salathe Posted October 3, 2010 Share Posted October 3, 2010 Hi Eric and you, dear reader, What's going on with the ads here, there seems to be a marked increase in the number of them on the forums and the main site. Are you running short on cash (thus wanting more subcribers, who happily don't see the ads) and/or just, to put it crudely, wanting to be more annoying to your regular-joe visitors? Of course it's your site to monetize, a little heads up would be nice though. I don't really care too much about the visitors (dear reader, I'm joking... honestly, I care about you) but more about any real need for more funds coming in to PHPFreaks. Yours patiently, Sally Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phpfreak Posted October 3, 2010 Share Posted October 3, 2010 Dear Sally, My sincere apologies for intruding ads on your space of our website. Unfortunately, we had a hardware failure, and PHP Freaks could be optimized with some more ad space. So yes, we do have to pay the bills, but please don't assume that I don't care about you. If I didn't care about you or this community, this site wouldn't have existed for 9 years. I've always been directly connected with the site, although not always here, and I do my best to keep the lights on and the servers up. A little help from the community could really do us some good here, so please support our decision to put more ads on the website. If we can continue to monetize enough to pay the bills, then we will focus more energy and efforts into growing this site. Its just a fact of life these days no thanks to large social media sites sucking up everyone's time on the web, the little guys have to rely on advertising to keep it all going. Good to see you again salathe! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salathe Posted October 3, 2010 Author Share Posted October 3, 2010 I'm calling bull. Pardon me for being blunt but how does a hardware failure require a drastic and completely unannounced (even after-the-fact) increase in the number of ads on the site? Why do you suddenly need double (whether literally, or it just feels like that) the income; I was under the impression the advertising as-was more than covered the outgoings? I'd rather see other, likely more lucrative, monetisation ideas put forward than filling my page (every, single, darned, page) with more and more adverts... if cash really is so tight, that is. I'd say it was also good to see you, Eric. But it's not. (Nothing personal!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted October 3, 2010 Share Posted October 3, 2010 hmm... yeah I have to be honest and say I too am a bit disappointed in this unilateral decision. I mean I know you're the owner and all and I understand where you are coming from (assuming it is true), but that's just it...you aren't really around, you don't keep us informed about things like this, and then make a decision and implement something like this without saying anything, even to your volunteers running this place. IMO it stands to reason that if "keeping the lights on" really was an issue, the obvious thing would be for you to come talk to the people actually running this place and who are around. Seems fairly obvious that we would know best how to take advantage of the community's current resources, seeing as how we are the ones actually around. Frankly, it makes me wonder how much respect/worth you see in us. I kinda feel devalued by this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFMaBiSmAd Posted October 3, 2010 Share Posted October 3, 2010 Too bad the changes weren't tested. Even in this thread, the in-line ad is over the text of the post. In posts with code blocks, the width is out of control and the posts cannot be read. I particularly like the Ass-a-me-se ads and am going to click on them to get me a Bride. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phpfreak Posted October 3, 2010 Share Posted October 3, 2010 the changes were being tested.. live. I've removed a couple of the ad elements, the more intrusive ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Unfortunately, we had a hardware failure So are you needing to get new hardware still, or did you already get the replacements? A lot of us are still getting hit with SMF's cannot connect to the database, or simply timing out. I had SMFs cannot connect to database errors 12 times before I was able to load into this topic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Code blocks still break the layout, FWIW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salathe Posted October 5, 2010 Author Share Posted October 5, 2010 I've removed a couple of the ad elements, the more intrusive ones. (Emphasis mine.) No you haven't. How much do the ads bring in every month? I may be willing to donate a percentage of that, if you'd be willing to hide one or more advertising blocks for all visitors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 Unfortunately, we had a hardware failure So are you needing to get new hardware still, or did you already get the replacements? A lot of us are still getting hit with SMF's cannot connect to the database, or simply timing out. I had SMFs cannot connect to database errors 12 times before I was able to load into this topic Dunno who restarted the MySQL server, but the max_connections setting went down to 60, which is what is in /etc/my.cnf and which is too low. For some reason I have always just tweaked the settings via the MySQL console after I did restarts. I've now also updated my.cnf. The problem is that 60 connections isn't sufficient so you'll quickly run out of connections and get that error. Restarting MySQL only momentarily fixes that because it incidentally kills all connections when doing that. I should probably have written this somewhere, but for a long time, I was the only one who ever touched the server so it wasn't really necessary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 I can only assume it was Eric who made these changes / restarted MySQL. I haven't logged in for a few days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 I've removed a couple of the ad elements, the more intrusive ones. (Emphasis mine.) No you haven't. This. Even if the ads have been removed, the layout is still borked. Code blocks are broken. Also, 'testing' on the live site? Are you kidding me? There's a reason why things are tested before being implemented live. The only thing these new ads have done is make the people who actually run the place look incompetent, which is a great message to send people looking for help. I guess we shouldn't expect more for an owner who makes a mere handful of posts in a two year span. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions show someone who doesn't really give a crap about the community, despite semi-elegant sales language to the contrary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gizmola Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 So I am guessing this is all related, but what happened to the features that allowed me to see the most recent posts and most recent replies to my posts? I pretty much used those features exclusively and navigating the site without them, or following up on threads I added to has become very difficult. Were they intentionally disabled for some reason, or is this something that has happened inadvertantly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadTechie Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 So I am guessing this is all related, but what happened to the features that allowed me to see the most recent posts and most recent replies to my posts? I see them top left, and seam to work ie (PS i included the links) Hello MadTechie Show unread posts since last visit. Show new replies to your posts. 05 October 2010, 23:01:36 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikosiko Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 I'm using Chrome (don't know if some of the problems are exclusively noticeable on it) but all those ads screw up almost every screen... out-of-margins, double ads, etc, etc... very annoying... regarding to the decision to include those ads... well.... old-timer already said all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 So I am guessing this is all related, but what happened to the features that allowed me to see the most recent posts and most recent replies to my posts? Look at the top right of the header you'll see an arrow, just click on that. it expands/hides the top box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gizmola Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 So I am guessing this is all related, but what happened to the features that allowed me to see the most recent posts and most recent replies to my posts? Look at the top right of the header you'll see an arrow, just click on that. it expands/hides the top box. AHA!!!! Thanks, they just disappeared, and it never occurred to me they might just be hidden. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.