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.

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.

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.

How do they help DSF? Pay-per-click?

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.

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"?

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.

And there is the fact that a lot of us do play D&D.

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.

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.

touche, i'll concede my point.

i was just so disappointed when i saw "wholesale dragons". i want a pet dragon so badly

I liked the first color scheme with mathced the rest of the board more, than the currnet red one...

Yes, the colour. Is it possible to make googles background powder blue or whatever our colour is called? This one hurts my eyes.

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

I clicked on one of the adds just to check it out. They had WizKids D&D Miniatures listed there.

I clicked. all of them. twice.

well. that's my work for the day. call me if something explodes.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My 2 is that I like those ads better at the top than when they were on the side.

I like the top solution... But what about changing the background color to black?

I prefer the ads at the front of the page much more than having them at the sidebar.

The ads at the top are good, and I'll echo that I like that better than the sidebar (running at 1024x768). The background color of the ads makes them standout a bit without being obtrusive, IMO

To have a few more in that spot, is it possible to move the Control Panel information somewhere else?

Yes, it's possible to move the control panel stuff, and I might consider doing that if I can find the time over the weekend. I'm satisfied with the way things are right now, so my motivation level is a little low -- I totally agree with everyone that likes it better at the top.

The top layout fits, the colours are acceptable too. I like!

It may be smaller than the sidebar, but beeing placed next to the private messages-link can´t hurt.

Well now that i look at the top, i see the adsand they don't disrupt me.

Yeah, the 24" Dell LCD that is my primary display is definitely easy on the eyes. It relegated my old 20" non-widescreen to secondary display duty.

Bastard.

Don't mind me, I'll be over here, cursing my shitty 15" monitor from that's been in existance for ten years.

I've been clicking on each new ad that I see, and occasionally going back to the old ones to go back and look at things that caught my eye...

Is there a benefit for DSF, if I revisit the same linked site through the ads? IE, if I made a point of going to each site once a day to do my part, does that help the follow througjh count or does google track IPs?

Google does track IPs, it being a vital part of preventing click fraud and all that jazz. What this translates to for multiple clicks from the same IP that aren't considered fraudulent, I don't know.

Just, as I alluded to before, don't get overeager in "supporting the site". While I'm sure we're way below the threshold, I wasn't kidding about the possibility of getting someone's AdSense account cancelled by too much "clicking for the sake of clicking". TANSTAAFL and all that jazz, no one wants to pay for someone they don't know supporting some site that they don't know by clicking ads they pay Google per click for.

(My personal take is that they knew the risks when they decided to advertise, particularly on a per-click model, but this is why Google would care)

~J

Kagetenshi is exactly right, but if you do have interest in one of the sites that advertises through the adsense ads on the DSF pages, clicking through to them from the ad link will benefit us. Typically advertising networks like Google's AdSense will "count" a click from the same IP, but only after a certain amount of time has passed. Could be 12 hours, could be 24 hours, I don't know how the details work with Google.

What it boils down to is this: If the advertisers interest you, please feel free to click through to them, but don't feel obligated at all to do it just for the sake of supporting the site.

Well we like the sight so of course we want to support it. I like the new place and color of the adds, minimal if any disruption.

Did Google change the way their ads display? I'm mostly getting graphical ads for vehicles now.

Due in part to talks with AOL, Google now does graphical adverts.

(My understanding is that they did before, but on a much more limited basis)

~J

Google has indeed recently started doing some graphical ads as well. There is a preference that you can select in the adsense admin system that toggles text only, graphical only, or both. I currently have it set for both. We'll see how it goes, if they're too annoying I'll switch it to text only, but right now it's not bugging me too much.

Wow, I haven't even noticed the ads. How clueless am I?

Do they only show on certain pages?

All the forum pages, at the top next to the DS logo.

Hmmm, I see nothing at all in IE or Firefox. Could a firewall be blocking it?

If you have Javascript disabled you won't see it. Google ads use Javascript.

Wouldn't those ads that pay for just showing up be a better option? Money-wise?

If the click-through rate is truly abysmal, possibly.

~J