Forum Ads

[Darren]

I know it is quite possibly a rubbish idea....
I have just been given 12 months free GoDaddy from Virmin Media as they are shutting down their webspace....

[Matt]

After a bit of head-scratching (and lots of swearing) last night, it transpires that there's an issue with doing a "lift and shift" - one of the tables is chucking up an error when I re-import the forum to a different host. However myphpadmin is a bit vague as to which table is throwing a wobbly, so it's going to take a bit of creative thinking (and tweaking) to get around this problem, but I'm sure it's possible.

In the meantime, I'm bombarding the current hosts with emails demanding action - Watch this space.

M.

[Pompeyfan]

Cheers Matt, I think I speak for everyone that we appreciate your effort.

[Daniel.Bishop28]

Matt, in the politest way possible, I am getting fed up of the ads now. I can just about tolerate the ones that pop up on the side of the screen, however what I do not like is being forced to click on something I know to be a load of rubbish to be taken to a third party website.

[Pompeyfan]

I think we're all getting a bit fed up with them, but currently we're discussing behind the scenes the best cause of action. This is just a hobby for all the Mods so obviously if one of the 2 main mods (Matt/Janes) are snowed under by real life then there's not a huge amount of progress to be made.

The adds are getting more aggressive to a point where all devices are being told they contain virus' and they must be cleaned.

[James]

Hi all,

Matt is working on a solution but also busy with real life. He has already tried many different things and it hasn't worked yet due to an unknown fault... Give him time - life has many priorities and forum ads aren't one of mine, and I assume not so for Matt.

I was going to temporarily shift us all back to the old forumup forum to remove the ads - however, eagle eyed spotters will have noticed that the GSC forum has been down the last few days and up to its old tricks, so this is why I haven't taken action.

You might see some movement from me over the Easter weekend, but I'm off down to Swanage today so it won't be until later this weekend. I already pay for smugmug and freewebs so will not be paying for another site; I know many people had said they will put money in but (a) I'm trying to avoid having to pay anyway, such as the old forumup forum, and (b) the logistics could be tricky!

Either way, we will keep you in touch as and when there are developments.
I know how annoying they are - try jumping to different pages while you are updating the website!

Best wishes,
James

[beneboy]

I for one am happy to let the mods sort this out. I'm afraid I know enough about computers to know it isn't straight forward to sort out, but not enough to help sort it out!

I regard the ads as a pain but nothing more; a price well worth paying to get the quality gen and craic we get on here!

In the meantime I am grateful to Matt, James and the other mods for their efforts.

[Matt]

Before anyone else bites my head off, I received a (not very) apologetic email about 20 mins ago telling me that the ad-removal subscription should be activated today, so hopefully that'll be the end of it. However, as I've got enough common-sense to install an ad-blocker on my gateway, I'm not affected by these things, so I'm relying on feedback to confirm that they've done what's been promised. Now I just need to figure out why I've been charged twice (once about a month ago and, as I've just noticed, again today) .. b@$t@rds.

Ho-hum. If it aint one thing, it's something else.

M.

[Matt]

Another thing. Some people have kindly offered to help by making a small donation. If indeed anyone does, please PM me and I'll give you my account details. I might think about setting up a Paypal account (or similar) for future voluntary donations.

I've got a spare Apache box sitting here doing nothing, so when I figure out which SQL table is causing the problems with export/import operations, I might well whack a copy of the forum on there - I've got a static IP, so paying a few quid and for a domain registration might be a good idea - as then I'll have *full* control over the way the forum behaves, and ads will 100% be a thing of the past (unless someone annoys me - and I'll bombard them with bouncing boxes )

M.

[Matt]

Just had another email from our hosting folks - the ads have (apparently) now been removed. Can anyone who was getting them please flush your cache and reload this site - all should now be sorted.

Thanks for your patience (well - most of you anyway) on this matter.

M.