[Closed] stupid adverts messing up my STW browsing experience

What, like dissin' you?

Gave up using this site on mobile and work pc's.

Anything other than my home pc finds this site incredibly slow, clunky, ad ridden and crash-prone. This site is about the worst on the net of anywhere I go, for killing the browsing experience. It's only on a home pc where I can control the ads using adblocker that it's even vaguely useable.

A few ad's fair enough, but this site's sorife with them you can only use it by turning them all off, which kind of defeats the object really of having some ads on display.

Iz dey all up in ur grill 'n shit, blud?

I blame David Cameron.

A lot of the work I do at work is on web based applications. I can only use Explorer, no other browser.. I know that if I want to surf stw between tasks I have to save and close my work on those apps before opening stw otherwise after 2/3 clicks explorer stalls, goes to 'not responding' & I have no choice then but to close all web browsers. My work should have a more update version or a different browser but Stw is the only site where this happens.

what adverts? had to be said

[quote=kimbers said]but in this case i think hes probably blameless

Stored for posterity.

Just got a nexus 7 using lollipop and the ads are covering the first inch or so of the thread titles, sometimes . I've implemented a non premier fix on my pic so now will research similar for the tablet but kind of defeats the object of the ads as I'm happy to view and click providing they display correctly.

I pay for my STW experience and never have a problem

Craig5 - didn't know you could do that, thanks 🙄

It's only a couple of quid for the premier account. No ads, you can read all the reviews and the magazine. Well worth it if you ask me.

It's only a couple of quid for the premier account. No ads, you can read all the reviews and the magazine. Well worth it if you ask me.

Surely the model is to entice new users, who'll clearly want to use for free until they see if they like the thing. Plenty probably turn straight around and **** off for good

I only ever use an iPhone online (mainly as I don't have a PC/Laptop/Mac etc)

Never had these drastic issues many seem to have on here, that apparently make the site "unuseable"

Maybe I'm not fussy enough 🙂

Aye, the bottom 'adverts' - shown under the thread posts, just above the 'Reply' option - I get links to other forum posts with some very random pictures next to them - whilst on my Android phone. On my browser I appear to be getting links to massage places and personal assistants - both mildly worrying as I haven't searched or browsed for either (and nothing in London!)

Never really been bothered by ads either on my phone or pad, I just double-tap the main text area and it expands to fill the screen, and the ads don't seem to cause any speed issues, mainly because there's no Flash involved for mobile devices. Desktop may be another matter, however; when I used to have a bit of time to browse STW on my work computer it was almost pointless because of the continual freezing and warnings about advert content.
Won't even attempt it now, even if I had the time, because of the much greater level of security on our network.

This is quite annoying:

[img] [/img]

I'm getting the above issue too, not constantly but c. 50% of the time. Web Bods- for info i am on Android 5.1.1.

I Get this same issue every so often on my iPad mini using Chrome, so it's not just an Andriod problem. It's a poor user experience, and I'm pretty confident it's not what the advertisers would want either.

Was getting the same as torsoinalake earlier on, but it's gone now, looked to be an advert for a well known UK bike store that went a bit wayward.

I have had that happen this morning. It will happen at least once when I browse on my android phone. Also the back button still isn't working consistently on android. Not a moan, more a beads up to point out the site isn't working correctly (and hasn't for weeks).

Otherwise I too have opted for a "non premier solution" on work's computer and now also on the tablet since the pop up ads started. The magazine doesn't interest me, my budget is pretty tight at the minute and every other website I visit on the Internet is free to use. Apart from the non premier solution, which cost a fiver four years ago.

And after I posted that it crashed my phone 😉

Modest update - an earlier post here, I mentioned it was the work pc that suffered running ie9, with random page crashes (it tells me the page has stopped responding). Having just bought a Hudl, I also get the issue above where you cant see the left and right hand side of the page in Android - I think it was a huge Evans ad dominating the left and right, overwriting the actual forum content to the far edges as above.

And it's the only site so far that's broken the Hudl.

Sorry STW.

Yep that's what I get too on 5.1.1. Very intermittent and have resorted to reloading and stopping the page pre ads whilst I can't be arsed to investigate an android solution. It is Sunday after all!

http://singletrackmag.com/terms-and-conditions/

"In addition you agree not to promote the use of ad blocking on our site in either story comments or forum posts."

I shan't, then. But I do wonder if legit advertisers will have an issue with those whose ads cause people to consider alternatives.

I have sympathy for people that complain about the adverts, especially from those who browse on phones and tablets - I stopped coming here for months because of the watch/Audi adverts that kept on spamming me when I visited. T'husband has a Premier account, so we thought that having a second one would be a bit overkill - the difference is amazing though.

I make F2P games so I understand the difficulties of balancing monetisation with offering something that's essentially free to use, but if that something is community based, you really don't want to be alienating the bulk of the non-paying community by making it actively unpleasant for them - it means you might lose paying users before they get a chance to convert, as well as reducing the size, variety and vibrancy of the community (which ends up reducing how valuable you are to advertisers). Although obviously I'm not familiar with STWs analytics, so the amount of people bothered by the adverts might not be an issue compared with the money they bring in. 😉

I also have a lot of sympathy. Even for those of us who pay, it's often a pain to login when using a phone as you have to wait for all the ads to load when not logged in.

It's a shame cos I like it here for the most part. The ads, particularly the side screen ads that obscure the forum are a pain.
I stopped going to The Poke for similar reasons.
I aint flouncing though! Just come here less often as a result.

Bike Radar adverts used to be far worse. Full screen pop ups and sliding in/out were infuriating.

I'd actually forgotten the watch and car ads that opened right across the screen! Apart from the issue using the IMG tabs above to post photos which crash the site, it's pretty much back to how it used to be for me, using my pad.
Strange how these issues don't seem to be consistent across a single platform, let alone multiple platforms.

IPad seems ok, windows phone is fine but laptop is not worth it. Crappy blue banner that hides itself but throws formatting right out, half screen missing and looks like its 150% zoom.

Bike Radar adverts used to be far worse. Full screen pop ups and sliding in/out were infuriating.

Yeah at that point everyone left. STW is getting that bad, I simply can't use the site on Android phone as you can't view the text properly. Oddly the site seems to work fine on Chrome running on Win7 laptop though.