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Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 19 May 2017
by EdGrip
If you don't mind us asking, how much are the costs? I'm guessing that VST will mean more Reason owners, more visitors, and more hosting costs in future.
I've selected "no": I'm happy to have the ad if it has to be there - but I'd much prefer to put my hand in my pocket and give the forum a couple of quid.

I'm wholly in favour of having the option to pay upfront to live in an ad-free internet. That's my dream.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 19 May 2017
by Kenni
EdGrip wrote:If you don't mind us asking, how much are the costs? I'm guessing that VST will mean more Reason owners, more visitors, and more hosting costs in future.
I'm happy to have the ad if it has to be there - but I'd prefer to put my hand in my pocket and give the forum a couple of quid.

I'm wholly in favour of having the option to pay upfront to live in an ad-free internet. That's my dream.
I agree, that's basically what I've been doing so far, and I'd like it to be that way. Optimally, to run the site, I'd like for us to have something we could actually offer our users something instead. With ad's, we don't have to as long as we can keep it at this level.

I've always been open about the costs of the site, and I'll continue to be. We're well below our bandwith limits, so we can handle the increased traffic the way I've set up the servers.

Our costs
  • News site server: $20
  • Forum server: $20
  • Utilities server (backup, shop mirror, daily housekeeping scripts): $20
  • Development server: $5
  • Google Apps (email): $10
  • Total: $75/month
Then there's a few one-time-fee's here and there. Some people might say it would seem like an overkill to have a server for each particular area (News site/forum), but when the forum's busy like when Propellerhead announces VST support, CPU usage crawls to 50%-60%, and with the influx of new users I think it's wise to have the forum on a server of it's own. Same goes for the news site.

Some of the daily scripts and tasks for the utility server only run for short periods of time, but they're fast because they're multi-threaded, so they take a lot of computation as well. If all of these things were on the same server, things would be... Well, slow and unstable :)

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 19 May 2017
by HepCat
Dude, if you don't mind me saying, the ads look like filth, all this stuff about Forex and getting girls.

I aint gonna suggest any alternative because l know you like to find answers yourself.

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 19 May 2017
by Dante
My only issue with these adds is to at least make them family friendly - get rid of the single girl and dating adds pls !

Re: RE: Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 19 May 2017
by Kenni
Dante wrote:My only issue with these adds is to at least make them family friendly - get rid of the single girl and dating adds pls !
Yes, we're working on that!

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 19 May 2017
by pjeudy
when I first saw the adds I thought I had a virus of some kind...but all in all I have zero problems with adds IF you can have them be strictly music related.

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 19 May 2017
by eusti
jfrichards wrote:Thank goodness they go away when you sign in.
On tapatalk? Not on Firefox... (Maybe I need to log out and in again????)

D.

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 19 May 2017
by jfrichards
I mean on ReasonTalk.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 19 May 2017
by aeox
what ad?

edit: turned off adblock and it's still not showing up, guess my pc is immune to ads.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 20 May 2017
by SoulState
With adblock I don't see the ads here but on my iPhone - which doesn't have Adblock - the ads take up a good chunk of the page!
Happy to donate REGULARLY if it means keeping ads at bay.

Don't be shy - just do a fund raise couple of times a year - people are happy help out :D

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 20 May 2017
by selig
There's even a comedic advantage to ads - I just LOL'ed when a "save the pandas" ad appeared next to an "Lectric Panda ReFill" post...


Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 20 May 2017
by JiggeryPokery
jfrichards wrote:Oh yeah, what could possibly go wrong with starting a little advertising?

Thank goodness they go away when you sign in.

I'm signed in and I'm still being invited to click some dodgy dating/pr0n website that exists only to harvest email addresses from gullible signups to pass to spammers.

This is what this site is now about?

"It's a requirement for Tapatalk"? Get rid of Tapatalk then.

I used to donate monthly to avoid ads. I would have continued had I been made welcome!

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 20 May 2017
by decibel
ugly tbh

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 20 May 2017
by joeyluck
I'm merging this with the other topic/poll so folks don't miss it

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 20 May 2017
by Zac
I really dislike the ads. I really like the site. If the latter needs the former then OK I guess.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 21 May 2017
by Kenni
Hi all,

First round of ad-review are now done. It resulted in 24 blocked ad networks, and 78 specific ad type blocks, all related to dating, cheating, etcetera :)

Hope this weeds out as much of the inappropriate ads as possible!

Round 2 starts tomorrow!

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 21 May 2017
by stratatonic
What cookies or whathaveyou are on your computer that you have Russian Dating sites popping up in your ReasonTalk visits, lol?

So far I've had ads for Plugin Boutique (been looking at some VSTs), A Canadian Bank (good, I'm Canadian), a couple of sites that sell cameras (i've been researching cameras), a Real Estate agent (ok, out of his jurisdiction by about 260 miles, but close enough :) ) So far it's been mostly unobtrusive.

Personally, I don't mind a small ad popping up on each page.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 21 May 2017
by scratchnsnifff
i accidentally clicked it when i was on my phone, idk if the placement messed with anyone else? not really an issue but just saying :p

Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 22 May 2017
by Ostermilk
jfrichards wrote:
Thank goodness they go away when you sign in.
Well I'm signed in, I disabled my adblocker and there they are.

I'm a bit disappointed as I haven't noticed any inappropiate content so I shall enable my ad-blocker again.

Re: RE: Re: Huh? Ads on ReasonTalk now?

Posted: 22 May 2017
by Kenni
Ostermilk wrote:
jfrichards wrote:
Thank goodness they go away when you sign in.
Well I'm signed in, I disabled my adblocker and there they are.

I'm a bit disappointed as I haven't noticed any inappropiate content so I shall enable my ad-blocker again.
Haha, thanks!

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 22 May 2017
by C//AZM
selig wrote: ...I would actually be interested in ads IF they were extremely targeted to my interests (and "on topic" for all Reason users), but as that's unlikely at present ...
:)
I was looking for dress shoes for my son this past weekend and bam! there"s an ad from one of the places I visited online. I'm gonna wipe my cookies and go to Rupert Neve's site and see if it tracks me back here.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 23 May 2017
by househoppin09
If ReasonTalk management is finding the ads to be delivering substantial revenue, I don't have a problem with them. However, my experience has very much shown that a large, un-missable donation banner (say, about the same size and placement as the new ad banners) will generally deliver far superior results. I strongly recommend comparing the two approaches--say, a month with the ads the way they are now followed by a month with no ads and a donation banner in that same spot. I'd bet that the donation banners would outperform the ads, as long as the donation system itself is well-designed (e.g., offer about four preset amounts as well as a name-your-own-donation fill-in, with the lowest preset being no more than $5, make sure to accept PayPal, etc.).

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 23 May 2017
by artotaku
I hate banner and blinky distracting ads and avoid them where I can. I´d prefer to keep RT without them. But I totally understand that server costs may be covered somehow.

Re: There's an ad in the header!

Posted: 24 May 2017
by Audiotic
All good. I dont mind it at all
Always keep my adblocker deactivated for sites I wanna support.