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Too many ads: slow loading pages

post #1 of 21
3/25/05 at 1:01pm
Thread Starter 
Am I the only one seeing this?

At work (where I have a T1 connection) and at home (where I have DSL), the index page is becoming impossibly slow to load because of all the advertisements:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/index.php

Those are both high speed connections!

The additional problems is that I always go back to the index page before I go to the next forum: sources, amps/receivers, speakers, etc.

I understand that you have to pay the bills, but what bothers me, is that it won't load the forum links *before* loading some of the ads. In other words, sometimes the links to some of the ads slows down (and delays!) the rest of the page loading. (This also happens in some of the threads too, just not as maddening as that index page.) Why not just do the place holder thing, have the entire page load at once, and then the ads can load at their leisure?

One famous competing forum certainly does not have this problem...
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post #2 of 21
3/26/05 at 7:16am
Kevin:

Images should be the last thing to load anyway. I imagine what is slowed down is the ads that are getting served over from Gorilla Nation as they are having to get to our site from there's. That is always a problem when you go that route. That is serving a third party vendor across the net to another site.

I have a cable modem at home and that page loads just fine for me with no delays. Delays can be caused by a number of things. It particular our connection to the net may be over taxed, the uplink might have problems. I know that lately we have had some issues with our site not loading right due to the amount of traffic that we are getting. And that affects page loads too. Often times when I get on the board and it is slow in loading I will notice that we have about 1,500 people online at the same time.

As far a that competing forum their ads are a lot smaller than ours so they load faster. We started out with the larger ads and going to something that small would be a problem.

Parker
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post #3 of 21
3/26/05 at 2:25pm
Adblock!
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post #4 of 21
3/26/05 at 5:52pm
Quote:
Adblock!


Not exactly the best way to support HTF.
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post #5 of 21
3/27/05 at 1:02am
It's a real shame that people come to this forum
to receive and share information at absolutely
no charge to them -- but yet they choose to use
adblocking software that results in revenue loss
for the advertisers and owners who pay for the
upkeep of this site.
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post #6 of 21
3/27/05 at 3:05pm
Thread Starter 
But Ron, if you surf as much as I do on HTF (at least twice a day in a half dozen of the sections), I just personally ignore the ads anyway.

Kind of like white noise in an office area. A bunch of people talking, but no effort to delineate individual conversations. I see the ads because they are at the top of the pages, but I immediately page down (as soon as I'm able!) to the good stuff!

I can believe that ads coming from a 3rd party are a big part of the problem though. Maybe you could bug them about their server speed.
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post #7 of 21
3/28/05 at 4:02pm
I hope you don't skip any ads with your Tivo, Ron.
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post #8 of 21
3/28/05 at 4:51pm
Brian:

Ron doesn't own a Tivo and rarely watches TV but that is beyond the point.
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post #9 of 21
3/29/05 at 5:10am
Quote:

I hope you don't skip any ads with your Tivo, Ron.


That's sort of a low-blow remark, but that's
okay....I understand the logic as to why people
feel they need to use ad-blocking software.

Understand this....

Home Theater Forum (and other forums like this) are
providing all of you with a valuable service at
absolutely no charge out of your pockets. You can
easily ask a question here and get a considerable
amount of feedback/advice within an hour of your post.

Take myself for instance. I'm looking to buy a
new computer. I have lots of questions. Within
a day of posting those questions I received a huge
amount of advice that is going to lead me towards a
confident purchase.

The advice cost me nothing.

So....

You can imagine why we get irritated when we read
about members using ad-blocking software on our site.
It is those banners that you block that pay for the
cost of running this site.

We have explained this many times before, but it
bears repeating....

Internet advertising is a totally different animal
than print and TV advertising. Because Internet
activity can be so easily tracked, advertising is
based on the amount of "impressions" each ad receives
rather than the sort of flat rate that television
and magazines receive. It's very unfair.

Every time one of our readers uses ad-blocking
software to defeat a banner that's an "impression"
we lose. All we need is for more of our members
to heed the advice of some of you within this
thread and we might as well just close shop.

We realize this forum is littered with a lot
of advertiser banners. Understand that all of
these advertisers have taken a keen interest in
supporting what we have to offer our membership.
We are very careful to bring aboard advertisers
that offer quality products and services
and hope our members look to them first before
going out to a brick and mortar retailer.

Despite all the advertisers you see listed on our
forum, Parker and I are not rich men. We get a
mere fraction of what it would cost to advertise
on television or in a magazine -- yet this forum
attracts far more of the "target audience" than
either medium does. This forum averages 29 million
page views per MONTH. Despite that kind of readership,
both Parker and I run this forum in addition to
our 40-50 hour per week day jobs.

I'm not here to cry or make you feel sorry for
us. The forum is supporting itself quite well
these days. It's just that there seems to be a
growing level of concern over the fact that we
have so many advertising banners and that some
feel there is a need to block those banners.

I'm all for pop-up ad blockers. I hate those
things -- and believe me when I say that we have
been offered a crapload of money to run those
obtrusive ads on this very site. We have turned
down that sort of money because we feel that we
shouldn't be subjecting our members to that sort
of advertising.

We are friendly with a few other DVD websites.
Talking with the owners, we all find ourselves in
the same boat when it comes to Internet advertising.
We are all bringing on a higher amount of ad cliental
just for the mere fact that Internet advertising
is paid on a far smaller scale than TV and print media.

And studio support? You have no idea how all
of us fight to get the studios to support these
websites that provide them with valuable
feedback from all of you. Studios would rather
throw advertising support where audiences are
not as "built-in" as they are here. Only a few
studios advertise here as you have well noticed.

We are so very grateful to our advertisers that
see the value of this forum. All of our advertisers
offer product that is generally superior to what
you'll find at your local brick and mortar store.
It's not a lot to ask our readership to help support
our forum by supporting our advertisers.

Thank You.
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post #10 of 21
3/29/05 at 7:45am
Quote:
Ron doesn't own a Tivo and rarely watches TV but that is beyond the point.

He talked about rewinding Lost on his Tivo just last month...

Quote:
That's sort of a low-blow remark, but that's
okay....I understand the logic as to why people
feel they need to use ad-blocking software.

And yes, I know that was a low-block remark, but I think it's a point worth making. I understand the economics of web advertising, I understand how costly it can be to run a large website. However advertisers need to understand that, just like you say, advertising on the internet is different to print ads & that consumers have the power to block, skip & ignore their ads.

Even if adblock software wasn't available, I know for a fact that people would still ignore the ads.
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post #11 of 21
3/29/05 at 9:12am
Brian,

In defense of Parker's statement regarding me
not owning a Tivo...

I own REPLAY TV, and I don't think Parker is
aware that I still use it since I normally
don't watch a lot of broadcast television (and
haven't for the past 7+ years). This is the first
year I have gotten back into it as I regularly watch
Lost, American Idol and The Shield. That's
three hours more than I usually have available
to me.

What I do with my REPLAY TV has nothing to do
with blocking web ads. We are talking about two
different breeds of advertising here.

The last thing I want to do is to turn this
thread into a personal debate between you and
I over the ethics of blocking web ads.

The bottom line is that every member that accesses
this forum or any other like forum with web-blocking
software is hurting that site and pulling advertising
dollars out of their pockets.

Web advertisers don't consider that people have
ad-blocking software. All they see is the final
number of "impressions" their ads are receiving.

You and I will agree that sort of logic is totally
unfair, but that's the ugly truth of how Internet
advertising works and the rules by which we must
play by.

I have the option of using ad-blocking software
on my computer. I made the personal choice NOT
to use it because I read MANY forums EVERY day
and want to throw my support to each of them. I
can handle advertisements as long as they are not
pop-ups.

I don't think we are asking much by requesting our
readers not only access our forum through the
MAIN PAGE but not use (or brag about using) ad-blocking
software.
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post #12 of 21
3/29/05 at 6:05pm
Thread Starter 
Ron- I don't know if this helps, but it's only been in the last maybe 4 - 6 weeks that it seems really slower to me.
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post #13 of 21
3/29/05 at 6:06pm
Ron,
There seems to be NO WAY to send you an email or private message.
Thought I had figured it out when I found the email link in your sig.....but that got kicked back to me.
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post #14 of 21
3/30/05 at 7:54am
Kevin:

I made a couple of script changes a few days ago. Does the forum still lag on you?

Henry:

If you can't get an email off to Ron send it to me and I will make sure he gets it.

Parker
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post #15 of 21
3/30/05 at 8:25am
Quote:
Ron,
There seems to be NO WAY to send you an email or private message.
Thought I had figured it out when I found the email link in your sig.....but that got kicked back to me.

Henry,

I'm sorry about the difficulties you are experiencing.

I get over 200 emails PER DAY. Most of them spam.

I have a very aggressive spam filter that often
deletes and bounces back GOOD mail.

If a message gets bounced back to you, just send again.

The secret to getting mail to me is to put something
in the subject header like: TO RON EPSTEIN IN REGARDS
TO....

Thanks!
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post #16 of 21
3/30/05 at 5:58pm
Thread Starter 
Parker- Even before I saw your post today, it did seem a little bit faster...
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post #17 of 21
3/31/05 at 9:41pm
I still think there are some network issues. The servers appear to be working just fine with low loads even with high traffic.

Parker
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post #18 of 21
4/4/05 at 3:52pm
I find that loading your opening page completely freezes my browser. Has for several months now. I had it as my home page so I changed my home page hoping that would help. Nope. It's like the top of the page loads, then no activity for a couple minutes (sometimes more), then suddenly the rest of the page loads. During that dead time I cannot do anything with the browser. Nothing. When the rest of the page starts loading all is well. Dial-up connection. Any ideas? Thanks.

Greg
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post #19 of 21
4/18/05 at 10:20pm
Thread Starter 
I just had a another delay loading the index page. 10:20pm, west coast time. The site causing the delay was something like us.falk.net or something...
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post #20 of 21
4/19/05 at 5:33am
Hi, Kevin!

Parker and I are out in Los Angeles on
business Will be returning later today.

I'll make certain Parker takes a look
at this situation then.

Thanks for alerting us.
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post #21 of 21
4/20/05 at 12:30am
I've got ad-blocker software, but I don't think it affects anything on the HTF. Actually, it's not really software, but a Hosts file that I have to manually add items to block. I've never added any of the HTF addresses to it, and they are so unobtrusive that I have no reason to do so.

Anyway, on the index page, I see a grid of about 15 or 16 banner ads, and they are all visible. My question is, do you get any revenue from those banners simply loading, or do they need to be clicked every once in a while?

Edit: I clicked on several in order to help out. It looks like you've got some great companies lined up. I wish I was in the market for their products, but right now I'm mainly here for the DVDs and don't actually have a home theater. I do like hometheatercarpets.com's site. They've got some neat stuff.
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