Ads are coming

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

The problem I have when scrolling on a desktop is the ads are not populating immediately when I click on a page, so when I click a sub-forum, and then go to click a topic, the ad pops in just before I click, and I end up clicking on a topic I didn't intend to. Super annoying.

[Brock Beauchamp]

7 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

The problem I have when scrolling on a desktop is the ads are not populating immediately when I click on a page, so when I click a sub-forum, and then go to click a topic, the ad pops in just before I click, and I end up clicking on a topic I didn't intend to. Super annoying.

Yeah, I'm going to try to address ad loading speed in the coming weeks. It's something that bothers me, too, and I need to look into why it's happening.

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 minutes ago, gebc1997 said:

This keeps happening to me this morning on my iPad .   It has happened before on other sites that were loaded with ads.

What version of iPad are you using?

[gebc1997]

2 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

What version of iPad are you using? And are you using Safari on the iPad?

15.3.1,  and yes I'm using Safari

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, gebc1997 said:

15.3.1,  and yes I'm using Safari

And what iPad hardware are you running? Base model (what year?), iPad Air, iPad Pro, etc. 

[gebc1997]

Just now, Brock Beauchamp said:

And what iPad hardware are you running? Base model (what year?), iPad Air, iPad Pro, etc. 

IPad 6th generation 

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, gebc1997 said:

IPad 6th generation 

Okay, so that hardware should easily support the site code. I see your screen is blank, what does the display do before that happens? It's almost as if an errant ad is throwing errors and putting the page load into a recursive loop or something similar.

[gebc1997]

Just now, Brock Beauchamp said:

Okay, so that hardware should easily support the site code. I see your screen is blank, what does the display do before that happens? It's almost as if an errant ad is throwing errors and putting the page load into a recursive loop or something similar.

I'm sure that's what's happening.  the page will flicker off and back on,  and then after it does it again,  it goes blank and gives me the repeated error message.   it would often happen on bref often too before I decided to pay the membership fee for bref.com

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, gebc1997 said:

I'm sure that's what's happening.  the page will flicker off and back on,  and then after it does it again,  it goes blank and gives me the repeated error message.   it would often happen on bref often too before I decided to pay the membership fee for bref.com

Strange. I'll research this more in the next day or two and see if it's a common issue, particularly on iPads (I own an iPad but don't use it for browsing, it's primarily an illustration device).

[gebc1997]

1 minute ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Strange. I'll research this more in the next day or two and see if it's a common issue, particularly on iPads (I own an iPad but don't use it for browsing, it's primarily an illustration device).

Ok cool,  im 80% browsing on iPad,  20% on my phone, and zero percent laptop or pc

[DuWayne Steurer]

I browse the site at work on my phone, and the ads don't really hinder the experience too much.  They are plentiful, make no mistake (almost between every post), but I haven't noticed any issues with slowdown or any issues with sketchy ads or sites that would raise any red flags.  

I have WAY too many subscriptions right now, and I'm looking to trim back to be honest.  If ads help pay for the site, I'd rather have to put up with the minor inconvenience of ads rather than have more and more of the sites I enjoy become subscription based.  

[yfinn6]

22 hours ago, RoCoBrewfan said:

I browse the site at work on my phone, and the ads don't really hinder the experience too much.  They are plentiful, make no mistake (almost between every post), but I haven't noticed any issues with slowdown or any issues with sketchy ads or sites that would raise any red flags.  

I have WAY too many subscriptions right now, and I'm looking to trim back to be honest.  If ads help pay for the site, I'd rather have to put up with the minor inconvenience of ads rather than have more and more of the sites I enjoy become subscription based.  

I've been on this site since the early 2000's, which probably says more about me than anything else. That being said, the ads are brutal to read between posts. If you think "it's not that bad"..  well..   good luck everyone. This site used to be clean and easy to see where new posts were being made; it's just about opposite of that now. 

I've been on random online forums for along time and know that format and hosts change and so change is inevitable. That being said, this is probably the worst migration I've seen when it comes to what used to be and what is now. I'm on a fairly well-known Badger site that has ZERO ads and the members are willing to pay money to keep it that way so that "usability" trumps making money. I understand you bought the rights and you need to make money..  but good luck. 

 

Edit -- I'm talking to wrong person. 

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

If the ads would only load simultaneously with the rest of the page content, I think it would be ok. But the pop-ups showing up a few seconds after the rest of the page content loads makes scrolling and clicking pretty cumbersome.

I realize how "first world problemy" this sounds, but I believe that right now this is a big issue, and it's driving users away. It is noticeable, especially in the game threads. Brock, please don't take what I'm saying as a criticism of what you are doing here, because there are plenty of noticeable improvements, but the ads, at least the way they are populated on the site, absolutely suck.

[Brock Beauchamp]

58 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

If the ads would only load simultaneously with the rest of the page content, I think it would be ok. But the pop-ups showing up a few seconds after the rest of the page content loads makes scrolling and clicking pretty cumbersome.

I realize how "first world problemy" this sounds, but I believe that right now this is a big issue, and it's driving users away. It is noticeable, especially in the game threads. Brock, please don't take what I'm saying as a criticism of what you are doing here, because there are plenty of noticeable improvements, but the ads, at least the way they are populated on the site, absolutely suck.

No offense taken, I appreciate constructive feedback. I'll contact the ad provider immediately about this and shorten topic length (I bumped it up a few days ago). I'll see if I can't mitigate this issue today or tomorrow. I finally noticed this issue last night and yes, it's quite aggravating.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I've shortened the topic pages and contacted the ad provider but don't expect much movement on this for several hours, as they're on the west coast and probably won't even read my email for another three hours, much less execute the changes I've requested.

[Guest]

Just wanted to chime in. I understand the need for ads, I've done a good amount of adsense sights in the past, I get it. The problem I have is that I mostly use this site on my phone, exclusively the forum, mostly in game threads. I literally have an ad between every message. When using mobile the only time I've seen more ads on a page are like illegal streaming sites and hacked sites that just spit popups at you. It's honestly made me stop using the site almost entirely, but I really do love this community and would hate to see it slowly die off and move to reddit etc. as I've been coming here to read the thoughts of others since forever. I followed the rise of Weeks, Braun, Fielder, etc. here. I just .. wanted to share before I logged off for good.

[BruisedCrew]

The ads make scrolling through threads very clunky, especially on my ipad, which is what I usually use. 

I don't know if it's the ads but some times I have trouble posting because the site bogs down and I can enter complete sentences before the words appear.

[nate82]

Maybe add a donate button for the website.  Set up a PayPal or whatever account for people to donate to.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

18 hours ago, BruisedCrew said:

The ads make scrolling through threads very clunky, especially on my ipad, which is what I usually use. 

I don't know if it's the ads but some times I have trouble posting because the site bogs down and I can enter complete sentences before the words appear.

The biggest issue for me continues to be that the ads populate at a different rate than the rest of the site. It makes clicking on topics and scrolling pretty tough. The issue isn't nearly as bad on Twins Daily, which tells me there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope you can fix things here, Brock.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

The biggest issue for me continues to be that the ads populate at a different rate than the rest of the site. It makes clicking on topics and scrolling pretty tough. The issue isn't nearly as bad on Twins Daily, which tells me there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope you can fix things here, Brock.

Yeah, thanks for reminding me about this. I contacted the ad provider and they ghosted me (not a normal occurrence, I promise you). I'll reach out again and try to get this resolved.

[Brock Beauchamp]

On 4/21/2022 at 6:47 AM, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

The biggest issue for me continues to be that the ads populate at a different rate than the rest of the site. It makes clicking on topics and scrolling pretty tough. The issue isn't nearly as bad on Twins Daily, which tells me there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope you can fix things here, Brock.

The ad provider keeps shifting the burden of this on to our site, and I'm not sure they're wrong.

So that means this won't be an immediate fix but I always planned to move us to a faster, better distributed server system but haven't done it because it's bloody expensive. This is probably the kick in the pants I need to move in that direction more quickly.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

1 minute ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The ad provider keeps shifting the burden of this on to our site, and I'm not sure they're wrong.

So that means this won't be an immediate fix but I always planned to move us to a faster, better distributed server system but haven't done it because it's bloody expensive. This is probably the kick in the pants I need to move in that direction more quickly.

Why would there be a difference between this site and Twins Daily, though? Aren't they basically the same template, more or less? The ad issue is demonstrably worse here. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Why would there be a difference between this site and Twins Daily, though? Aren't they basically the same template, more or less? The ad issue is demonstrably worse here. 

Yeah, that's why I'm less than confident in their answer. Twins Daily is on a faster server but its traffic load is *much* higher so any extra hardware bandwidth would surely be consumed by the additional traffic.

Anyway, I haven't given up on this, I'm still exploring options, it's just taking longer than I hoped.

[greeg35]

Maybe turn off the ads until this is figured out.  I'm down to 1 or less visits a day, down from about 5.  That will get lower as soon as I curb the automatic/reflexive shortcut clicking impulse ?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Okay, we're trying more things to address this issue. Are all of you having this on mobile only or is it also affecting desktop browsing?

Personally, I've only seen significant bounce on mobile so let me know if some of you have *extreme* bouncing on desktop. Right this moment, I'm not worried about a little bit of bounce, which is normal, I'm concerned with the show-stopping issue some of you seem to be having regularly.