Ad-Blocking Is Killing Hhplace

[yozz]

Although none have ever been caught to my knowledge I would think that the likelihood of the viruses and cures both coming from the same source are quite high. Profitable deception is my name for it.

This may have been the case in the beginning. Nowadays, with people banking/buying and whatever by internet there are enough honesty-challenged people that try to get into your computer.

I was told that at one of the Chinese universities they have a whole department for breaking into western computers.

Then there are the people who try to enslave enough computers to mount Ddos attacks at companies to extort money from them. These have nothing to do with companies making anti-virus stuff.

And then there are always those who want to show they are the smartest person in the world by making a virus that gets through everything. There are many of those.

Y.

[Rockpup]

Viruses are usually aannoying, but not the threat they were. Now they want to drop s trojen or rootkit in your computer to either get your bank acct info, or add your computer to a botnet they can use for denial of service attacks. Yozz: sorry, had to spread out my time typing at a jobsite, so did not see your reply. Yea, some of this stuff is state sponsored now, such as the stuxnet worm, which Obama stupidly took credit for, or the new red october trojen that was active among diplomatic computers for up to 5 years spying for unknown groups.

[yozz]

To me it looks all like practicing for world war 3, which will be fought in Cyberspace. Probably the majority of state sponsored 'viruses' will only become active when the **** hits the fan. Anyway, the first thing to go down will be the whole of internet, so most computers will become utterly useless. On topic: I was already feeling that I was becoming overdue with a donation. I like the place to the extend that I do not mind paying some real money. I actually did once when that was still possible. I prefer an occasional donation over the ad's. As I become older, I dislike things that distract my attention more and more. I hope this is some incentive for Tech...... Y.

[Shafted]

While I would agree with you Yozz about the internet being decimated in cyber-warfare, computers would still have value as stand alone computing machines, as long as they were not connected to the internet at that time. For what it's worth, I really like the Google ads which appear on the site for the most part. I do click on them when they show me something I like. I also like the fact that the ads are not pop-up ads. Ads that aren't a hassle to deal with are okay in my book.

[yozz]

While I would agree with you Yozz about the internet being decimated in cyber-warfare, computers would still have value as stand alone computing machines, as long as they were not connected to the internet at that time.

Right. But the majority of computers is not used that way.

I can be perfectly happy developing my own software and working with it. I do not need the internet for most of the things I do. But that is nowadays not the rule.

The name computer comes from computing, but that is what few computers do.

The cloud is a good example of something that would be out. Takes out a very large fraction of the Apple users.

Knowing our politicians, it will probably take a real disaster before they even think about proper measures.

Y.

Edited May 9, 2013 by yozz

[Pumps]

They help pay for this site. Isn't that worth it? I'm not saying click every ad you see, but if you see something that interest you, go ahead and click. It helps. Google ads are generally safe.

I'm not sure I understand. If the site gets suspended from Google adsense it doesn't get any money at all. I have a site that's suspended (for a different reason) and thats no fun.

[ilikekicks]

Heres just my thought. Whats 10$? For some, its a lot, for most, its a Pizza or a 6 pack of beer. If there were 20-30 people, regular users that just donated 10$, no strings, no VIP or anything.. I used to run a few domaines in PhPbb on a Mac here in my home ( musician forums/file servers and a bind for my own DNS ). The forums themselves were quite busy and my bill wasnt that bad. That was a Decade ago and I know prices have changed greatly. I dont know what this site pays for domain hosting nor its re-occurring costs ( forum software license? ). I really couldnt see a small site like this running over 300$ a year though..

[meganiwish]

I think you hit the nail on the head, ILK. $10 would be a significant amount to me, but this site means a lot to me, for odd reasons, and I'd be happy to offer my skills , such as they are, for free to make revenue. I can't make money with them in real life, but someone might find a way. Anyway, my point is, you don't expect to get anything for free. I quite like some of the adverts. Oh, just a thought, do the advertisers respond to the amount of traffic? Is that an issue for this site?

[Richy]

Unfortuantely, the likes of google HAVE made on line advertising intrusive to a lot of people, which is why ad blockers are now so popular. I loaded AB+ simply because I got to a stage where I felt like my on line activity was being stalked by google and such like. I'm sure that many others feel the same way. It's why google, facebook, yahoo and others have been forced to create opt-outs for their programs such as google analytics. And yes, I am opted out of every one of them and no, I won't be turning ad block off for this or any other site. Sadly, you've been caught up in a backlash against a marketing industry that knows that traditional advertising methods are now dead, because everyone has ways of ignoring/bypassing their product. When they branched out as more and more got online, their methods were often inappropriate and took people outside their comfort zone of how much invasion of their privacy they were prepared to accept. That's why ad blockers are now so popular with people. It's nothing to do with individal sites, it's all about the thought that the likes of google are recording your every keystroke and those adverts remind you of that fact every time you see a targeted advert.

[Impala]

I use Incognito mode when browsing this side so my parents and sister won't find out about this site for now. Because of that, I get ads on this site. No problem for me, the ads are small, don't get in the way and often show nice shoes. I do often get ads about asian dating sites. WHY? I never browse for asian stuff or asion ****, so it seems like they targeted the wrong person for their ads. When an ad shows nice heels and a store that I can use, like the belgian store Zalando, I often click the ads. How much money does the site get on average per click? Not much probably... I hope the site stays this way! I won't hesitate to click any ads showing beautiful shoes!

[Rockpup]

Richy: Do you remember a dozen years or so ago when ad's = pop-up hell? Could not click out of them since that would cause two more windows to spawn. Would have to reboot your computer. Google ad's is pretty benign compared to some of the crap advertisers used to try to pull.

[heelsthisguy]

Thanks for the offer of creating some HHPlace merchandise, thats awesome, do show us what you come up with, I look forward to that, and also thanks for volunteering to start a contest too, fantastic :-)

That folks, is the spirit of "Its our website, we need to do what we can to look after it" :-)

Much better than those other sites who just leave everything to 1 person, offer zero ideas, and never chip in with some effort to help out...

Thanks heelsthisguy, much appreciated :-)

Not being sarchastic either by the way, am deadly serious....

Yeah I can see how much sarcasm isn't in that post.... I was letting you know that because for some reason you think the only way to fund your site is by ads which is entirely false. I offered legitimate ideas, I don't mind helping out finding some cost efficient ways to make it happen to fund the site, at least its actually doing something other than whining about how everyone who has an ad remover on and up is destroying the site. It really isn't tough to figure something out, just have to do a lil research to find out what works. You could probably do something like paid stickers for advertising and support... a lot of forums utilize this method to fund their website. If needed I could help with the sticker design and then all that needs to be done is just find a free lancer who will print them out for cheap not necessarily hard to do with internet resources. You could have a donate button (I'm not entirely sure if you have one already) so that if people want to provide funds you can utilize that as well.

Be sarcastic all you want but its ultimately up to you, either complain some more about how everyone isn't getting you money and continue to do nothing or actually try and do something about it and possibly save the site.

[meganiwish]

I didn't read sarcasm in Tech's post. In fact he said he wasn't being sarcastic. Blunt as a baseball bat and all that. I don't begin to understand the funding of a website. I'd be sad to lose my friends here, who I'd probably never 'see' again. What sort of sums are we talking about? There are, what, 7000 members, but regular contributors rather less. Are we looking at the price of a daily paper? If that were the case then you could offer in-site rewards rather than merchandise. Surely that would be almost cost free. But I can see, Tech, that you have to work to live, like the rest of us. Don't block the ads would seem a good starting point. There's always been this problem with advertising. It encourages people to think that stuff comes free. Not the case, of course. I pay for the BBC because I have to pay a licence fee, but I pay for ITV, regardless of whether I watch it, every time I buy something in a shop that's advertised on television. No such thing as a free lunch, nor a free website.

[Richy]

Richy: Do you remember a dozen years or so ago when ad's = pop-up hell? Could not click out of them since that would cause two more windows to spawn. Would have to reboot your computer. Google ad's is pretty benign compared to some of the crap advertisers used to try to pull.

Google ads may be pretty benign on the face ot it, but to me it's still advertising at that is a red flag to me. I have spent a considerable number of years actually fighting the ever increasing notion that companies are free to bombard and invade your private life with adverts when they feel free with little thought for whether you want to see their products or not. I'm now at a stage where I don't get junk mail delivered by the postman, and haven't received a cold calls on my telephone since September of 2010 thanks to the phone system I purchased specifically because it was designed that way. I have a notice on my front door, specifically stating that I want no free advertising, menus or charity bags put though it. I rarely watch live TV, usually recording programs and fast forwarding through advertising breaks because I have no interest in see them.

When I come on line, I am the same. I want to see what I want to see, not what someone else THINKS that I might want to see in the hope of scamming some money out of me.

To me, advertising exists SOLELY for the purpose of extracting money from people. It attempts to sell the products that cannot sell themselves because they are not good enough, to people who don't actually need them (because if they did, they would already have bought them).

[meganiwish]

Yes, the world could work without advertising. We'd just all have to pay for everything up front. I daresay the technology exists to enable pay-as-you- use, but whether it would be desirable is moot.

[Rockpup]

Richy: i may be wrong, but you seem to feel entitled to entertainment without compensating those who work on it. Do you expect tech/etc to work on this site not only for free, but to foot the bill themselves so you get a free ride? Ad's support a business model. Channels like hbo/showtime get the $ up front, but most cable or broadcast tv exists due to funds they get from advertisers. Sites like this exist because of volunteers, but there are costs, and to expect the mods to pay for everything is greedy.

[Richy]

Rockpup. You obviously are unaware that I own a free membership website, which contains no advertisements, banner links to affiliate programs or any source of income whatsoever and that all costs incurred in the creation and maintenance of that site are met by myself. So no, I would not describe myself as greedy. As for this site, I'll be honest with you but it actually has very little value to me, because the majority of it's content relates to a subject that I have absolutely no interest in, namely MEN wearing high heeled shoes. That is why I rarely participate in it these days, except to reply to the odd request for information. I used to contribute a reasonable amount in terms of ORIGINAL photographs taken by myself (as apposed to web found copyright photos that appear in any number of threads), but no longer do so, because for every post of appreciation, there was an equal number who would simply demand more. The point of my original post was, however, that if this site is built solely on the business model requiring income from advertising and click throughs, it is doomed anyway, That is because more and more people are reverting to the likes of ad blocking to improve their browsing experience and, like myself, are not prepared to turn it off again. If Tech needs a more sustainable income stream, then he would be better looking towards an affiliate program linked to membership sites of similar interests. Of course, I realise the problem with that is that most of those sites are adult content sites, which would require some compromising of this sites terms and conditions.

[meganiwish]

Or people who do like the site could just turn off the adblockers. The simplest fix is normally the best place to start, though plenty of fools like it more complicated. The Tao is like water.

[hhboots]

Tech, I am wondering if there is more of a technical issue with google's link to hhplace rather than blaming ad-blockers. I couldn't imagine that there would have been that dramatic of a change in users all of the sudden starting use of ad-blockers that you would have noticed a significant difference like that.

The reason I think it might be a technical issue is related to an issue I think Amanda Snake brought up a couple of months back, that actually still exists today.

If you go to google and type in any search term to bring you to this site, even something like "high heels forum", one of the first links is hhplace.org. However, if you click on this link, it takes you to some other malware looking website (url4short.info) that is completely unrelated to hhplace.org. There seems to be some sort of strange DNS redirect from google that is causing this.

I have been able to reproduce this from several computers and using any web browser. It only redirects the first time you click on the link, so in other words, when you go back to google and re-click the link, it works fine and comes to this site. Back when Amanda brought this up, people just sort of dismissed it as a user issue and suggested that she should just create a 'favorite' or type the direct URL to come to the site, etc, instead of really looking at this from the perspective of being a real technical issue.

So anyway, my thought is that google AdSense may be pulling this bogus redirect and therefore not crediting this site correctly for the ad links from it and instead is crediting that malware site. In my experience working in the computer industry, stranger things have happened, even if my suggestion sounds like a bit of a stretch, it should be considered a real possibility

[heelsthisguy]

I didn't read sarcasm in Tech's post. In fact he said he wasn't being sarcastic. Blunt as a baseball bat and all that. I don't begin to understand the funding of a website. I'd be sad to lose my friends here, who I'd probably never 'see' again.

What sort of sums are we talking about? There are, what, 7000 members, but regular contributors rather less. Are we looking at the price of a daily paper? If that were the case then you could offer in-site rewards rather than merchandise. Surely that would be almost cost free. But I can see, Tech, that you have to work to live, like the rest of us. Don't block the ads would seem a good starting point.

There's always been this problem with advertising. It encourages people to think that stuff comes free. Not the case, of course. I pay for the BBC because I have to pay a licence fee, but I pay for ITV, regardless of whether I watch it, every time I buy something in a shop that's advertised on television. No such thing as a free lunch, nor a free website.

Well its hard to read whether or not it is sarcastic because even if you say its not sarcastic it can certainly still come off as such because some people say they aren't being sarcastic when they are. If not sarcasm then I do apologize.

[Lvemadomina]

Whoops, looks like I better change my settings. I didn't think my Ad-blocker would effect anything. Don't want to hurt this site...

[hhboots]

I pretty much expected my technical suggestion as to a potential real cause to be overlooked, a shame really, but the focus went right back to the adblocker. I earn a good living in the IT industry troubleshooting such matters all the time. Oh well, I tried... I'm moving on.

[Shafted]

I'm sure that Tech might still appreciate the suggestion, hhboots. Gotta give the guy time.

[saudade]

I say sign up to something like gittip https://www.gittip.com/. Idea comes out of open source i.e. github, and keeping people doing what they like to do. You say throw $10 into it, and elect to send a certain amount a week and it just does it until the money is done. It isn't really meant to replace incomes, more of a: Hey I like this thing you do and want you to keep doing it here's some cash each week. Instead of donate buttons, which tend to get ignored, the idea is a little bit each week. Most people I know that use this now have made more from this than they ever did from donation buttons because of the recurring charges. I don't use "ad-blockers" myself, but my router itself blackholes ad network ip addresses for anything in the network. It speeds up page loads and generally keeps out a lot of things. Turning that off for one site isn't simple because to be honest setting up dynamic ip table rules isn't what I want to do. It would take me way more time to screw around with that than just tip money, not economical to do on my end. But if it kills the site completely hell I have a bunch of dumb vps's that I could setup something like http://www.discourse.org/ on it and keep it up to date that people could use. What kind of costs exactly are you hitting here with this? Are we talking over $200/yr for a vps? Colo? Bandwidth use? What is the rub exactly? I hardly come here any more so apologies for not doing what is being requested. But I can always help, this basically falls under my arear of expertise. Though I don't do php, I'm more a ruby dude so I know how to scale that stuff better.

[nyenor]

Must say I agree with Richy on one point here. I am also losing a lot of interest in the site because it seems dominated by the 'men in heels' subject. Of course I cannot tell whether these men actually wear heels or like us to think they do. Perhaps Oz is behind the times because I have NEVER seen a male wearing heels down here (In fact it is getting harder to find a female wearing heels in this city). As for the subject of ads and ad-blockers. Yes the ads annoy the hell out of me but I am just an ignoramous when it comes to computers and do not even have any idea of what an 'ad-blocker' is, let alone knowing how to use it to disable ads, so I put up with the ads.

[meganiwish]

but I am just an ignoramous when it comes to computers and do not even have any idea of what an 'ad-blocker' is, let alone knowing how to use it to disable ads, so I put up with the ads.

It's nice not to be alone. I find the ads intriguing. I love that they remember something I said months ago.

Do we all come here for the same reason? I have some friends that I'd miss. And I mean friends in the old sense, not the facebook sense. Penpals would be better perhaps.

[manluvheels]

I'm sure that Tech might still appreciate the suggestion, hhboots. Gotta give the guy time.

For what it's worth hhboots, I didn't think that the problem Amanda found was peculiar to her browser or setup. Like you I replicated it in various ways and in different machines.

I think you may have a very valid theory for the loss in revenue, but I am not Tech. Sorting it out could be a nightmare so I am glad it's not me doing it. And also glad there are techie guys like you to think about these things and give input.

[Heelster]

Must say I agree with Richy on one point here. I am also losing a lot of interest in the site because it seems dominated by the 'men in heels' subject. Of course I cannot tell whether these men actually wear heels or like us to think they do. Perhaps Oz is behind the times because I have NEVER seen a male wearing heels down here (In fact it is getting harder to find a female wearing heels in this city). As for the subject of ads and ad-blockers. Yes the ads annoy the hell out of me but I am just an ignoramous when it comes to computers and do not even have any idea of what an 'ad-blocker' is, let alone knowing how to use it to disable ads, so I put up with the ads.

There are of course some who do, and we know that. I don't get out as much as I would like to, but every now and then I get out in some jeans and heels.

I have never seen another guy in heels other than a drag queen and at a charity event. I've even sat around a couple big city shopping malls with no luck. I know we are out there,but not enough to make a big difference - - yet.

[hhboots]

For what it's worth hhboots, I didn't think that the problem Amanda found was peculiar to her browser or setup. Like you I replicated it in various ways and in different machines.

I think you may have a very valid theory for the loss in revenue, but I am not Tech. Sorting it out could be a nightmare so I am glad it's not me doing it. And also glad there are techie guys like you to think about these things and give input.

Thanks manluvheels...

So to add more technical details: I did a little research on the "url4short.info hijack" and apparently this hijack/redirect problem is pretty common with quite a lot of message boards.

If my guess is correct, they are doing this to quietly siphon adsense revenue from little forums such as this one and they take a long time to first discover and then to eradicate. I gathered from a couple of mod comments I found, that say it injects sophisticated code and disguises itself as code for an Invision Power Board Firewall within one of the config.php files

[meganiwish]

So, are you saying that we need to be careful with the route we use to come here? I seem to have created a short way of getting here, though I don't remember doing it. I click on a word that says 'Logo', at the top just below the bit that says 'www. etc' and Hey Presto! It brings me right here. That wouldn't affect advertising revenue, would it? I'd hate to be part of the problem.