Opinions: "SN lite" or not?
 

Just a quick poll. . . .

If Scoobynet had a "scoobynet lite" interface with no the images (which costs the webbie to download) - and subsequently no advertising "features" would you use it?

I understand it's a bit of a moot topic as this is never going to happen. . . . but it's getting to a point where I'm thinking about avoiding the forums as the benefit of using the forums is being outweighed by the intrusion of ads.

Just wondering if anyone else thinks the same?

A few adds doesn't bother me......... and what else would you do instead???? it would mean getting a life or something :D

Hmmm....I don't lose any sleep over a couple of ads on a forum to be honest mate! :thumb:

Or just get Opera and use the Text Only view!!

Think it would be beneficial to all the people who log on at work during the day

It is a little less inconspicuous with the new page header and all other advertisements

Surely there is a way something can be built into the ‘USER CP’ aspect to get rid of this? Rather than creating another “user friendly” interface?

Tools>options>disable images

No option on my machine:wonder:

That was just a general thing to say just disable images in your browser. What are you using?

I never even look at the ads to be honest, so I would keep it as it is.:thumb:

firefox: tools, options, content - click the exceptions for "load images"

I take your point and agree that at times SN can feel cluttered (just look at the top of the page!) but I don't lose any sleep over it. By disabling images in the browser you can't be selective - it's everything.

I like the new look


BUT its not work friendly ;)

Hi Guys

This is all very well, but we would need to pay for the site somehow. So, we will absolutely 100% install a version with no advertising, no images, etc if you are willing to pay for it.

Whenever you download a page from scoobynet it costs somebody money.

This could be :

a) The host
b) ScoobyNet
c) The advertiser
d) You

The host isn't going to pay for it. Supplying bandwidth for charge is what they do for a living. It would be like saying to McDonalds "to make things more striaght forward for customers, could you provide an option to give us burgers without charging us for them?"

ScoobyNet certainly can't afford to pay for it, as ScoobyNet doesn't actually get anything out of it at all.

The advertiser is happy to pay for it, as it means their advert is seen by the person who downloads that page (unless you use an adblocker, in which case ScoobyNet is forced to pay for your page download :().

So.. the only other option if you don't want the adverts is for you to pay for it yourself. I would be happy to see this installed, and if you truly would like to support scoobynet, but have it exactly how you want it, then this would be a workable solution.

Simon

It is also worth noting that we work hard to find advertisers that are truly in line with the things the majority of the membership are interested in.

Of course, this means that the odd thing here and there will be of no interest, but generally, I think you'll find you would miss out on something if you didn't have the ads showing.

IE 6

I understand that webbie, but hosting doesn't cost that much surely?

Hypothetically, how much would it cost completely disable adverts? (not interested in any of the SN+ stuff - just to remove ads).

Tools>Internet options>advanced>[Multimedia]>untick [show pictures]

We've had some funny google ads at times, particularly on threads dealing with religeon: "Find your perfect Muslim partner" for instance :D

To be honest Simon, you guys do a damn good job (most of the time) with little thanks from us. :thumb:

And finally.

For a member who is logged in, we have the following advertising.

On the portal home page :
1 standard horizontal banner about half way down a standard page.
1 standard vertical banner which is off the bottom of the page.

On the foum home page :
1 standard horizontal banner
1 small picture with text next to it to allow you to enter a competition to win products you've told us you want.

On a thread :
1 standard horizontal banner
1 small competition pic
1 set of text links at the bottom of the thread.

--

I'd hardly call this overkill in terms of advertising.

We don't give you pop-ups, pop-unders, those things that cover the page and you have to search for hours to find the off button, banners that make noises until you click them, etc, etc, etc.

They're just a few pictures, and they help us pay for the site. Take a look around at less professionally run sites and you'll see horrible advertising everywhere. Our advertising it :

1) Highly targetted = very relevant to you
2) Descrete = no noises, pop ups, intrusions, etc
3) minimalistic = all our adverts are the smallest standard sizes of their type

--

take a look at the portal home page : - ScoobyNet

before you even get to the first descrete banner you have the following features :

- blogs from Blog from Phil Mills (Petter Solberg's co-driver), we earn no money from this, and it is purely content created for you.
- blogs from Damian Harty (chief dynamics engineer for prodrive!) same as above.
- 3 x Featured Scoobies. Again, no money for us, purely content.

Then you get two little adverts which do not slow down the page load, or intrude on you in any way.

These are surrounded by yet more blogs, new stories from other sites (not even pointing to scoobynet pages!) which we think will be of interest to you, and of course, a large image about the ScoobyLIVE scooby shootout, which it the biggest thing this year for us.

I'm sure you'll understand that just from this alone, there is so much work, time and effort that goes into creating all of this for you, we really don't think a few descrete banner adverts are the end of the world.

Will give it a shot, thanks

Thanks guys.

--

Re : hosting doesn't cost that much surely?

You would be stunned, I can assure you. Our bandwidth bill alone is in the region of £1,000 per month. ScoobyNet is not a small site. It is INCREDIBLY busy, and therefore requires significant hosting infrastructure.

You start to add on to that Insurance, legal fees, accountants, admin costs, servers, software licenses, and it turns into a whole hill of cash.

This is even before additional things we might want to do like advertise, pay people to help us out on things, or "god forbid" pay ourselves something for the (estimated) 25+ hours a week Shaun and I put in EACH.

Trust me. A handful of scoobynet plus members, and a few of the lowest yealding banner advert sizes/types on the internet do not add up to a fat cheque each month.

We are gradually seeing scoobynet start to earn some more money over the last year or so, and hence the big investment we've made to make it better for everyone and add more content.

Things are never as straight forward as they seem on the surface.

I'm sure you can also imagine, that seeing people such as RMA saying "i'll give it a shot", to dissable our ability to show him adverts, sticks in our throats a bit, as we now know we're serving him pages each of which will simply cost us money with no way of paying for it :(

I just re angle my VDU and its now work safe ;)

Keep up the good work guys :D

LOL @ Phil

We're not even going to charge you for that feature. Glad we could help! :D

I work in IT... I can view what I like! I must say other than the little banner at the top I didnt know scoobynet had many ads - GoogleAds are blocked as a general browsing experience.

Maybe some of the millionaires here could help fund the board? Maybe with donate the proceeds from a cage fight? I'm sure PSL could spare a few quid from his vast abundance of wealth ;)

Why is everyone so bothered about money when they all own their own houses and own their own cars and many have second properties ? :confused:

Or have people really been telling porkie pies ? :lol1:

One of the diamonds just fell off my enter key while typing this :mad:

Thats true! :lol1: :lol1:

Sidhead

Out of genuine friendly interest, I'd really be interested to know if you think that it is morally correct to block the ads that you do?

I'll give you my case :

- You've posted nearly 9,000 times on scoobynet
- You've been a member for nearly 5 years
- You don't currently subscribe to any of the premium features we offer

- So you basically use scoobynet completely for free, and have done extensively.

All of this is fine so far.

- We offer scoobynet on the following terms : You can use it completely free, as it is. This includes the adverts. We will put all of the work into it, and pay for all of the costs without question, and won't ask you for anything, if you do this. This enables us to earn money to pay for the cost of serving the pages to you.

--

Do you think its morally right, to decide to download the pages and cost us money, without being willing to download the adverts at the same time?

I dont do it to spite scoobynet, and i can definately see your point but its an on-off thing. I cant tell it to allow them on Scoobynet ? Also iirc I have them hidden not blocked. So you still get your ad hit.

I have actually paid for Plus membership in the past. My reason? To help the site out because I use it a fair amount. I didnt make use of any of the benefits etc, i saw it purely as a way to contribute.

I have only recently started using the site more again, i went thru a period of not using it mainly because I do not have a scoob currently, and the NSR bit was annoying me the way idiots were having a go at PSL etc.. My posting stats would show that. If i continue using it as much as I am currently I will probably contribute again.