Zachy
What a waste!
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Hello,
I've already made a thread in the active forum members section about this, but I just wanted to let everyone know that we are bringing advertisements to this site. In fact, as of me writing this, advertisements have already been up on the site for a couple hours now. So, what is the point of advertisements? The point of advertisements are to make money. Those annoying advertisements you see on sites aren't there to take up space or annoy you (although they probably do annoy you), they are there so that the site owner can make some money. Honestly, it's not greedy. If you are actually serious about your own site, it costs a lot of money. It is by no means cheap. I've been paying alone for a while and I've had no problem with it, but I'm not going to sit here and deny that if we were to get a bit of money from advertisements, it would help with paying for hosting and make this website much better. So that's why I have advertisements on the site. They aren't there to be annoying, they are there to make some money so that we can improve the forum. Also, I'm not making a boatload of money from these advertisements. I think that I maybe make one or two cents a week. As time goes on, our advertisements will make more money, which is why I'm keeping them. Most people expect to be making $10 right from the get go, and that doesn't happen. You have to stick with it to see results.
In terms of placement and visibility for advertisements... Staff, VIP Members, Premium Members, and Bronze Members will not see any advertisements. If you're not part of any of those groups, then you will see advertisements. I only ask that you please don't use adblocker. I know advertisements may be annoying. Trust me, I was a big adblock user a while ago. But really, advertisements are important so that we can improve the site, so I'd really appreciate it if you don't use adblock. The placement is above the shoutbox or above the forum list (if you don't have access to the shoutbox). There is also one in the footer for guests. I'm not making a ton of money either. I'm not really interested into getting into specifics, but I promise you that it isn't a lot and will be used for the forum. I know the main reason people hate advertisements is because they're inappropriate or just in the way. In terms of an ad being inappropriate... If you see an inappropriate advertisement, please screenshot it and send it to me and I'll see what I can do about it. I've already filtered some advertisement categories out though because they aren't really appropriate for our topics and our userbase. So that's it on advertisements.
On another note, you may notice that there's no more like button and below there are a bunch of icons instead. These are all ratings for various responses you have when reading messages. They are only available for messages on the forum. For profile posts and profile post comments, you still have the default like button (probably for interface reasons). There's not too much to explain here. You just click one of the icons (hovering over the icon with your mouse will show you what the rating is, although I'm sure we will all get used to them eventually), and the action is applied. You get alerts for it too and such, so nothing has really changed here except some more options. We can add and remove ratings over time, so if you have any suggestions, please let us know. I've already taken the liberty of removing the "negative" ratings that come default with the system. These include "dumb", "bad spelling", and "dislike". Unfortunately, I see these being mainly used for abuse or to discourage/put down other users.
That's all I have to say for now. Hope you enjoy these updates and hope you had a good weekend!
I've already made a thread in the active forum members section about this, but I just wanted to let everyone know that we are bringing advertisements to this site. In fact, as of me writing this, advertisements have already been up on the site for a couple hours now. So, what is the point of advertisements? The point of advertisements are to make money. Those annoying advertisements you see on sites aren't there to take up space or annoy you (although they probably do annoy you), they are there so that the site owner can make some money. Honestly, it's not greedy. If you are actually serious about your own site, it costs a lot of money. It is by no means cheap. I've been paying alone for a while and I've had no problem with it, but I'm not going to sit here and deny that if we were to get a bit of money from advertisements, it would help with paying for hosting and make this website much better. So that's why I have advertisements on the site. They aren't there to be annoying, they are there to make some money so that we can improve the forum. Also, I'm not making a boatload of money from these advertisements. I think that I maybe make one or two cents a week. As time goes on, our advertisements will make more money, which is why I'm keeping them. Most people expect to be making $10 right from the get go, and that doesn't happen. You have to stick with it to see results.
In terms of placement and visibility for advertisements... Staff, VIP Members, Premium Members, and Bronze Members will not see any advertisements. If you're not part of any of those groups, then you will see advertisements. I only ask that you please don't use adblocker. I know advertisements may be annoying. Trust me, I was a big adblock user a while ago. But really, advertisements are important so that we can improve the site, so I'd really appreciate it if you don't use adblock. The placement is above the shoutbox or above the forum list (if you don't have access to the shoutbox). There is also one in the footer for guests. I'm not making a ton of money either. I'm not really interested into getting into specifics, but I promise you that it isn't a lot and will be used for the forum. I know the main reason people hate advertisements is because they're inappropriate or just in the way. In terms of an ad being inappropriate... If you see an inappropriate advertisement, please screenshot it and send it to me and I'll see what I can do about it. I've already filtered some advertisement categories out though because they aren't really appropriate for our topics and our userbase. So that's it on advertisements.
On another note, you may notice that there's no more like button and below there are a bunch of icons instead. These are all ratings for various responses you have when reading messages. They are only available for messages on the forum. For profile posts and profile post comments, you still have the default like button (probably for interface reasons). There's not too much to explain here. You just click one of the icons (hovering over the icon with your mouse will show you what the rating is, although I'm sure we will all get used to them eventually), and the action is applied. You get alerts for it too and such, so nothing has really changed here except some more options. We can add and remove ratings over time, so if you have any suggestions, please let us know. I've already taken the liberty of removing the "negative" ratings that come default with the system. These include "dumb", "bad spelling", and "dislike". Unfortunately, I see these being mainly used for abuse or to discourage/put down other users.
That's all I have to say for now. Hope you enjoy these updates and hope you had a good weekend!