The Lemon Fool

As you may or may not know, the site is funded by adverts.
This puts all our eggs in one basket, so I am introducing different ways of funding ongoing maintenance and future development.

The first of these is a new "donatations" button up on the top menu. By donating you are saying thanks for the site and any help it has provided. There is no commitment, there is no renewal or auto annual payment.
As a way of saying thanks, we will remove the adverts from your view for 12 months and extend the size of you PM inbox limit. We may also introduce more benefits as we think of them (please suggest anything)

If you liked the lack of ads in a years time, feel free to donate again for another year without them.

Please note, there will NEVER be any restrictions to accessing this site. No paywall. Nothing. This is purely voluntary.

Regards
Stooz and Clariman

stooz wrote:The first of these is a new "donatations" button up on the top menu.

Sorry, I'm probably being blind, but I haven't managed to see something I recognise as a "top menu" with such a button on it. Could you explain exactly where it is, please?

Gengulphus

Gengulphus wrote:

stooz wrote:
The first of these is a new "donatations" button up on the top menu.

Sorry, I'm probably being blind, but I haven't managed to see something I recognise as a "top menu" with such a button on it. Could you explain exactly where it is, please?

I can't see the new button either, so it's not just you...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Gengulphus wrote:

stooz wrote:The first of these is a new "donatations" button up on the top menu.

Sorry, I'm probably being blind, but I haven't managed to see something I recognise as a "top menu" with such a button on it. Could you explain exactly where it is, please?

Gengulphus

It must be part of a cunning plan...

A toe in the water, and if the reaction is wholly against, perhaps the button never will appear

Personally, I think it's a good idea. Another site I regularly use has a similar arrangement and the voluntary donations more than cover the site's cost.

Contributors are identified by a different coloured username. I'm not personally convinced that that is necessary but the site owners presumably feel that identifying those who help out is worthwhile.

As I mentioned, the donations entirely cover costs, so whether site users pay up or not, no-one sees adverts, because there arent any. Maybe Stooz and Clariman will find similar here.

One thing they have is a link to a page showing the amount needed to cover the next years costs, ans a running total of how much is donated.

My mistake, it was only visible to me !

I have a donations button next to quick links. Running on a tablet with firefox.

Raptor

Fixed the issue. Hopefully it's visible to all.

stooz wrote:Fixed the issue. Hopefully it's visible to all.

OK for me. Don't spend all the donation on wine, women and song (unless you invite me to the party)

--kiloran

To be honest I barely notice the adverts, they are relatively unintrusive, it seems that after 20 years of using the world wide web I appear to have developed a mental filter for ignoring banner ads. Nevertheless I will make a donation as I greatly appreciate what you've done in getting this site up and running but if it makes you more income I'm happy to keep seeing the ads for now.

Thanks

BH

Yes, don't find the ads too intrusive. Much better than pop-ups and highlighted text in posts (you know the sort of thing - you post "I'm off on holiday end of next week" and it ends up looking like ""I'm off on holiday end of next week" with a link to a holiday website

Ghastly!

Ads? What ads? The only ad I see is the newly appeared one at the top that says "Remove ads" ...

AleisterCrowley wrote:Yes, don't find the ads too intrusive. Much better than pop-ups and highlighted text in posts (you know the sort of thing - you post "I'm off on holiday end of next week" and it ends up looking like ""I'm off on holiday end of next week" with a link to a holiday website

Ghastly!

A decent adblocker, like uBlock Origin stops all that and removes the risk of contracting malware from the adflingers.


The donation is still worth it, so done

Slarti

bionichamster wrote:To be honest I barely notice the adverts, they are relatively unintrusive, it seems that after 20 years of using the world wide web I appear to have developed a mental filter for ignoring banner ads. Nevertheless I will make a donation as I greatly appreciate what you've done in getting this site up and running but if it makes you more income I'm happy to keep seeing the ads for now.

Thanks

BH

Ditto. I don't notice the ads at all, so if it maximises revenue to keep showing them to me feel free.

Incidentally, why are there no recs on this board? Not complaining, just curious.

Oh? Not sure why recs are off here...

stooz wrote:Oh? Not sure why recs are off here...

Below-par admin! I want my money back

--kiloran

kiloran wrote:

stooz wrote:Oh? Not sure why recs are off here...

Below-par admin! I want my money back

--kiloran

I'm writing this in what appears to be the Biscuit Bar and recs are available to certain select people, such as here:

viewtopic.php?p=53001&sid=f5952ede5b52cb97781082cdec14bcd6#p53001










However, I do realise this isn't really the Biscuit bar at all. It is the Announcements section, above the Topics, and I could have written this from anywhere on LMF and not been as confused as I may have been originally. Had I been confused at all.

Yes! That. This isn't a forum related post.
Had me confused for a while..

Clitheroekid wrote:Ditto. I don't notice the ads at all, ...

I quite often did notice them, but I can see why people's experience might vary. Specifically, I'm often on a mobile connection which is quite slow, so that there's an appreciable delay before a banner advert appears - often just long enough for me to click on something and have the advert appear as I click, so that I end up clicking through to the advertiser. And having to press the back button to get to the page I actually wanted to be on, often involving another wait for it to reload... Most annoying, and I'm glad to be rid of it - but on a fast connection it would happen much less.

I do also find some adverts visually distracting, often because they're fast-moving and/or show a face looking straight at the camera - quick motion and someone staring at you both being things the human visual system is very good at picking up and reacting to. Have to say though that TLF's adverts weren't often a problem in that respect - it's more a problem with other sites.

Gengulphus

The adverts I've seen on TLF are ok, but I'd rather not have them than have them. Yes losing the adverts means a loss of revenue for TLF, but I'm personally quite comfortable with that if what TLF loses in ad revenue is more than made up for in donations.

There are other sites where the adverts are very irritating. My local newspaper website is a case in point. Full-screen adverts appear in front of news articles, if not full-screen adverts then banners that take a quarter of the screen and videos stop part-way through to give an advert. And it can slow down my computer. But there is no option to pay for no adverts, if only there was...

shinygoldcar wrote:There are other sites where the adverts are very irritating. My local newspaper website is a case in point. Full-screen adverts appear in front of news articles, if not full-screen adverts then banners that take a quarter of the screen and videos stop part-way through to give an advert. And it can slow down my computer. But there is no option to pay for no adverts, if only there was...

I highly recommend the MVPS HOSTS file. The HOSTS file on Windows is the first port of call for determining the address of a site. If it isn't specified in the HOSTS file Windows then goes to the DNS servers to find it, but if it is in the HOSTS file it just gets it from there.

Now, the vast majority of ads are served from a site different to the one you are looking at, indeed, most come from specific ad-serving sites, so if the HOSTS file contains a "duff" address for those sites then you won't get any of their ads, and that's what the MVPS HOSTS file is: a list of all the known such sites, all pointed to a "duff" address.

Aside from the obvious effect of no longer seeing the vast majority of ads, the speed effect can be outstanding, as the MVPS HOSTS file not only blocks ad sites but also trackers, counters, and all sorts of other stuff you don't care about or want. E.g. on my Windows 10 laptop it cuts the time to fully load the TimeOut Free Exhibitions in London page from 30-40 seconds to only 5-6 seconds!

It all looks a bit techie, but it's a once-only setup (and a once in a blue moon update) and well worth doing.

You will also want a hosts file switcher, as just occasionally you want ads, or at least links through the ad serving sites, e.g. if you google "where can I buy XXX". There's a few available. I use Hosts Manager, which just sits an icon in the taskbar tray that lets you easily switch between the MVPS "blocking" hosts file and your original empty one (which you should copy before setting up the MVPS one).

You'll also want a DNS Flusher add-on for the browser you use, as sometimes it'll remember the previous address for a site even though you've switched host files.