Adblock or Similar to brouse PH

[essayer]

surveyor said:

Too often it's done on a Friday night, and stuck with it for a whole weekend.

very convenient that.

[Oldred_V8S]

mp3manager said:

He's not, the 1st gen ipad is stuck on 5.1.1, so safari is pretty much unusable. I use Atomic Web on my 1st Gen ipad and it has ad-blocking.

Thanks both of you, I will investigate atomic web.

[Funk]

.:ian:. said:

On the HH5 you need to change the DNS servers given to the dhcp clients, rather than the dns servers used by the HH itself:

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/networks/1400420/ho...

Same principle, but use the ips of the pi-hole or opendns.

That can't be done on HH5. The very page you linked to says:

"Unfortunately for BT Broadband customers, this isn't possible on a BT Home Hub, meaning you'll have to look further down the page for our on-device DNS settings guide."

You can't change DNS at the router level on a HH5 and changing DHCP settings isn't going to make any difference in that regard either. You still have to alter on a per-device basis.

A better router is required.

[Calza]

9patch said:

A lot of people have gone to Facebook.

In 'merica a Canadian company [Autoguide] has bought up hundreds of American forums...apparently they have little interest in the forums just the dollars they can generate.

I did hear [rumour] that they paid big money to get some of the forums.

A company did this to the largest Megane RS forum, then effectively blocked tappa talk and brought in their own branded version for 5 or 6 quid.

The entire community revolted, and made a new free forum

[B'stard Child]

toohuge said:

Until I read this thread, I never used an adblocker or similar software - I guess I got a little out of date re. current software etc.

But - I have just installed Chrome with Ublock Origin and it's wonderful. The internet is back to normal.

Thanks to this thread!

It's very refreshing isn't it - question is what poll option box did you tick

[B'stard Child]

Well this thread was in general gassing - I asked for it not to get moved to website feedback but it got moved to the lounge instead

I've long held a view that if a poll gets started on PH then pretty much best number of responses you can get is around 500 if the thread stays in GG

so 350 (ish) I reckon that's probably reflective of

a) the 1% rule in effect here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_...

b) the fact it got it's ass kicked out of General Gassing and into the long grass here

Good job it didn't get put in Website Feedback as that's where threads go to die

[B'stard Child]

PS pleased to see the MX-5 option still gets a few votes

[Reardy Mister]

essayer said:

The other hassle with the ads is that they take so long to load, the content shifts down midway through loading the page, so if you are trying to click on a link, it jumps down and you end up clicking on something else..

THIS!! So much fking THIS

[The Wookie]

I'm on Chrome and don't find the ads that annoying, but I do leave the browser open and minimised a lot. Quite often I'll be doing a memory/CPU hungry task to find that it falls over due to lack of system resources. 9 times out of 10 it'll be PH has turned into a beast over the space of a couple of hours.

Not sure if it's the ads or the site itself, but I'm tempted to try an adblocker to see if it makes a difference.

[Oldred_V8S]

Reardy Mister said:

essayer said:

The other hassle with the ads is that they take so long to load, the content shifts down midway through loading the page, so if you are trying to click on a link, it jumps down and you end up clicking on something else..

THIS!! So much fking THIS

This really pisses me off.

[Goaty Bill 2]

Oldred_V8S said:

Reardy Mister said:

essayer said:

The other hassle with the ads is that they take so long to load, the content shifts down midway through loading the page, so if you are trying to click on a link, it jumps down and you end up clicking on something else..

THIS!! So much fking THIS

This really pisses me off.

It's probably the most annoying thing for anyone using any website.

It's not just ads that can cause that, but it's about 10,000 times more annoying when it is an ad.

Studies from about 10 years ago showed that you had less than 10 seconds for your page to load, or the user was more likely to go elsewhere than wait.
Site/page builders really should keep this in mind. Apparently our attention span in decreasing as a result of internet use, so that is probably even less now.

I don't normally have much to do with web site builds normally, but I have kept this in mind as a 'first principal' for any page design / build since being informed.

[Funk]

My view is that sites/advertisers have made the browsing experience so intolerable we've no choice but to fight back. It's the same as happened with adverts on TV; before DVRs/Sky+ you HAD to sit through them - they even used techniques to make the ads sound louder so you'd hear them when you went to put the kettle on! People now time-shift their viewing deliberately so they can 'fast-forward through the ads'.

The difference is the online experience is so bad that independent sites who rely on ad revenue to make it viable get caught in the cross-fire. On sites which don't take the piss, I whitelist them.

[RacingPete]

A very interesting thread and comments, plus the poll makes interesting reading too. From usage stats around the interenet ad blocking software (that we can detect - which is the usual browser extensions) show about 20% of users have them. These stats come from various media publications, including our own.

This thread probably attracts a larger proportion of users of these systems due to the nature of the thread title, but is still interestingly high.

Advertising revenue works several ways across the site, traditional CPM model (cost per thousand) which is a fee for showing the adverts (so visibility is the key). Then there is CPC, cost per click - where a price is paid per click through to the advertiser. The latter model, due to tighter budgets and justifying ad spend, sees this route as more popular. This has created programmatic trading for ads - so give an advertiser a demographic/page content/etc and let them bid for the ad (selling it to the highest bidder).

Programmatic trading is the main cause of the Friday night turn on of bad ads, as companies (usually newly started that week to get round banned lists) try to break the rules in place at a time when not many people are monitoring. Those rules set by us, but also the programmatic trading platforms (we run several).

We do care about the forums, and have seen an increase in posting in recent months. Check out The Lab forum in the new year for some exciting developments we are going to do - or join The Board to get to preview and influence the development we do (PM me if interested as a hidden forum)

Obviously we want users to see adverts, click on those that interest them, and try and make them more appropriate to the viewer. But admit we (and across the industry) have improvements to make, and are working on them - especially as some publishers are moving to messages about ad blockers (guardian) or stopping site use completely (cityam).

I am sure the answer to a publisher saying "please don't use ad blockers", is "stop making ads so fking annoying" - so there needs to be better control on ads, and to make sure they don't affect the use of a site.

[B'stard Child]

Good response Pete

[Durzel]

RacingPete said:

snip

I find myself on Pistonheads forums most days, sometimes several times a day. I'm also an ad-blocker (uBlock Origin), in fact it's usually one of the first things I install after I've finishing clean installing Windows, OSX or whatever. The browsing experience is so degraded otherwise that it quickly becomes intolerable. As mentioned before it's not just the page real estate taken up by ads, it's the added resources they take up loading, and shifting actual content around as they do. On some lower spec PCs in the office here opening Internet Explorer for the first time and landing on MSN.com, they grind to a halt. I can't imagine how bad it must be on early iPads, etc.

To be fair Pistonheads isn't the worst example I've seen, but it's up there. It's a shame really because whilst I sympathise that making ad revenue is becoming harder and harder nowadays, necessitating even more of the page to be taken up with it, or by more and more in-your-face ads, this very action is what drives more and more people to adblocking, so it's self-defeating.

I'd probably consider paying a yearly subscription to use the forums, but it would have to be a reasonable cost. Perhaps that's something to explore. People who will block ads anyway will carry on doing so, but maybe you'd get some subscribers.

[Megaflow]

I always used to say I'd pay a small fee for using the forum's, in exchange for no adverts.

But, after the frankly shocking service this year with advert management, the new log in system, general bout's of slowness, etc. I'm not sure I can say that anymore. I'd need some firm guarantees of performance and maintenance of the site first.

[rich888]

Oldred_V8S said:

mp3manager said:

He's not, the 1st gen ipad is stuck on 5.1.1, so safari is pretty much unusable. I use Atomic Web on my 1st Gen ipad and it has ad-blocking.

Thanks both of you, I will investigate atomic web.

On your iPad try switching off Javascript which will stop the adverts from loading and will speed up webpage load times quite substantially, if the website requires Javascript then it's easy enough to switch Javascript back on again and reloading the page.

iPad2 > Settings > Safari > Advanced > Javascript ON/OFF.

[lostkiwi]

I use an adblocker (I was using adblock but UBlock is sooo much better).
I also have my browser set so my searches shouldn't influence what ads I see and my private information is kept private.
I view the whole advertising thing as a complete PITA and would rather ads were removed entirely.
However... I understand the need for advertising to pay for sites and fully understand why businesses do it.
The big thing (as mentioned) is to make the advertising unobtrusive and fast to load. You would not believe how much difference it makes using an ad blocker.

[KaraK]

I know this makes me something of a minority on the internet but generally I don't object to ads on sites - if it keeps the sites I love going and free then I'm ok with that. If a site is too ad-laden to be usable then I go elsewhere as a general rule. What actually made me install an adblocker for the first time was when the Taboola crap was introduced onto PH and I wasn't about to give up my PH-addiction!

[TooMany2cvs]

KaraK said:

...but generally I don't object to ads on sites - if it keeps the sites I love going and free then I'm ok with that.

There's two different scenarios here.

- Enthusiast owned-and-run site which has ads to keep the lights on.
- Commercial site which only exists as a way to drive ad revenue.