyes.
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Dec 16 2005, 04:01 PM
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#14
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,718 Joined: 14-September 02 Member No.: 3,263 |
I suspect that if it blends too much the fellow cutting the cheques won't be happy. :) Any, with the adds in the board actually formats on my screen better. I really like my widescreen monitor, but it does make a few things like this board look bizzare when Maximized. :wobble: |
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Dec 16 2005, 04:30 PM
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#15
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 16,898 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
IMO, it ends up being extremely disruptive to the look and feel of the place—plays eight kinds of hob with the layout. The white-and-orange-on-black look is both eyegrabbing (in a bad way) and discontinuous with the rest of the board.
My two cents: I'm not a fan. I understand what you're trying to do, but the current implementation is, in my opinion, a bad way to go about it. If the site needs funds, I'd be glad to help by donating what I can, but as it stands the ads just make this a place I don't necessarily want to spend much time. It isn't so bad on thread views, where the vast majority of my time is spent well below the level of the ads, but it is impossible to functionally use the reply screen without having the ads in field-of-vision. I'm off to see about installing adblocking in hopes that that will restore the proper formatting of this page, because I really do enjoy spending time here and I'd hate to lose interest over something like this. ~J |
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Dec 16 2005, 04:35 PM
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#16
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 132 Joined: 24-August 05 From: Luxembourg, Luxembourg Member No.: 7,611 |
I clicked on one of the adds just to check it out. They had WizKids D&D Miniatures listed there.
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Dec 16 2005, 04:48 PM
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#17
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
Let me take your issues in order: 1. I detest doing fund raisers and will shut down Dumpshock altogether before I do another one. 2. Ads are a fact of life on sites, and I chose to use text ads because they were the least disruptive that I could come up with. I suppose I could do banner ads at the top of the page, but I find those even more annoying than the simple text ads from Google. I did take y our point about the color scheme though and changed it to more closely match the rest of the site.
That's the reason I linked to the Greasemonkey script in the first place. It took me less than 3 minutes to get Firefox configured to remove Google ads. Anyone who is really offended by them like you seem to be can quite easily make them vanish. Thanks for the feedback. |
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Dec 16 2005, 05:09 PM
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#18
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Creating a god with his own hands Group: Members Posts: 1,405 Joined: 30-September 02 From: 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 Member No.: 3,364 |
I clicked. all of them. twice.
well. that's my work for the day. call me if something explodes. |
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Dec 16 2005, 05:55 PM
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#19
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 16,898 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Great way to get rid of the ads—get his AdSense account cancelled for invalid clicks :P
Any thoughts on sticking the ads flat on the top or the bottom of the page? Now that the colourscheme is fixed, my only real complaint (aside from general principle, but I can understand your dislike of fundraisers) is the way it pushes the entire right side of the page in and off-balance. ~J |
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Dec 16 2005, 06:01 PM
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#20
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
I tried it at the top the first time and didn't like the way it looked. It was additional scrolling that you had to do in order to get to the actual content and that offended my sensibilities. The bottom of the page is a no-go simple because of the damage that it would do to the click-through rate -- it'd be better not to do it at all in that case. I'll put it back up on the top of the page and leave it there for a while so I can get some comments, but I don't think anyone is going to like it any more than I did. At the resolutions I run at, the ad on the right hand side has not negatively impacted the site layout for me, but I guess at very low resolutions it could. |
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Dec 16 2005, 06:11 PM
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#21
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
Ok, I managed to finagle it into the header at the very top of the page so that it doesn't impact the layout of the page at all. I'm reasonably happy with the result, though it only shows 2 ads at a time now so I suspect the clickthrough rate will be negatively impacted. We'll give it a shot this way for a few days anyway and see how it goes.
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Dec 16 2005, 06:28 PM
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#22
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Decker on the Threshold Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,922 Joined: 14-March 04 Member No.: 6,156 |
Well it's been playing merry hell with *my* screen layout, but that's mostly because I have my screen set to 800x600 resolution ('cause my vision sucks). Tossing the ads on the top looks at least a little better; as it was the actual forum posts were getting squeezed down to a newsprint column in width.
I'm a supporter of ads as a necessary evil, but it was getting really annoying to actually see the content of the page after the ads were done screwing it up. |
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Dec 16 2005, 06:33 PM
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#23
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
It seems to just fit at 1024x768, and honestly that's the lowest resolution I'm prepared to design for. I know the page header flows really poorly at 800x600, but there's not a whole lot I can do to fix it. I recommend using Firefox and the method for hiding the ads that I linked to above.
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Dec 16 2005, 06:42 PM
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#24
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 16,898 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Much less intrusive, IMO, though the width issue is as you say.
For reference, I'm running at 1440x960 with the browser at full-width and ~85% height. Maybe I'm just sensitive to that kind of thing. (Also, for those using Safari you can use PithHelmet with a rule matching googlesyndication.com and blocking everything from it under the Filter tab.) ~J |
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Dec 16 2005, 06:47 PM
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#25
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The Ghost in our Machine Group: Retired Admins Posts: 166 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Unlisted Datastore Member No.: 52 |
I have to force myself to think about resolutions when things like this come up. I don't usually consider them since I'm running 1920x1200 on my primary display and 1600x1200 on my econdary. :)
Thanks for the info for Safari users. |
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 13th April 2022 - 03:30 AM |
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