Empty box at the bottom

[ncbill]

Turned off my ad blocker for this site as well.

My only request would be for ads on the side, not popup on the bottom that blocks text of the posts.

[GalaxyBoy]

In Safari on Mac OSX with no ad blocker, there is simply an ad at the bottom that I can easily close; no slowdown in performance. Small price to pay if it covers costs of the site, IMHO.

[tb001]

I would hope, given the traffic here, ad revenue is doing more than just covering the costs of the site. Which is great—a win win for all of us.

But I’ll say again, the ONLY reason I have an ad blocker turned on is because this site, and only this site, regularly had an ad that tried to hijack my browser on the phone. I know many others had this issue as well and though it was reported several times, it continued to be an issue and makes the forum virtually unuseable from a phone.

I’m more than happy to turn it off if this type of ad can be easily removed when reported. Not sure how doable that is.

[Cobra9777]

I use Chrome with Adblock Plus. I've seen this empty pop-up box a few times over the last few days. Very weird and confusing. Haven't seen it recently. Maybe ABP learned how to block it entirely.

[ivinsfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tb001 I would hope, given the traffic here, ad revenue is doing more than just covering the costs of the site. Which is great—a win win for all of us. But I’ll say again, the ONLY reason I have an ad blocker turned on is because this site, and only this site, regularly had an ad that tried to hijack my browser on the phone. I know many others had this issue as well and though it was reported several times, it continued to be an issue and makes the forum virtually unuseable from a phone. I’m more than happy to turn it off if this type of ad can be easily removed when reported. Not sure how doable that is.

Right and this just reminded me that the hi-jack ad happens every once in awhile on my Kindle Fire....I usually stay off the site for awhile on the KF and return a week or two later then it seems good.

[audreyh1]

Yes, I'm seeing this on both Safari on my Mac, and on my iPad. My iPad is running an adblocker, but I still see the box. My Mac has no adblocker, but it looks the same as my iPad. This is very annoying.

I'm also one that only has an adblocker on my iPad because of this site. The winner popups that simply won't go away was the reason I finally resorted to using an adblocker on my iPad.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cathy63 I assumed it was a new kind of ad that was being only partially blocked by my ad blocker, but I hadn't yet gotten curious enough to turn off the blocker and see. Are you guys using ad blockers?

I see it on my Mac (Safari) with no adblocker, and on my iPad with an adblocker. Looks the same.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy R The reason the box is empty is because we have so many people using ad blockers that's it's undermining the ability to offer services for free. We basically moved the ad from the footer of the page (which would not have seen before if you are using an ad blocker) into the box in the footer. The box in the footer is empty because the ad blocker is removing the ad. All you have to do is click the X and it will go away for 24 hours. Then you can view as many pages as you want before it comes back in 24 hours. We are looking into a way to disable this thing for members who actively post. For example, made 20 posts in the last month it would get disabled. We are working on this solution so it might be a little while before we can roll it out.

But I'm not seeing the ad on my Mac in Safari (just a blank box) even though I am not running any ad blocker there.

[tb001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 But I'm not seeing the ad on my Mac in Safari (just a blank box) even though I am not running any ad blocker there.

Now that I think about it, pretty sure on my Mac it’s showing up as a blank box too. No ad blockers on the computer either.

[ExFlyBoy5]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptTom Yes, of course, we all understand that ads pay the bills. But pop-up ads? In 2019? Seriously?

You can always request a refund.


I don't find it annoying at all. It takes a whopping .03 seconds to move my mouse 2 inches to X it out. It's still much better than some of the sites that load up a page with 14 ads.

[target2019]

I might be persuaded to pay a fee for PUM.

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 In Chrome, AdBlock Plus finds and blocks this element as "early-retirement.org###footfixed"

It popped up again this morning. Very annoying. So I clicked "Block element" in ABP and it found and blocked it with same name as you posted. Hopefully that's the last I see of this.

I wouldn't mind it at all if it was an actual ad. But it's just a transparent, empty, pop-up box. Makes it seem like something is broken with the forum. Based on posts here, it's empty whether the user has an adblocker or not. So it's difficult to understand what's being accomplished here. How does the forum make money on an empty, transparent, pop-up box?

[gwraigty]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra9777 How does the forum make money on an empty, transparent, pop-up box?

They're trying to annoy us so that we'll pay to make it go away.

[Rianne]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sengsational Both on Firefox desktop and Firefox Android I've had an empty box appear at the bottom of the browser window. It's got an "x" in the top right corner, and it's able to be dismissed. Just weird. Wondering if anyone else is seeing this. Maybe it's more of that nutty 'notify user we use cookies' law (like, duh, cookies are ubiquitous, I don't need to be reminded ten thousand times). But if that's it, then where's the text?

I'm seeing the same thing on Firefox. Just started a few days ago.

[LarryMelman]

An annoyance is that if I came to a page from clicking the "show new posts" and being taken into the middle of a page of posts, x'ing out the ad box causes a jump to the top of the page, and I'll have no idea where the new posts started.

[gwraigty]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LarryMelman An annoyance is that if I came to a page from clicking the "show new posts" and being taken into the middle of a page of posts, x'ing out the ad box causes a jump to the top of the page, and I'll have no idea where the new posts started.

+1

I turned off my ad blocker today for unrelated reasons, and I was able to see the pop up ad, which I quickly closed. I can see all the other ads just fine, those in the header and on the right side. IMO, there's no reason to have yet another ad popping up that obscures a part of the page I'm trying to read. I'm much less likely to pay attention to, much less click on, an intrusive ad like that.

[Bongleur]

Still getting the blank box at the bottom every time I go to a new page or tab.

[Gumby]

Do you click the "remember me" button when you log in?

[SecondCor521]

I think there's a minor flaw in this implementation. I don't think it's reasonable for me to expect it to get fixed, but I'll mention it here anyway.

I have an ad blocker on, so I get the empty box at the bottom of the screen once a day.

If I go to "User CP" or "New Posts" and open one of the threads to the first unread reply, I'll get the empty box at the bottom. Once I click on the "X" to dismiss it, the URL changes from the bookmarked first unread reply to a blank bookmark, so from "....html#post2336805" to "....html#" which takes me back to the top of that page of the thread.

In other words, dismissing the blank window makes me lose my place in the thread because it makes the bookmark go away.

Since I usually open threads in a new window, I've discovered the workaround of pressing the back arrow button, which restores the bookmark but not the empty window.

[Winemaker]

I usually close the empty box, refresh, then it doesn't appear until the following day.