Blue then Orange (now White) Side Bars

[Thelma Sanders]

On my laptop I don't expect to have to scroll down before I get to the first post, that's for sure, and now side ads as well. It's just too much

[Dave]

Hi everyone,

We can see the new batch of ads have caused a stir within the forum as before. I'm typing this as fast as I can so please excuse the grammar/spelling mistakes. As a manager within a for-profit organisation I'm not tasked with breaking even, I'm here to help our organisation turn a profit... and ideally a bigger one than if I wasn't here.

Whilst some years ago the back plate was added to the site, the unit was no longer sold in and they disappeared. This year I've advocated for their return and I'm promoting all of our ad opportunities to our ad team. Those of you that are unhappy with this please blame me.

Do we need this money to keep the forum live? Probably not. Will Grow Your Own magazine still go on to profit without these ad opportunities? Absolutely. So why do we push to have these ads here? Investment.

This extra finance helps us try new things, experiment, invest and improve in all aspects of our business. The web team that I work in for example is actively recruiting new staff to help grow our digital business. With the extra time that we've now got available we're optimising our websites for mobile devices, launching apps and experimenting on new platforms at a rate we couldn't without revenue.

To be totally perfectly honest with you we want to overhaul Grow Your Own. I'm not going to give to much away but technically speaking. Why does it look like 'that' on a phone... why doesn't it adapt well to tablets and why isn't it showing as much of the forum bit as it should. We need to keep testing, experimenting and learning so that the forum stays as the UK's #1 destination for grapes who like to grow their own.

We be progressive we need the support of many people and that includes you. We will endeavour to show you ads that are appropriate and not interfere with the awesome content in the website. If you are experiencing technical issues please get in touch. We will in the meantime be working aggressively to improve the user experience and solve issues as we go along. The reward for our efforts won't be apparent immediately but thy are coming.

Thank you you all for your support to date.

Thanks,

Dave

[21up]

Hi all
i cannot see why i have never had these blue bars and never have had.
i have avg and no ad blocker plus and keep reading this thread but i do only now and again get an add thats about an inch wide and covers the part where peoples name and location is and it goes right across.

That is only now and then not all the time
cheers

[Hazel at the Hill]

Thank you for coming back to us, Dave - I'm glad that our views are being taken into consideration when you make changes.

[marchogaeth]

Thank you for coming back to us, Dave - I'm glad that our views are being taken into consideration when you make changes.

I too appreciate the feed back, thanks. I hope Hazel's interpretation is fair, it all sounds a bit too "politician speak" to me.

Kristen, I just want to be clear; I was really trying to point out that there is plenty of skill among us on the forum - you being one of them. (I think your blog is successful - it's up to date and read/ well cross referenced and not over personal. I've not noticed any ads when I've visited.)

I will just keep watching the ad block totals. the blinking thing that pops down every time I clock on annoys me! Can I get rid of that with ad block plus? Off to try........

[Nicos]

Personally I find the ones on the right quite interesting to look at ( I actually think the staircase looks very interesting! ( wish I had a garden big enough to need a staircase though!! )- the ones on the left still look very much like an advert

[JanieB]

Hi all
i cannot see why i have never had these blue bars and never have had.
i have avg and no ad blocker plus and keep reading this thread but i do only now and again get an add thats about an inch wide and covers the part where peoples name and location is and it goes right across.

That is only now and then not all the time
cheers

I'd rather not have all these ads but only the one at the bottom usually annoys me but I also get the ones 21up has mentioned and these are supremely irritating as you can't see who's posting.

[marchogaeth]

The blinking thing that pops down every time I clock on annoys me! Can I get rid of that with ad block plus? Off to try........

Whisper it, I think AB+ has got rid of it anyway.

[Kristen]

Thanks for that update Dave. Useful to know what is in your mind / plans, and very helpful that you are prepared to stick your head above the parapet!

(I think your blog is successful - it's up to date and read/ well cross referenced and not over personal. I've not noticed any ads when I've visited.)

You are too kind Its a vanity project or, put differently, a means for me to keep a scrapbook of my project as it is, nowadays, as easy (easier even?) to do that online in a blog as compared to something in a paper notebook. It also enables me to easily share it with friends, including having some private pages.

I get about 20 visitors a day, I expect some (or many even?) stumble over it in a Google quest and it turns out to be not what they are looking for. I get 2 or 3 people a day arriving from here, mostly from them clicking on my Blog link rather than a link in a thread (although perhaps when I have freshly put a link in a post to something relevant it probably gets a few more click through for a day or two).

Each year I promise myself I'll make something of it ... it never happens! It would need some much better presentation styling (on a scale of 1-10 I score less then 0 on Artistic Merit!). That said if I spent the time that I currently spend on here, and several other gardening forums, I could no doubt knock up some articles ...

For the non-techie, and in case of interest, all external links in posts here (e.g. if I put a link to my blog, or to A.N.Other site) are tagged with REL="NOFOLLOW" which means that Google etc won't follow them (to "find" or "promote" the target site) and won't increase their ranking because they are linked from billions of forum posts!! - pity that spammers don't seem to be aware of that and still invade sites like this with rubbish links (yeah, for the nerdy here I do know that Google does use some other algorithms that ignore the NOFOLLOW in some instances ).

[Guest]

Those of you that are unhappy with this please blame me.

Ok, I will Joking aside thank you for explaining and elaborating how this has come about and why and where you see it going forward.

[Bohobumble]

Those of you that are unhappy with this please blame me.

Thanks Dave; I was concerned that we were going to get more of the same and you've now confirmed it. I tried to show my other half the amount of adverts now plastered on the site, but without the adblock plus the page wouldn't load.

I've now joined another gardening forum site at the recommendation of another member.




Those who know where it is, do say 'hi' as it'd be a shame to miss out on the friends I've made in the last few months.

[Alison]

Are people still seeing side bars, only just logged on today and it's the same as yesterday on the iPad, no side bars at all, just ads at the top and bottom.

[Kier]

Ive got sidebars again , been else where for a month , maybe going to leave again, adblock+ has been working up til now


just increased the page size to get rid

[sparrow100]

. We need to keep testing, experimenting and learning so that the forum stays as the UK's #1 destination for grapes who like to grow their own.

We be progressive we need the support of many people and that includes you. We will endeavour to show you ads that are appropriate and not interfere with the awesome content in the website. If you are experiencing technical issues please get in touch. We will in the meantime be working aggressively to improve the user experience and solve issues as we go along. The reward for our efforts won't be apparent immediately but thy are coming.

Hi Dave,
Thanks for the post, though I have to say I have no idea what a back plate is or why it's important.

I don't think you have addressed the key issue. No one is quibbling with GYO making a profit from this space, but we are/I am upset about the number and placement of them which makes posts impossible to read and the site very, very slow to load. Some of them flash/move which makes it even harder to read the site and to participate.

AdBlock is currently showing 13 ads blocked on this page alone. That's way beyond any other site I have experienced. The only reason I installed AdBlock in November last year was because of the sheer weight of advertising here. Since November it's blocked 47,293 ads, most of them from this site.

If I didn't run adblocking programmes, I wouldn't be able to use this site. I'm a member of other allotment forums and they do not have these issues.

Having so many ads is counterproductive because it actively discourages people to stay around if they can't read the pages that load, or if the pages take forever to load because of the ad content.

It's a real shame because the site is good. What has made it that way is the people on it and their voluntary contributions to help others, not how many and not how much money can be made from clicks. Personally for me it reflects that the magazine must value the forum only a very little. It is disappointing, but I guess other forums will benefit from it as people get properly fed up with this.

[spamvindaloo]

Are people still seeing side bars, only just logged on today and it's the same as yesterday on the iPad, no side bars at all, just ads at the top and bottom.

Same here. Had a look on the PC earlier to see what the fuss was about and they are there. To be honest I've not really had any problems browsing on the iPad, no side bars, the bottom bar is easy to click 'hide' then goes away for a week so I think we are quite lucky Now if I could just stop the iPad changing what I write for something completely different, irrelevant and absurd.....