Hello, today while I was on TGO, not everytime but a majority of the time ads would pop out to about half screen and then I have to either close them or or click around them to use the web page. It was for a Cinemax car, circuit city, and some movie with the guy that played Darth Vader in the most recent movies.

Just wanted to say how annoying it is and that if at all possible to have them stop doing that, this isn't the only site that does this but I hate it on all sites where they do do this kind of advertising. I will go out of my way not to use busineses that use forced advertising like this.

Thanks, Kenny.

 

I'm not in charge of advertisements, but I'm not aware of this happening on our website. I have not personally seen it, nor has anyone else reported it.

Because you mentioned that this isn't the only website that this issue occurs, I suspect you may have some type of adware/spyware/malware installed on your machine that you don't know about.

 

happened to me to on here was a cinemax banner also took up like 1/2 the screen.

 

That's definitely spyware guys. Go Here and download AdAware:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

It's free and it's awesome.

 

It only happened on this site and that was yesterday and hasn't done it since. And never did it on any other site.

 

I checked the logs and our templates were not changed yesterday, or the days prior to yesterday. I guess it could be something that happened on the advertising backend.

Even if a few people report the same thing, that doesn't exactly mean it's our website. With as large as TGO is, and as common as it is to have an infected computer with adaware/malware/spyware, stuff like this will be reported when it's just as likely to be the user's computer.

I'll look into it and check with the advertising department. And if someone has a screencapture, I'd like to see it.

 

It's started happening to me this morning. Mostly ads for companies that don't even operate in this country.

 

I certanly wouldn't doubt that it is some kind of spyware/adware being that this is my wifes computer while I wait for my household items to get over here.

When I said it happens on other sites I just meant the intrusive ads like for example on Advanced autos website when I would go there the first thing that pops up is a live action half screen ad for windshield wipers.

How do you do a screen capture?

 

Hold Control key and push "print screen" The will put the screen shot on your clipboard so you can paste it.

 

Got one

 

Thanks for screen capture. That indeed is news to me. This is the first that I've heard about this.

As I mentioned, I'm not involved in the advertising department, and our templates haven't been altered for the past few days. It's possible there was a change on the backend of the advertising server. It's also possible that this is either a "test", or not as planned.

I'm waiting to hear back from the advertising department on this issue.

Thanks.

 

Same issues here. The ads drop down like that when you hover over them. But they dropped down a good 6 times today when I was no where close to hovering over them.

 

Here's another one.

 

yep thats the cinemax dropdown I got to. havent got the circuit city one yet though.

 

As soon as I saw TGO was "bought out" I figured this was coming. I completely hate these ads. There's no need for it, it's there - it doesn't have to fill the screen to get it's point across. Don't know why advertisers think that pissing people off will get them to buy their stuff.

 

Seems as if ALL the feedback on these adds is NEGATIVE. Lets see how the "powers that be" handle the dissatisfaction the members have expressed over the recent changes made to TGO by it's new owners.

Pop-up adds are just about universally hated,..........Ever hear anyone say " I saw this awesome pop-up add and bought this overpriced gizmo because the add was so cool " ?? Not only are the pop-ups a pain in the neck to deal with - they don't even work right. IMO; A Text based message board would be better than being forced to deal with all these pop-ups !








Since the site strictly enforces that the input of it's members to be EXCLUSIVLY Third Gen F-Body based - Implementing non-third Gen adds on this site was hipicritical. Not testing the added pop-up advertisements and placing them into a live system could be considered amateur - at best.

Please; before anyone starts wining about me bashing moderators or administrators - it's already been claimed by this group that they are not responsible for these recent changes. My discent is aimed at those that are cracking the TGO foundation that many dedicated volenteers have created over the years.

 

i could'nt agree with John more, ever since TGO was first moved, the servers were SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW and still are, now the new owners are here, and these dumb pop up ads are everywhere, i somehow feel violated, and i'll be honest my visits to TGO are becoming fewer and fewer, it's a shame to see this fantastic site head this way, oh well all good things come to an end.

 

In the amount of time it took to load a single TGO page I loaded 28 web pages thru Yahoo - These were all pages that I have NEVER visited before. Server response time seems to be getting worse - not better.

 

Yes, none of the staff here was involved or aware of this change. For that, I'm slightly disappointed as that is something I try to ensure doesn't happen. That said, I'm not as bleek on the outlook as some, because I know the people from the parent company involved will listen and take note. That said, they just did resolve the K&N banner blocking content by disabling certain ads after I kept with the issue and seen it through. I'm still working with the advertisement team on this issue.

I imagine that Third Gen F-Body related sponsors is not enough, alone, to pay the bills and turn a profit. This isn't quite exactly like other websites, that have the vehicles they are dedicated to, still in production. Our "pool" is dying everyday because these vehicles haven't been produced for some time now. I'm not speaking officially on that, but that's my suspicion.

If you have Third Gen F-Body related sponsors that would like to advertise, by all means, send them my way so I can ensure they are put in contact with the advertisement department.

I can tell you a few things being on both sides. I'm here daily, and more often then you are, and I've never experienced any performance issue. I also know that TGO has been moved to a few different servers since the new owners. TGO is currently operating on more than 1 server, which was not the case in the past. That's not a downgrade, but an upgrade. In addition, I have access to the server and I can see server load. I can tell you that the server load is not an issue.

What I do believe the issue is, is something with the way the browser renders/draws the pages - not the server itself. I see you're using IE. Anytime we have a report about performance (and though we do get them, the percentage of those reports against the active members is slim), it's nearly always IE. Yes, IE is the most commonly used web browser and it should be supported. That's not the point here.

When I use IE, I do see this render/draw slowness, which can easily be blamed on the server. When I use FireFox (my main browser), there is no performance issue whatsoever. That, in addition to actually seeing server load, tells me pretty clearly that the server itself is not the problem. It's likely the content. And some of you will know and remember that this issue has been present since our 2nd owners, not a result of our current owners.

I will continue to look into this (IE performance), now knowing more information. But it's not cut-and-dry as official support is minimal when you have plugins and so many template changes.

 

In regard to these new ad reports, those who are seeing it, can you answer the following?

Those ads that appear to enlarge, are they from the same ad (same company) as the one underneath it? Or is this ad actually a different ad that is popping over the original ad, and not from the same company?

As well, those who can replicate this issue, if you could send us a Page Source view from your browser, that might also help. Since those are long, you may just want to email them to me directly (attached in a notepad or text file) to jt@thirdgen.org

I'm working with the advertisement team and also a developer from our sister website. We both have been unable to replicate this issue, while deliberately trying to do so.

Thanks.

 

It's a popup version of the same ad. I'd grab the source, but I've got ads disabled right now.

 

Just to be more detailed - Those 28 pages were loaded WHILE the single TGO page was loading..... not seperate actions. Both actions were performed concurrently. I loaded all the Yahoo pages to see if IE or my PC was the problem.

The K&N Banner still seems to be an issue,.........






P.S. Nice to see the Pop-ups are gone !!!

 

Based on what I have access to, and what I experience and know from being on both sides, I'm fairly certain the problem is something that impacts IE browsers more - and I believe it's a render/draw issue - not a server or hardware issue.

I'll look into this. This was actually supposed to have been disabled yesterday.

 

wow JT is right, i just used my girlfriends G5 with firefox and it was fast, which doesnt help seeing as most users use IE...

 

Just sent you the page source, JT.

 

They pop open every time you run over it with your mouse. I don't think it is random, just a "mouse over" operation on the actual ad.

 

I noticed today they are gone. Thank you JT and Moderators.


Cheers!!!

 

screen shot if it helps. Same ad as underneath...it just enlarges. Then you click the page or close button and it goes away until your mouse travels over the ad again and it blows up again. Really tedious.

 

mine just happened like 10 minutes ago...i don't think they are gone...

 

They seem to be some what intermittent, this morning they were happening every time just about for me and tonight there hasn't been one yet, so who knows.

 

I haven't had any pop-ups since yesterday morning so I'm assuming that they have been disabled and hopefully never to return. I would like to thank everyone who posted there disgust over these annoyances

 

Maybe it's a regional thing? I haven't experienced ANY of these ads, and I sit on TGO all day.

 

The google adds have been giving me a problem today. Anyone else have google's adds covering the top lines of the threads? Here's a picture.



I've since banned google

 

The google ads do that all the time when I am on my laptop with windows 2000 and I am running firefox.

I refresh the page and they jump back into their little box. The text usually runs over onto the text of the thread, making it unreadable.

 

Thanks for the screen captures. We are working with the advertisement team to resolve these issues. As I understand it, progress has been made.

Thanks.

 

I thoght i'd throw out that there is a top add that that goes over the search pull down. so i'll post a picture if i hit it today.

 

If this is an issue, yes, please provide a screen capture. We found that the flash ads (such as the K&N ad) were creating this issue by overlapping the Search drop-down menu. It is difficult to resolve such an issue with flash when it involves layers. Therefore, the advertisement team disabled the flash ads in that section. This should have resolved this issue.

If it is not, please provide a screen capture so that we can investigate.

Thanks.

 

hey...jt it's happening to me again...now lincoln MKX up top and Curcuit City on the bottom, or vice versa...and i leave my mouse in the middle of the screen and it pops one or the other down...just a second before i caught the second screen shot, my mouse was in the exact same location and the top had popped down blocking the words that i was typing, then the bottom one popped up. This has been happening with search result pages, new post pages, forum to forum, and user cp.

Other's have mentioned blocking advertising completely...how do i go about doing this?!

 

This is the first time I HAHAHAH....as I was typing this just now, I was rudely interrupted by one of these pop-ups.....anyway, to finish my thought, This is the first day I have seen this but it is EXTREMELY ANNOYING.

Please get these guys to fix this. I highly doubt I am interested in the TOYOTA tundra on a 3rd gen camaro website.

I understand the need for ads. Just please don't make them fly in my face.

If everyone on this website donated a dollar a year, would they drop all the ad crap?

 

lol, i like the intermission with the laughter . Anyways, as seen in this thread it's been a minor problem in the past, but now it's just like a misquito, it's getting really bad with one at the top and one at the bottom. I got dial up and loading up the TGO banner takes 2 minutes as it is...now full pages take 4-5 minutes to load trying to load these pop-in ads.
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Great idea on the dollar thing, that alone would probably help, but with figureing out the sign up software, membershiping, and monitoring of who payed and who doesn't, engineering software that lets you browse a certain amount of pages before they ask for your money, and basically the cost of all the brain work into the concept of a $1 membership fee would cost them probalby $5 a person so idk if something that simple would help us ad wise.

Besides the fact that TGO is for the people by the people so to speak, and i know they don't want to change that anytime soon.

 

JT, you seem to be answering all of the "ad problem" questions so I'm going to direct this at you; Whats going on????? Why does the circuit city banner keep popping up over top of my screen every time I go to a different page???????? There is four different ads for circuit city with the stupid close button in a different corner for every one! People are freaking out. I'm one of them. Because of this banner I will never shop at circuit city again. Let your advertising team know that please. If this harrassment keeps happening I will never visit this site again either. I never thought I'd say this but, things used to be so good on this site. I am a huge fan and supporter of this site, please don't let these guys ruin our great page.

 

I understand the issue and will contact our advertisement team to find out about this issue.

Thanks to those who provided a screen capture and brief description of the issue.

 

happened to me this morning , a real pain in **** .

 

To update this, after making some contacts, I'm told that the ads noted here that were expanding today, will get resolved. I'm told it was a mistake that they were reactivated.

I'm sure there may be some speculation about the "mistake" part, but the last time this occurred, once we identified the issue, it was taken care of by having those ads disabled.

Thanks to those who had provided a screen capture and a brief description of the concern so that we could quickly identify and address this.

 

JT, I can see that it's fixed now, thank you.

 

Thanks for saving the site from these intrusive annoying ads