Advertising on Railroad.net

MEC407 wrote:OK, so far it's me, prr60, charlie6017, and ApproachMedium who are on record as having seen a marked increased in pop-ups... anyone else? Please also tell us what web browser you're using.

On Windows 7 I have been getting a bunch of pop-ups (not pop-unders) with Firefox 14.0.1 the past few days - several each browser session. It used to be one a day. With IE 9.0.9 I have never seen any and still don't. The only pop-up blocker I use is the one built into the browser.

Thanks for the info. I think it's clear that Firefox's pop-up blocker doesn't work as well as some of the others. Nevertheless, it is RAILROAD.NET that is serving up the pop-ups, and serving up far more of them than just one per day per user. I'd be very interested to know if that is indeed still the official "policy" on pop-ups, or if they decided to increase the number, or if it's simply some kind of glitch.

At least for me, the multiple pop-under problem seems to be resolved. Only one so far today.

I gave up and installed AdBlock. I really didn't want to go that route -- I was more than happy to give the site a few "ad views" per day if doing so helped keep the site afloat -- but the popups, most of which contained Flash animations, were simply getting out of hand. I had no other choice.

I'm now enjoying a completely ad-free experience, which is great, but if other members choose to do the same thing, it will inevitably result in a loss of revenue for the site. The same will happen if members choose to leave the site altogether. Just something for the owners to keep in mind...

Ironically I may do the same. I still haven't asked the owner yet. I've got a lot going on right now.

Understood. Thanks again for all you do

MEC407, one other thing I forgot to confirm, did you check the popup exceptions?

Remember if you ever got the 'has blocked a popup' message and inadvertently checked 'allow popups from this site' when you meant to check "never" you're stuck until you go into
firefox tools>options>content>block popup windows>exceptions
and remove that exception.

That might be one explanation why popup blocker seems not to work with rr.net, you may have had jittery fingers that allowed the exception when you didn't want to.

I did check the exceptions (there were none), but thanks for the reminder.

I filed a bug report with Mozilla and it appears that quite a few other people have had the same problem with the built-in popup blocker not being very effective.

Now that I'm using a full-blown ad blocker, I've not seen a single popup (or any other types of ads). I do regret that I'm depriving the owners of some revenue, but the popups were getting so bad that it was becoming difficult for me to effectively carry out my duties as a moderator. If they want my labor free of charge, they'll have to live with a few less ad views. (It's a labor of love and I've been happy to do it for free for the past 8+ years, but I do think it's worth mentioning that moderators on most other commercial/for-profit sites get paid. In light of that, I don't feel too bad about using an ad blocker under the circumstances. The owners are still getting a pretty good bargain.)

Google Chrome with Adblock Plus seems to be working excellent for removing ALL ads.

I didn't get a reply on multiple pop-ups, but it sounds like the issue is somewhere else. I've still been only getting one a day.

On another note, I may be making progress on the radio buttons. He may update the phpBB version. I hope. As far as you guys complaining about spam, let me point this out to you. After a weekend off, I had 300 spam posts and more than 1000 spam registrations. Just saying.

it seems like the website itself gets bombarded with Spam posts and registrations. Is there anything that can be done to prevent that? It seems like the other two forums I am on for automobiles do not have this problem. One is very very large (VortexMedia Group) and handles thousands of users across the world. I am sure there must be a way to slow that part of it down somewhat. Also maybe these spam bot postings could be cause of whats attacking some usrs machines with other pop ups and unwanted things.

I'm not sure if it's a setting in php that I'm missing, or if it's the older version. Greg Primrose may know.

I am getting hit with multiple pop-ups every time I try to read a topic or post. It is messing up my computer and I am considering a total withdrawl until and unless this problem is corrected. I suggested to the previous ownership years ago that instead of pop-up that they consider a reasonable annual charge in order to post on here and I make that suggestion again now. I would rather do that than continue with the situation as it seems to be now.
Noel Weaver

I'll pass along the suggestion, and I may set up a poll.

Perhaps direct feedback to the site owner (http://www.resourcewebs.com/) might help?