Deleting Adverts so that posts can be read

Steve,

I am a member on various forums and I agree with you and Steve W, about the principals of a forum.

However, I think this forum is being run in a commercial business form, rather then a true forum principal. Yes, there are other commercial businesses who have forums of their own which are left to run themselves. However, MHS is a commercial media based company who have to try and make money out of every element of their business, be it subcribers, advertisers as well as their own shop. I may disagree with some of their own shop idea, but that is my opinion.

I do not know who advised them about setting up their sites, and the rights and wrongs of it. It is still more commercial based then other sites. In the custom design, there may be back office elements which may be lacking on the off the shelf packages. This may be been one of the reasons to choose custom, over off the shelf.

My point is, they have already spent a lot of money on the sites creation, rightly or wrongly. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. May be they could or should have used a better forum software. But now that the money is spent across all their sites, what should they do?

Ketan at ARC.

Well, since you've asked, I'll make a suggestion, which is that it's time for a strategy meeting. Inevitably there will be an ongoing maintenance charge for running the site, and possibly quite a high one judging from some stories I've heard. It's relatively straightforward to install forum software, and not even that difficult to put adverising links in it. And once they are there, the maintenance costs are minimal. So my suggestion is to stop pouring good money after bad, as far as the forum is concerned, and actually save some in the long run. And I'm only saying this based on experience; a few of us went around this loop several years ago, and are rather better pleased with the results - we get zero complaints about forum navigation and use now, and zero software maintenance costs - a major advantage of open-source software.

You don't have to read this forum.

There are many others to choose from. Many with less whingers.

John,

What you say may or may not be true, but it still doesnt solve the problem. If an advert gets in the way of a persons pleasure in reading a post, it can also have a negative effect on the advertiser. Being an advertiser, it is something I would like to avoid, especially considering that this site - be it a forum or a commercial business form of a forum, is getting to be very high in world web rankings!.

Also, if as a result of this problem, a person decides to turn on adblockers, what is the point for a company like ours to advertise here?

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 19/05/2012 13:11:41

DC1,

Steve G makes a valid point. So, have all you editors and moderators from the group had any meeting with the head man?....and does he give a ...?

I am sure that he is aware of the situation by now. If not, perhaps you could direct him towards this thread. then perhaps he could discuss with the techis and see if he can get any sence out of all of this. As far as I can see, this is a common problem across all the MHS forums....for some of your visitors.

If MHS wishes to become even more popular in the postive manner, perhaps the techis should give priority to this issue over anything else such as how subscriptions can be viewed. Surely this is more important if you wish to keep your visitors happy?

It is not my place to say more then this.

Ketan at ARC.

Hi Ketan

Members can check their subscriptions in their profile pages.

I have had this added recently.

regards David

I'm putting my head above the parapet here, but its hard to resist!

David, in quite a few previous posts you have replied stating 'its not my job', 'cant be done', 'wont be done', 'dont know who is responsible' etc, yet you were able to have the software modified for subscription checking.

So is there something different about this obscurred text problem|?

Ian

I can only ask.

I can't get something done if they don't want to do it.

It suited them to add the subscription details. It stops a lot of questions to the subscription people.

regards David

I don't know if the problems that members have is allied to the browser they are using or even the operating system, or is it just related to the fact that the ad's are continually flashing thus distracting one from the main purpose of visiting the forum.

My view is that if the ad's are not flashing then there isn't a problem because, as mentioned before on this forum, all you have to do is press the "escape" button to stop them flashing.

I must admit that using IE 9 and Firefox 11, I have no problems at all (thats using Windows 7)

Personally I don't see that there is a problem with this website at all, perhaps I am just lucky.

Len. P.

No problem at all here - using Windoze 7 and Sea Monkey as the browser.

Hi,

I have experienced a big increase in the "ads obscuring posts" problem in recent days. I am running Windows 7 using IE8 as my browser. I have just clicked on the "Compatibility View" icon and as if by magic all the threads which were giving problems are now back to normal and perfectly readable.

For those using IE8, the icon is at the right hand end of the box at the top of the browser where URLs are entered. It looks like a sheet of paper torn in half. If you hover your mouse over the icon an information box pops up saying that it corrects picture, text & menu misalignment. Certainly worked for me!

Regards, Martin.

Edited By Martin Cottrell on 19/05/2012 20:48:56

Hi

Most of this re text clashing with adverts etc. has been covered in the post 'Not sure if it is me or not!!1' that has been running concurrently with this post. If a permanent cure is required then just select the 'Tools' under the IE menu bar and then on the drop down list select 'Compatibility View Setting' then either enter this site into the table or select 'Display all websites in Compatibility View'; tick the box.

The adverts, in my opinion, are not a problem as they roll over/change fairly slowly rather than flash. If what has been said before is correct then this forum is only part of a much larger site and as such possibly a minority part. Therefore to get changes made quickly or even at all could prove difficult for David and/or Dianne .

Yes it can be annoying when text is obscured but we as users have the software options at our disposal to display the site as intended. This is not the only site that benefits from using the the optional compatibility view function, perhaps we should learn how to use the tools we have rather than diving in and criticising the provider. If one was running a CNC system then I bet the software interface/command system would be studied very carefully prior to taking the first cut .

Martin

It seems to me that the whole problem of overlapping ads only happens when someone pastes a two foot long link into a post instead of using the link button and shortening it.

If it's not going to be fixed by the web gurus then we are all going to learn how to shorten links.

This is one of those subjects that comes up with monotonous regularity but it can be fixed quite easily by not posting loooooooong links.

So, come on guys, learn to do it properly and all these problems will go away.

My two pence.

Roy

oops double post.

Roy

Edited By wheeltapper on 20/05/2012 14:53:45

I am sure you can fix this problem at source. Maybe the coder can have a little look at this link and implement it?

**LINK**

It looks like the links have been sorted for a while,

Hence the **LINK**

regards David

ASF

Why would anyone want to link to and open a page that is flagged up as , and I quote, 'Dangerous This page contains malicious software or has been associated with fraud'. Unless there is another agenda of course.

Martin

lol - okay. Then this topic must be closed if as you say it has been fixed...

As far as 'Dangerous This page contains malicious software or has been associated with fraud' My browser does not flag it up as that at all.

Another agenda? you make me laugh!

I will go and retire to my safe place and wont bother commenting again on the subject.

Hi,

I used compatibility view? I think it's called, to move the advert box .

Hullo Ev'ry Bardy!

Here is the simple technical answer to the problem.

If the problem exists in one browser and not another, then the problem is with the browser and not the web site!

Simple eh? Diane and David have nothing to do with it.

Martin does not mention which version of IE he is using which is not terribly helpful. I doubt that he is using IE6x which were dreadful. IE 8 has it's problems. IE 9 seems to be pretty stable and standards compliant which means that there are virtually no problems with it when visiting web sites. That said there are occasion "Issues". Click the compatibility view icon in the address bar, press F5 and see if that fixes it. If not, then go to Tools\Manage Add ons and disable anything not Microsoft (just for testing purposes). See if the problem persists.

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