White 'work safe' skin possible?

[Nic Jones]

As a lot of us obviously read PH at work clearly breaking all kinds of interweb protocol is there any chance of having an optional white skin with no smilies, pics etc on it for covert PH viewing?

Cheers!

[Bob Loblaw]

I hope so, it would make my day a lot less tactical and stealthy

[Furyous]

Ghostzilla is your friend....

[Mr Will]

The only problem with this idea is the Pistonheads is funded by advertising revenue, and a work safe skin would have to remove most, if not all, of the ads.

So unfortuately it doesn't work from a business point of view, nice though it would be.

[Furyous]

Ghostzilla only hides the colourm if you mouse over any pics, the full colour is displayed.

[Davi]

Mr Will said:

The only problem with this idea is the Pistonheads is funded by advertising revenue, and a work safe skin would have to remove most, if not all, of the ads.

So unfortuately it doesn't work from a business point of view, nice though it would be.

A prime reason for having one, the ads on this place are a constant PITA. I don't mind advertising, fully understand the need for it, but does it really have to be sited somewhere so overloaded/slow that it makes the forum unbearable to use at times?

[Mr Will]

the speed of the site at the moment it not due to the ads (which are not on the PH servers) but rather due to the sheer number of users which is overloading the PH servers.

we have big plans to fix this which should be put in place soon but as i've said before, there is no quick fix unfortunately.

[Davi]

Mr Will said:

the speed of the site at the moment it not due to the ads (which are not on the PH servers) but rather due to the sheer number of users which is overloading the PH servers.

we have big plans to fix this which should be put in place soon but as i've said before, there is no quick fix unfortunately.

Sorry but I have to disagree - I know the PH servers have issues at the moment but it quite frequently stalls during an ad downloading (shows the adserver it's trying to download from in the bottom of the browser). Some adverts are considerably worse than others, sometimes I have to refresh the page to get past a certain advert (which they are I couldn't tell you, I give up and refresh long before they finish)

IMO it's been getting steadily worse with the more complex ads appearing.

[Funk]

Firefox will ad-block if you want it to.

[Mr Will]

Sorry, my mistake, I've looked into this more and the ads are sometimes slowing things down

[RacingPete]

The ad servers are a constant battle with the powers that be to make them faster, unfortunately it is a Haymarket wide system and outside my control. What I can do though is change the way the pages load, and hopefully if the server problems are sorted I can change the forums so that the ads are placed in last after the content instead of causing the pausing they do now (which isn't a simple task)

As for a work based skin, this has been requested before (cant find it on a quick search), but it is as Will says above and as a commercial entity we rely on advertising.

[Nic Jones]

Ok how about a way of keeping the adverts, I can skim past those but losing the blue and grey from the rest of the forum?

[Furyous]

Can anyone hear me ?????

GHOSTZILLA !!!!!!!!!

[RacingPete]

There is a possibility of more skins in the future with different designs, I am sure I can knock up a Microsoft Office skin We will look at these in the new year.

[Timberwolf]

The adverts are not too bad, the main issue with images is that every so often you get a big NSFW image in an otherwise entirely innocuous thread.

(This varies according to your definition, but basically if you count any "babe" image they turn up lots.)

[Hooli]

most threads that dont load for me appear to stall at the advert halfway down the righthand side. refreshing several times eventually gets you a complete page.

[RacingPete]

The ads is a continual problem that we are trying to address, along with a new way to implement them into the forums so they do not stall halfway down the page which hopefully will be in place in the next few weeks.

[Famous Graham]

RacingPete said:

What I can do though is change the way the pages load, and hopefully if the server problems are sorted I can change the forums so that the ads are placed in last after the content instead of causing the pausing they do now (which isn't a simple task)

Just whack the div at the end of the html and position it via CSS. Piece of the proverbial.

(exactly the same way as the top right banner ad is served in fact)

ETA - which is oversimplifying it, isn't it, cos the displaying of the ad is controlled by the asp saying "it's post number X, time to show the middle advert". Arse. Ignore me

Edited by Famous Graham on Wednesday 14th November 11:04

[RacingPete]

I'm sure I saw your brain ticking then

[Famous Graham]

That's reassuring - I've not been sure it's actually functioning of late