Why are there Ford ads on this page, especially ones advertising their hybrids? Might need to have a talk with those handling your website!
... and PriusChat is still a good place to troll for hybrid buyers who don't fit well into any of the Prius molds, and might fit better into one of their products.
Ive belonged to several forums, some owned by company's (vertical scope is the WORST for ads) and some not. And the ads are essential to offset the running costs (servers, software, etc) of the site and keep it free for us. However, the ads can be adjusted to be smaller and they usually advertise things of similar interest of people that browse a specific forum. Prius forums = hybrids/cars/mpg's = ads that sell stuff to do with that. BTW, there are some browsers (firefox?) and some add-on extensions you can download that will completely block the ads (ad block?). I dont use either of those because I simply dont let the ads bug me, but I know from other forums - one that I moderate at - members report good luck with those two.
The admin, Danny, doesn't personally select the ads that run on the sight. He signed up for an Ad service, which several companies do. With such an ad service, a admin injects a small bit of code into their site to support a specific add location and size on the page. After that, every time you load the page, it pings the server for the Ad Service and presents an ad the service thinks is relevant. In this case, it knows this is a car forum (it doesn't care what kind of car forum), so it tends to present car-related ads. These types of services also typically do some usage tracking so they "know" individuals (usually based on browser history for client-side tracking, or IP based tracking for server-side). Thus, if you visit another website before coming here, you might suddenly notice an ad related to that other website instead of being related to cars. Oh, and ad blockers typically end up hurting the sites you visit. Danny relies on the money the ads generate to help keep this place running. An ad blocker prevents your browser from requesting the ad in the first place, so the ad server knows it wasn't displayed, and they don't pay Danny for that page load. While each page load is only a fraction of a cent, it can add up real quick...
I normally turn off Adblock for sites I like, but after being exposed to obnoxious-beyond-the-realm-of-acceptable ads one too many times here, I'm keeping it on for PriusChat. If Danny ever puts on a "Support this site through Paypal" link, I'd gladly do that.
BTW, regarding making a donation to the site vs. seeing the ads, a lot of other forums have options where you pay $15-$20 a year and that makes you a 'supporting member' or something like that and you wont see any ads."Free" accounts will still continue to get the ads. Didnt even notice if PC has an option like that.
It has been suggested (I should know because I'm one of the ones who suggested it); it had been discussed before. However, apparently implementation is tricky so it hasn't been done.
i don't have any problem with the ads, they don't interfere with anything and they are not banners that take up part of the screen.
This depends on one's 'broadband' connection. Until very recently, mine was just 260kbaud with a 3GB/month limit. Back when most other users still had dialup, this was wonderful. But as the proliferation of broadband spread, web pages bloated severely, and the ads and partner site files started choking my connection. Pages loaded much slower, and I started running over my monthly traffic quota, triggering overage charges. Ad and script blockers greatly speeded my page loading and halted the overages, long before I discovered PriusChat. Then when PC users repeatedly reported malware, nearly all the problems were traced to infected ads. That clinched my decision to not whitelist PC when I finally got a faster link. Instead, I supported Danny through the PC Shop.
