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Feedback Ads on Stratics now?

Nexus

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I’m seeing ads on the forum now when using my phone. Why the change? It’s obnoxious in all honesty.
Google changed the way the ads are fed, not us. There always supposed to have been a banner ad at the top of the page, but now they have them anchored. You can click the little ^ to collapse it.

So that they still can ask for donations for the website...
If the site made enough in Ad revenue each year to pay all it's bills I'd be happy to turn off donations but it doesn't. So we have two options for people who want to help out, they can setup a $5 a month recurring payment via Stratics Pro, or donate. Stratics Pro disables ads for your account.
 

gwen

Slightly Crazed
I'm ok with watching ads. Internet is full of them. But most of times it blocking top row where are forum functions. I just vote "inappropriate" each time.
Google just sucking money of websites making surfing less convenient. Surely some high paid moron on top of Google decided : 《if we will show our ad on half of the page, make closing x tiny and hard to see we will have more clicks. Most by mistake, but whatever. And if after some time website will loose users - also, whatever. It is their own problem. We got our money from ad posters》
 

dvv

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924E9828-88B6-4EC7-9735-8942E6659349.jpeg

6E6A0486-79CE-4182-A0EA-37BAA7E37921.jpeg
Here it blocks navigation at the top of this menu.


You can collapse it yes and it looks bad still hanging out at the top as if anyone is going to uncollapse it to see the ad again (who would do that lol). Not your fault I guess but it’s an unpleasant user experience. I wonder if there are options available to make it so the ads don’t behave like this.

It’s pretty absurd that they could make a change that drastically affects the user experience on any site that uses their service.

What amount of donations would be needed per month to warrant the removal of ads entirely? I wonder.
 

Archnight

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What amount of donations would be needed per month to warrant the removal of ads entirely? I wonder.
Think the minimum is $1 a month for donations or as mentioned above the $5 a month for Stratics Pro. As per exact amount needed to run the site I don't think it's much tbh but it's a community base fansite, so they voted against charging everyone a fee to join and post.
 

Nexus

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What amount of donations would be needed per month to warrant the removal of ads entirely? I wonder.
The site alone costs about around $1200 a year to operate, for hosting an licenses, but we also have a policy of wanting to maintain several years worth of funding in reserve in the event of a poor year, or a buffer against a major recession/depression, or if a situation comes up where we need to migrate hosts or change platforms. This happened about a ago with our last migration and unfortunately coincided with the start of the economic downturn from COVID so we've been hit hard.

To answer your question though, once we returned to an acceptable cash reserve we'd need around $150 a month in order to pay the bills and continue to add to maintain an acceptable growth in our reserve funding. I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but we also try to minimize the number of ads on site, generally it's 3 per page. With so many people using ad blockers that comes out to $40-50 a month in revenue depending on site traffic.
 

Lord Nabin

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Glorious Lord
I'd like to see some investment in promoting and marketing the Stratics site.

*Raises his glass of Good old Moonglow red in your direction in salute*
 

Theno

Visitor
The site alone costs about around $1200 a year to operate, for hosting an licenses, but we also have a policy of wanting to maintain several years worth of funding in reserve in the event of a poor year, or a buffer against a major recession/depression, or if a situation comes up where we need to migrate hosts or change platforms. This happened about a ago with our last migration and unfortunately coincided with the start of the economic downturn from COVID so we've been hit hard.

To answer your question though, once we returned to an acceptable cash reserve we'd need around $150 a month in order to pay the bills and continue to add to maintain an acceptable growth in our reserve funding. I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but we also try to minimize the number of ads on site, generally it's 3 per page. With so many people using ad blockers that comes out to $40-50 a month in revenue depending on site traffic.
Just funny that other UO fansites do not have 1 ad/popup and they also don't moan about "costs" and "licenses". Granted, maybe not "big/old" as Stratics, but none the less, for me more valuable by now, sorry. A domain is like 50-60$ a year, including hosting for like 10-50GB. No idea where Stratics got this high amount from. Possibly managing all on a separate server - but then again, is it really necessary to have a separate server for what's left now... ? I seldomly see more than 10-15 active and real users (but like 350 bots lol) when I visit the forums here.

I generally do not support ads on websites anymore and I am an avid user of AdBlock. I quit using several sites (news/community/social) in the past because of annoying ads/popups. I pay happily for content which is generated with thought and also worth it, but not just copy and pasted from anywhere else. And there are alot of those websites, just trying to make some quick bucks with copy & pasted content and stating pirated content as "news", it's hilarious.
 

Johnny Black

Journeyman
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Just funny that other UO fansites do not have 1 ad/popup and they also don't moan about "costs" and "licenses". Granted, maybe not "big/old" as Stratics, but none the less, for me more valuable by now, sorry. A domain is like 50-60$ a year, including hosting for like 10-50GB. No idea where Stratics got this high amount from. Possibly managing all on a separate server - but then again, is it really necessary to have a separate server for what's left now... ? I seldomly see more than 10-15 active and real users (but like 350 bots lol) when I visit the forums here.

I generally do not support ads on websites anymore and I am an avid user of AdBlock. I quit using several sites (news/community/social) in the past because of annoying ads/popups. I pay happily for content which is generated with thought and also worth it, but not just copy and pasted from anywhere else. And there are alot of those websites, just trying to make some quick bucks with copy & pasted content and stating pirated content as "news", it's hilarious.
I was wondering the same thing, $1200 a year?? is people here on payroll?
is none of my business at all and idc, but stratics were sold and paid in full. License for what? just like mentioned before, someone need to revise the fee's because domains is like $12 a year or like mentioned $50-$60 with hosting up to 50GB.
 

Nexus

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Xenforo I reckon. I guess I could see where it might cost $100 a month between that licence, hosting, backup, and cloudflare. $1200 a year seems fair.

Just the xenforo license runs about $300 a year from what I gather.
Xenforo is rather minimalistic almost everything else besides forums, elastic search, the image gallery and resource manager is handled by 3rd party plugins. The calendar, donation systems, skins, bookmarking threads, improvements to the conversations system for QoL, and a slew of other things all require 3rd party plugins and each has an annual licensing fee associated with it. Between plugins and Xenforo’s annual renewal we spend just under $500, hosting makes up the rest. I don’t think people realize our forum DB alone is larger than many websites and outstrips the size limitations for most VPS services until you get to a point it’s more economically feasible to simply rent a dedicated server.
 

AdamPD

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$1200 a year is actually a good price for a site this large, I think I was paying around the same, perhaps more, for UOForums (although UOForums didn't need a big server, it was just handy having one with all the bells and whistles).

People don't realize how much cost is involved, especially if you don't have a tech working for you to cover technical issues.

For a site like Stratics you need to factor in additional costings on top of the hosting, like backups, backups OF backups, license fees for forum software and/or any paid addons for Xenforo etc.

Surprising how quickly it adds up.
 

Dan(Tasanar)

Journeyman
Professional
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Yup, about 500$ a year for my site. Run one for 5+ years and it all really starts to add up. People love to complain over that which is free.
 
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oompaloompa

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
All of you complaining about them asking for donations for this site is just silly. Im assuming you get plenty of entertainment from this site and that deserves a cost. Hell I just spend $200 on Tacos and Margaritas tonite and wont blink an eye of donating $5 or $25 for this damn site. It has provided a lot of info and entertainment for the 20 + years and i have no issues of trying to keep it open.
 

Captn Norrington

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All of you complaining about them asking for donations for this site is just silly. Im assuming you get plenty of entertainment from this site and that deserves a cost. Hell I just spend $200 on Tacos and Margaritas tonite and wont blink an eye of donating $5 or $25 for this damn site. It has provided a lot of info and entertainment for the 20 + years and i have no issues of trying to keep it open.
That’s the greatest part about community funded places like this, it’s really not that expensive when the costs are spread out. All it’d take is $5 a month from whoever the 20 most active users are, or $2 from the top 50 to keep the monthly cost fundraiser paid off forever.
 

Anon McDougle

Grand Inquisitor
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That’s the greatest part about community funded places like this, it’s really not that expensive when the costs are spread out. All it’d take is $5 a month from whoever the 20 most active users are, or $2 from the top 50 to keep the monthly cost fundraiser paid off forever.
I believe the issue was that people did upgrade to plus users and were still seeing ads
 

Dryzzid of Atlantic

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I can't say I've experienced any issues. I see 2 ads, one at the top and one at the bottom, before I login. No ads after I login. I have Ublock disabled for Stratics.
 

dvv

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
When viewing an image, you cannot access the options at the top of the screen because a huge ad blocks it. Any plans to try to change some of this behavior? The ads are altering the experience on the site on mobile pretty significantly.
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Stinky Pete

Babbling Loonie
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
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When viewing an image, you cannot access the options at the top of the screen because a huge ad blocks it. Any plans to try to change some of this behavior? The ads are altering the experience on the site on mobile pretty significantly.
View attachment 122689
Screenshot_20211004-195657.png
When viewing @dvv's ads I have ads that cover his ads. Does anyone's ads cover my ads?
 
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