LOL! 😆 The overlaying pop-up ads feels like going back in time to mid-90s when advertisers first found a way to advertise with push-technology. I still remember very clearly those days when advertisers practically pasted the whole website with as much ads as possible covering all available space. The concept hasn't changed much apart from the ads themselves.
I am not bothered with the ads as long as they don't eat up my RAM or inflict my pooter with nasties.
Most ads on the side of the website page are fine, but the one at the bottom is annoying as it keeps popping up from time to time. Could you make the bottom ad slightly smaller or thinner? The page will look nicer if the bottom ad is thinner and does not pop up too often. Also, some of the overlapping ads should be avoided because overlapping is just a bad design and makes the page messy.
Everything is currently working fine for me (Windows/Chrome and Android/Chrome - and accepting any cookies I'm offered) and my subscription is up for renewal in 2 days. I guess I now have a choice of £29pa to STW or £15pa to AdFree. Based on that, I'd rather STW got the extra.
If you use multiple browsers then each one will store it's own cookies. That means if you visit a site that requires cookie consent in one browser you will need to consent again with a different browser. That's not us - that's how the internet works. I use diferent browsers a lot in order to see how the site works without having to clear cookies from another browser. The large number of cookies that DuckDuckGo alerts is simply those listed in the CMP. As I said earlier, that does not mean that all those cookies are currently on your device, just that by giving consent you allow those cookies to be present on your device when they are needed. The cookie consent platform is one used by 1000's of media websites that run ads. It's called Uniconsent. By clicking consent you are not suddenly downloading 1000's of cookies.
I have DuckDuckGo installed on all my devices. It was a few clicks to let DuckDuckGo access the site.
Cookies are not a bad thing. Cookies are how a website knows you are logged in or not. Cookies are how websites know what you have in your shopping basket. It's how you can browse through any site that needs an account. The fact ads use them for targeting has tainted their reputation a LOT. They are nothing more than a text file on your device. You can open them up in a text editor and read them. Most are a few characters long. Some are pages long. We now offer a solution that allows you to block all the ad related cookies that are linked to ads across the site. What we don't offer is a way to block them AND still use the site - unless you are a subscriber.
If you are a subscriber and you are having problems accessing the site then we will jump at the chance to help you. You are paying for that support among other things. If, however we find that you have settings in your browser that prevent you from accessing the site and you are not willing to change them, then that's as far as we can go with help.
To access our site you need to have privacy settings that allow our site to store and access cookies on your devices. Ad blockers can usually be set to allow certain websites that you choose - this is called whitelisting. If you run an adblocker and whitelist Singletrack you will see ads and cookies will be stored on your device. If you run a firewall at home or at your office that has security features that prevent cookies from being stored on your devices then you will likely have problems accessing our site. Unless you are a subscriber.
Some users have pointed out that they don't have ad blocking software on their devices. But ad blocking is starting to be built in to some browsers by default. Brave and DuckDuckGo are examples. Safari on apple devices comes with ad blocking tools although I'm unsure if they are active by default. Each of those can be configured to allow websites that you choose to store the necessary cookies. But we can't do that remotely.
Advertsing cookies are not stored on subscribers devices while they are logged in. Singletrack cookies are though and these are very much needed to enable the site to function. If your settings prevent all cookies from being stored then regardless of your subscription status, the site will not work for you as intended until you change your settings top allow our cookies.
If you access websites using a private browser (Incognito window in Chrome for eg) then cookies needed to make the site work WILL still be stored on your device. But when you close the browser they will be deleted. That means when you come back to the site you will need to clear the consent popup again and login to the site.
As of now, in excess of 99% of all users visiting the site today have experienced no problems that we can see. If you are a subscriber in that last 1% we are here to help.
This is in no way meant to dismiss anyone's issues or access problems. I'm just being honest about how things work and what we can and will do about it. We want everyone to be able to access our site. But not for free. The terms are ads or subscribe and we will help where we can.
Bollocks to this I'm logging out for while. Have a good weekend everyone.
The reason I visit this site less often in recent months is because all the ads have become annoying and most of the content on the home page is just stiff I’d read in the magazine already or news that is on all the other sites, only without all the adverts clogging up the screen.
I use my iPhone for pretty much all
my web access these days an it’s hard to see anything on the small screen with all the ads. I used to pay for a subscription but money got tight and unfortunately I had to make savings somewhere.
I still can’t work out how to send a private message…
Also, I was unable to get past the Adblock thing today on my work pc, Win11, Edge browser.
As of now, in excess of 99% of all users visiting the site today have experienced no problems that we can see. If you are a subscriber in that last 1% we are here to help.
Is there maybe some sort of survivor bias going on here because certainly I’ve not been able to access as per my post earlier. I’m not a subscriber so I’m reading you post as you have no interest in sorting that - despite the fact I’ve no ad blocker turned on and using Chrome. Safari on the same machine works (but is not my default browser) so it’s neither computer nor network configurations. I’ve no issue with you blocking people actually using adblockers but I’ve endured your massively processor hungry, screen real estate greedy ads for years because I think it’s right that you should get paid. To be rewarded for that with a tone of “well you should subscribe” leaves a bit of a sour note.
@Mark - that last message took over 1 minute from hitting Add Reply to actually stopping the “working” spinner in the top right corner- if you want to know why I’m not a subscriber it’s because your site is riddled with janky stuff like that and changes are rolled out without robust testing.
Likely me. I just clerared the site cache after some ad tweaks
We test a lot. This CMP update was tested 2 weeks ago. We load test. But as much as you can test a site there's no way to test for every browser and every setting within a browser especially where cookies are involved as there is no way we can tell how any individual machine is going to deal with cookies. To add to the complication the code is not ours. CMPs are third party systems. We have always prioritised subscribers and it's no secret that I've been moving Singletrack more and more towards being a subscriber platform for quite some time. Free users are welcome and always will be. But the deal is ads. As I said earlier, we are here to help any subscribers who are having issues accessing the site. Just email us with your details and we'll do our best for you. Previously the price of subscribing and removing the ads was £31 for annual digital subscription. Now you can remove the ads for just £15/year.
Full subscriber, not working on the brave browser, even with a password reset ☹️
Full subscriber here. Clicking on the Lauf review, each time I get a small advertising video playing bottom left.
edit: in fact, as I scroll down the page new ones keep opening, the latest one in French, merde alors!
Full subscriber here having to type this on phone as the site on Chrome on pc won't work at all for me now.
Get the adblock detected popup. If I click Go adfree it takes me to a page to subscribe and pay which I obviously already do. If I click unblock and refresh I get a popup where I agree to all to see if it will direct me to a page to sign in, but it doesn't. It just goes back to the original popup so I can't actually access the site at all
Everything is currently working fine for me (Windows/Chrome and Android/Chrome - and accepting any cookies I'm offered)
Reading other posts, maybe I should log out then see if I can get logged back in again?
Reading other posts, maybe I should log out then see if I can get logged back in again?
Have the login screen link at the ready, it may be as bad as they say
https://singletrackworld.com/login
Subscribers. Go directly to the login page to login. That will bypass the popup and let you login as normal.
https://singletrackworld.com/login <
Replying to Mark from the previous page I cannot find a renewal email in junk. Deleted folder does not go back far enough. I am pretty certain that I didn’t delete an STW email but cannot guarantee it.
I am currently defeated trying to subscribe again though.
If I have ad blockers the go ad free button doesn’t do anything nearly every time.
The one time I did get it to work I clicked on the I already have an account link but it says user does not exist .
if I drop shields and login I go to subscribe but it says I already have a subscription. The no ads option could work well for me but…
I will try another day ☹️
You need to click accept and continue. Then login as normal you will be able to renew your subscription on your account. The ad free option you are seeing is Not a Singletrack subscription it’s a subscription to a service that simply removes the ads.
or since you are logged in, go to your account
https://singletrackworld.com/account
And click the subscriptions tab.
Just tried again for a while
If I have shields up I see the go ad-free button but clicking on it does nothing
if I put shields down I do not see an ad-free button
damned if I do, damned if I don’t
ad-free makes sense for my forum needs more than the subscription
That will be because with shields down the CMP looks for the consent cookie. You will have consented at some point in the past and so it’s finding the cookie and letting you through.
with shields up your device will be blocking cookies. This will break the code that gives you the options to go AdFree.
what we need to do is change your consent.
look for this little button in the bottom left of your screen after you have clicked ‘accept’. That opens up your consent options. You should then be able to reject all cookies and that will give you the option to sign up for AdFree.
You must drop shields to make this work. Shields up is breaking the functionality of the site which needs cookies. 
This is a generalisation and not aimed at STW.
I have multiple layers of filtering from the router to the browser. Part of this is ad blocking. The reason for this is not because I'm fundamentally opposed to adverts but rather that I'm opposed to intrusive adverts. I'd tolerate YouTube adverts if they didn't suddenly appear mid-sentence.
Every other website these days requires 47 clicks before you can read the content you're actually there to read. I find it hard to really care about cookies, on balance if I'm going to have adverts then it's in the interests of both the advertiser and myself to serve ads for things I might actually be interested in. But it's got to a point now where I've given up trying to play this game, if a site is being deliberately obtuse with its consent forms then I'm just hitting "decline all."
Autoplay videos can **** off, exponentially so if they have audio; you try to scroll away and the bloody things follow you; "close" is hidden, again presumably intentionally, in some random place in the smallest font imaginable; half the time attempting to hit an [X] 3mm across on a phone screen has the opposite effect to the one intended. Join our mailing list. Pop-up adverts covering chunks of the page you're trying to read. If you like this content, here's another article of ours - sod off, I've not seen this one yet! It wouldn't be half as bad if there was a couple of minutes' delay where you could actually use the site before it started mithering you, I might actually sign up for more stuff if I'd had the chance to read something I enjoyed. 20 years ago this is what browser hijacks looked like.
Subscribers. Go directly to the login page to login. That will bypass the popup and let you login as normal.
Surely this should be part of the process? People having these issues can't see this advice because it's behind the gatekeeping.
How about a third button, is that possible with a third-party plugin? Unblock and refresh / go ad-free / I'm already a subscriber, take me to the login screen. Or even just reword the ad-free option so it's clearer?
We test a lot.clearly not enough - you basically just pissed off a bunch of your legitimate customers and the customers of your other customers (the advertisers). I work with developers and testers - I understand how difficult testing is, but I also know that it's actually not that hard to check the main browsers with default settings (which I have). I wouldn't mind if you or your third party plugin (blaming them when you've selected them is crass) told me what I'm supposed to do or how I can help solve the problem but "turn off your ad blocker" isn't really an answer if I don't have an ad blocker - especially since I was seeing your ads right up until this "upgrade".
and that is the deal I've accepted for years.We have always prioritised subscribers and it's no secret that I've been moving Singletrack more and more towards being a subscriber platform for quite some time. Free users are welcome and always will be. But the deal is ads.
but no help for the non-subscribers who have never used an ad blocker and been happy to contribute to your business that way? I'm sure you told us when subscriptions came about that you made less money that way than from ads - has the market shifted? am I no longer actually a valued contributor.As I said earlier, we are here to help any subscribers who are having issues accessing the site.
Oh here's a suggestion - give me another site to visit from someone using the same 3rd party and I'll see if its blocked there or its something to do with your configuration?
That was mentioned earlier, Planet Football.
Which I visited to check and then started getting targeted by Sky Sports advertising.
I am not after a personal service here so no reply needed. I tried deleting cookies etc but cannot go ad-free. I feel pretty stupid but don’t know why.
I will see if it works in a few days or maybe on my work computer in the week
but no help for the non-subscribers who have never used an ad blocker and been happy to contribute to your business that way? I'm sure you told us when subscriptions came about that you made less money that way than from ads - has the market shifted? am I no longer actually a valued contributor.
I actually published the real money numbers a page or so back in this thread.
TLDR Subscribers contribute £37 on average/year.
Non-subscribers contribute £0.12/year or 1p/month in ad revenue.
Hi @ jp-t853
Lets take this to email.drop me an email mark@singletrackworld.com and I'll try my best to get you fixed. I'll need to aks you questions about your setup and what browsers and firewall/privacy settings you are using.
Cheers
Mark
Here's some general information that may be helpful to some who are experiencng difficulty accessing the site.
- Active Ad Blockers: Extensions like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin, or Brave Browser's native blocker are active on the site.
- Blocking Consent Scripts: If a browser blocks
cmp.uniconsent.comoredge.uniconsent.com, the site cannot initialize properly, triggering a fallback warning to the user. - Privacy & VPN Software: Cyber security software, VPNs, or browser "strict" privacy settings that block tracking scripts.
- "Reject All" Tracking Behavior: If a user clicks "Reject All" on the UniConsent banner, and the publisher has enabled AdFreePro (a recovery tool), a secondary message may appear asking for other ways to support the site.
- Incognito/Private Mode: Adblockers running in private windows can trigger notifications if they differ from normal browsing settings.
UniConsent +4
Once triggered, the platform can display custom messaging, often asking the user to disable their ad blocker to continue browsing or to accept the privacy consent banner to access content.
- Allowlist the Site: Click the ad blocker icon in the browser toolbar and pause it on the specific website.
- Disable Privacy Extensions: Turn off secondary privacy extensions to see if they are causing the alert.
- Clear Cache/Cookies: Clear site cookies to reset the consent state and re-check for adblocker presence.
AdBlock +3
I actually published the real money numbers a page or so back in this thread.
TLDR Subscribers contribute £37 on average/year.
Non-subscribers contribute £0.12/year or 1p/month in ad revenue.
If you completely close the ‘shop front’ by over zealous entry requirements how do hope to attract new subscribers?
Perhaps you need to offer a week/month of free to access to the whole site to show newbies what’s on offer.
Locking the site down is like bolting the door of a shop and only letting people have a peek through the letterbox. The odd person might knock to come in - many will walk on to the shop with the open door.
But we aren't locking the site down. A small number of users are experiencing issues related to triggering ad block detection. The traffic to the site over the last few days has actually increased by 10% on the same days a month ago.
Here's some more information that I hope may help.
- Browser-Level Privacy Features: Browsers like Brave, Safari (Intelligent Tracking Prevention), and Microsoft Edge (Strict Tracking Prevention) have built-in ad and tracker blocking that users often don't consider "extensions".
- DNS & VPN Protections: Users may be using a VPN or a custom DNS service (like NextDNS or AdGuard DNS) that blocks ad-serving domains at the network level before they even reach the browser.
- Antivirus & Security Software: Suites like Norton, Kaspersky, or Malwarebytes often include "Web Shield" components that block tracking scripts or ad-related URLs, triggering the CMP's detection.
- Residual Extension Files: If a user previously had an adblocker and uninstalled it, leftover registry entries or cached browser data can sometimes still cause detection.
AdBlock +4
- Slow Network Connections: If a critical ad script fails to load within a specific timeout period due to a poor connection, the CMP may incorrectly flag it as being "blocked".
- Script Failures: If your site has JavaScript errors that prevent certain ad-related variables from initializing, the CMP might interpret the missing variables as evidence of an adblocker.
- Aggressive Content Security Policy (CSP): A misconfigured CSP on your server might block the very scripts UniConsent uses for detection, leading to inconsistent behavior.
Reddit +1
- Ask for the "Incognito Test": Have a reporting user try the site in an Incognito/Private window with all extensions disabled. If the alert vanishes, it's a browser-level or extension issue.
- Verify Console Errors: If a user can provide a screenshot of their browser's Developer Tools Console, look for
ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENTornet::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED. These confirm something on their device is stopping the request. - Check AdFreePro Settings: If you use UniConsent's AdFreePro integration, ensure the "Revenue Recovery" logic isn't set to trigger purely on consent rejection, which users may confuse with an adblock alert.
If anyone wants to try other websites with the same Uniconsent system there's a list of them here https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/UniConsent
How about a third button, is that possible with a third-party plugin? Unblock and refresh / go ad-free / I'm already a subscriber, take me to the login screen. Or even just reword the ad-free option so it's clearer?
This is something I'm following up with Uniconsent. They have modified our text to include the paragraph about existing Singletrack subscribers. I have requested that they add a link direct to the website login page with the text 'Already a Singletrack Full Member? Click here to login'.
There's real confusion that I acknowledge because Uniconsent are offering their own AdFree subscription. It's a language and clarity issue that I'm working on. Uniconsent is a very large organsiation with a huge number of global publishers using their product. I'm limited as to what I can get changed quickly.
In the meantime I hope some will find the above information useful. If you are a subscriber then drop me an email and I'll personally offer my help.
Once you are logged in as a subscriber all the third party ad code is removed from your pages.
Ah that's interesting. I often do a reject all on pages even if I'm a member as I don't like being tracked never mind seeing ads. That suggests that its safe to accept all on this site and I won't be tracked. I'm finding more and more sites that I can just no longer read as there is no way to reject all and not be tracked 🙁
Came here to ask wtf this BS is about as I use duckduckgo on my phone as my main browser.
Had to log in on chrome on my phone instead and got reminded why I use duckduckgo in the first place, talk about a throwback to the 90s/mid 2000s having ads and popups aggressively spaffed in your face
Have been spending more time on emtbforum lately and this has done nothing more than hammer another nail in the coffin of me wanting to visit STW
How do I delete a post?
Ooh! I've just been over to the lovely new Profile page.
I'm getting 404 Page not found errors when I try to view users' profiles, when I try and view my own I get told that I don't have permission to view it.
-- Edit --
I should say that this is from following links in posts, I can view my own profile if I select it from the user menu.
TL;DR all the excuses…
As a long time subscriber I found it very annoying to have to accept cookies to get to the login page
I should say that this is from following links in posts, I can view my own profile if I select it from the user menu.
It looks like the URL says /participant/ when it should say /user/
(I think, at first glance)
Having to accept cookies seems pretty bad - there are plenty of reasons not to want to do that - not least tracking!
haven't been here to post much in recent months but do drop in for a look every few days. tried accessing from mobile the other morning, got to a login page and entered the email address i use for this site which is unique to this site - username+s****domain and it was rejected as an invalid email address.
HTH.
So let me get this right, your going to annoy all the free users over 12p each a year? Surely you can see that a hell of a lot will just stop using the site (it can be barely even usable with the floating popups)??? Yeah a few may sign up, but then you've lost all the potential members who might have subscribed at some point. Any fresh people coming on to the site up will simply not even bother.
So you loose old members, loose future members, loose forum content...forum goe's quiet, old full members don't bother to renew.
Fair play its your choice, i just cant see the logic in putting off people posting, id say 90% of the forums i used to be on are all gone now due to lowering content levels, hopefully this one wont go the same way.
Just to add i dont mind a few adverts, but intrusive ones, floating, page blockers and auto playing videos no thanks, feels like some dodgy porn site.
My annual subscription expired yesterday. I had a brief moment of seeing a few ads while I went through the renewal process, after which the screen reverted to being blissfully ad-free again.
I've done some investigation for you. It appears that our work computers have a duckduckgo privacy plugin installed by default. It is NOT an Adblocker - I still see the ads. It is NOT the duckduckgo browser - just a privacy extension in chrome. Disabling that "solves" the problem. I'm not sure I am happy with that. However more importantly with that plugin turned on you can go to the other 3rd party sites you listed and just click the "show me the ads" type button and they work fine. This does appear your are doing something wrong with the config or your anti-adblocker tool.
Here is the plugin which your configuration is conflicting with:
I'm not sure how I feel about a "well we need to make money out of you so your privacy doesn't matter" approach. Had it been tackled in more respectful way I might even have been persuaded to pay for ad free. If its true you only make £0.12/yr from showing me ads I wonder why you want 100x this for me to go ad free. I suspect there is some statistical manipulation going on there and you are counting the large number of very very infrequent visitors (probably scared off by the Lings Cars experience)
Sorry if I missed that - by having to use a phone screen the process of reading the forum behind all the ads becomes tedious and scrolling large threads is painful - all the more so when it involves page changes. Honestly if it wasn't for the people here I would be long gone.That was mentioned earlier, Planet Football.
Which I visited to check and then started getting targeted by Sky Sports advertising.
You need to count in the moral fact that there are thousands of users who come here who pay for either a subscription or accept that ads is the deal for access. If you adblock then you are not holding up youre side of the deal and if I was either a subscriber or an ad viewer I'd be a bit peeved that we are allowing users to come and get the whole access to Singletrack at not only zero cost but actually at the cost of Singletrack. I consider it in the same category as fare dodging, as do a very quickly growing number of publishers around the world who are doing the exact same thing as us.
Regards your comment about misconfiguration of the ad blocker - we do not configure it. It's Uniconsent who configure it on our behalf. It's their code that we use and it's the exact same code as every other Uniconsent publisher. There is a variation in the text.
There are other sites (for example screenrant.com) that have the ad block warning, which also includes VPN users, but at the moment allow users to dismiss it and continue. This differs from our approach which is that you can't continue without ads. We are holding a firmer line.
Singletrack is pay to play - it always has been - either with or without ads+subscription. 40k+ users/month are not holding up their side of the deal by blocking ads. That's now too much for us to absorb and ignore and it's a price being picked up by subscribers as it loses us thousands/year.
I'm glad you got to the bottom of your local setup. DuckDuckGo is a problem for publishers by default but as you have found there are adjustments that can be made.
Not sure if it's been covered already, but when sharing a thread to my Mrs on WhatsApp, it has the AdBlocker kick in and a sign in request? (I'm a fully paid STW member but neither of us can then open the thread)
Mark - I'll be honest together with your previous post that "adblock alert despite claiming they have no adblocker installed" I find pretty offensive. I have been 100% clear I see ads (lots of them!), I play by the rules you ask us to in terms of ads. To now be accused of fare dodging or an implication that my claim not to have an adblocker installed is pretty outrageous. I don't know how many other people will be in a similar boat - I'm sure that if they are not long time users they'll just shrug and move on. People you'll never have the opportunity to convert to paying subscribers.You need to count in the moral fact that there are thousands of users who come here who pay for either a subscription or accept that ads is the deal for access. If you adblock then you are not holding up youre side of the deal and if I was either a subscriber or an ad viewer I'd be a bit peeved that we are allowing users to come and get the whole access to Singletrack at not only zero cost but actually at the cost of Singletrack. I consider it in the same category as fare dodging, as do a very quickly growing number of publishers around the world who are doing the exact same thing as us.
well I'd suggest they've buggered it up then because I tried 3 or 4 of the links on the page you send and they all offered me free access with ads and it worked. As did Planet Football one someone else posted.Regards your comment about misconfiguration of the ad blocker - we do not configure it. It's Uniconsent who configure it on our behalf. It's their code that we use and it's the exact same code as every other Uniconsent publisher. There is a variation in the text.
and I have no issue with you doing that I'm not using a VPN either - but it feels like you aren't listening - I get ads, I have never blocked them, but you are blocking me reaching your site.There are other sites (for example screenrant.com) that have the ad block warning, which also includes VPN users, but at the moment allow users to dismiss it and continue. This differs from our approach which is that you can't continue without ads. We are holding a firmer line.
Once again you are suggesting I'm breaking the rules. I'm not and never have. Your crazy power hungry ads probably cost me more than 12p a year in electricity! If you want to go 100% subscription only - then do that but don't say its Ads or Subscription and then accuse people who accept ads of being the problem. There is something wrong with how your service is set up which isn't affecting other Uniconsent publishers. If you don't believe me I'll take a video this evening and show you.Singletrack is pay to play - it always has been - either with or without ads+subscription. 40k+ users/month are not holding up their side of the deal by blocking ads. That's now too much for us to absorb and ignore and it's a price being picked up by subscribers as it loses us thousands/year.
No the only "adjustment" is to turn off a privacy product which causes no other probems and works across all the other Uniconsent sites you listed.I'm glad you got to the bottom of your local setup. DuckDuckGo is a problem for publishers by default but as you have found there are adjustments that can be made.
This reminds me of when I was a paying subscriber years ago and the site wouldn't keep me logged in and nobody seemed to care then either. Your business will be much more profitable if you stop blaming your users.
In Polly's post above there are what appears to be 3 different fonts, 3 different sizes, 3 different colours and 3 different background colours, most of which on android Firefox look like either creamy grey or grey-y cream.
It makes it all less than a pleasant reading experience, it's been brought up before many times. Could that be fixed?
It's their code that we use and it's the exact same code as every other Uniconsent publisher.
I would double check that. My experience of its behaviour on STW and on Planet Football were not the same.
I'm not blaming you or users. I'm not personally accusing you of running an ad blocker. But your system is clearly triggering it. I'd like to help you get access but you will need to give me some more information about what devices, operating systems, browsers you are using. There's simple solutions in Brave, DuckDuckGo, Edge and Safri browsers and I'm happy to guide you. But I need to now a bit more first. If you like you can email direct and I'll help. I've been helping some subscribers this morning and while they are always a priority I'm happy to help anyone when I can. Not to excuse your issues or anyone elses but just for contect the VAST majority of users are experiencing no issues whatsoever. Not an excuse. Just saying that because there seems to be an understandable belief that if it's happening to one it muct be happeing to many more.
Forum speeds for me are continuing to be absolutely laughable when posting content.
Looks like it's already been covered but yeah, the new 'Adblock Detected' thing: Requiring subscribers to enable non-essential cookies to even view the site or forums seems bang out of order to me. Took me a goodly while to realise the modal wasn't asking for my STW login, but some third party thing wanting to share my details with 200+ parties. If this blocker is expected behaviour, then I'm sorry, and I realise it's no skin off your nose but after 15+ years, I'm out.
It's perhaps worth pointing out that it's not the ads I'm really blocking, it's the tracking.
For me it seems to be rapid one minute and glacial the next, but I can't rule out this being a connectivity issue at my end currently.
We had a chinese bot attack this afternoon. That was eating up a LOT of bandwidth and slowing things.
@ped to repond to you legit issues. Once you are logged in as a subscrber there is no ad tracking code or ad related tracking cookies on any pages we serve. The code that fires the ads is literally removed from the pages of all logged in subscribers. You can bypass the CMP entirely and go straight to the login page> https://singletrackworld.com/login <- there is no ad code on that page.
And to reiterate a point I made earlier. Consenting to cookies does not mean that hundreds of cookies suddenly save themselves in your browser. They only do that when an ad appears from that particular source. None o fthe ads we place on the site ourselves (ie the ads that Ross sells direct to advertisers) use any tracking cookies. In essence the targeting has already been done by that brand coming to us with their ads.
I hope to have an updated CMP popup from Uniconsent that includes a direct link to our login page for subscribers. When that happens any subscriber needing to login can just click that link and head straight to the login page. No consent will need to be give at that point. You are bypassing the whole cookie and tracking process.
I hope to have an updated CMP popup from Uniconsent that includes a direct link to our login page for subscribers. When that happens any subscriber needing to login can just click that link and head straight to the login page. No consent will need to be give at that point. You are bypassing the whole cookie and tracking process.
Thanks Mark. 👍
I guess what's happened is that I've been logged out after the session expired and so was hitting the home page instead.
I can't get access either. I'm using Opera with VPN switched on now. Otherwise I can't get access at all due to adblock detected thing. I run pi-hole to filter traffic, but even when I disable it, I still can't access the site unless I clear all the data and then it only seems to work intermittently. Not sure what's going on.
Pi Hole will be a potential problem. Pi Hole blocks all ad related traffic BEFORE it gets to your browser. It's the ultimate tool in ad blocking. No amount of browser settings are going to allow ads since Pi Hole stops them before they get near. I'm afraid the only long term solution there is to configure PI Hole to allow Singletrack and the ads through. Or to subscribe to either the AdFree subscription at £15 or one of our own Singletrack subscriptions. Once you are a subscriber and logged in (either via the direct url I've posted above or by clicking the link I hope to have on the popup soon) you will have no ad tracking code on any of our pages.
I found some useful information on Whitelisting a site if you are using Pi Hole..
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-whitelist-or-blacklist-a-domain/244
Haven't been on for a while because of the snail's pace loading speed... Unfortunately it's still appalling; generally taking about 30 secs for a page to load .. 5g full signal on Chrome .
That took 28 seconds to post
Two things:
Has the layout/decor just changed?
Anyone else still getting there variety of colour text that's almost unreadable? I can't find how to change to a light background or different text.
See below.
I'm on light theme not dark but it has gone funny. No lines between posts or topics on the page
I'm on light theme not dark but it has gone funny. No lines between posts or topics on the page
It's ****in weird looking........all different colours/highlighted - why is it so hard to do something so simple? etc
edit...only 40secs+ to post this 😆
In fairness Mark did say earlier they had some sort of cyber attack thingy happening
Less of a cyber attack and more an AI bot scraping incident. But for a time it did quadruple the requests to the site. It's sorted now though. I've been logging everything the site has been doing for the last 1.5 hours. That will give us a huge amount of data to be able to analyse to find improvements. One of the downsides to doing thta is it can have an effect of some page load times. Doing it a peak times does mean we grab a very good set of data though. That may have been what caused soe display issues.
display seems to be back to normal
I still miss the little thing at the top of each thread page, that took you to the last post.
From the forum contentsy page I get fairly random behaviour from clicking the thread title or the >>, but until a few days ago I could at least jump to the last post from within the thread.
Just testing something here after reading all of the above 👀
"Member rating badge"? Interesting.
Careful you don't out anon moderators, assuming any are still secret.
"Member rating badge"? Interesting.
Careful you don't out anon moderators, assuming any are still secret.
Mods are already identifiable by their lack of membership status, I mentioned it a couple of pages back
Hi @Mark, fyi the site is excruciatingly slow for me this morning. Some threads are taking 3 or 4 minutes to open after I click on them. Logged in member using Chrome browser on a Chromebook. All other web pages I have used this morning open instantly. If it helps, there seems to be a correlation between the number of posts in a thread and how long it takes to open. Epics like the Ukraine or UK government threads seem to be the worst offenders. Even new threads though, with a handful of posts are taking over a minute to open. Is this the Chinese bots from yesterday, or something else?
That took 2 minutes and 25 seconds to post
Also experiencing the longest thread load times in a while this morning (using Chrome on both PC and phone).
This thread is taking 4-5 seconds to load.
But then about a minute to post.
We are currently being hit by a huge number of non-human requests. They are targetting our shop and search pages as these are currently not cached. We know what the problem is. Now we are just putting in a fix. Sorry about the slowness.
Things are speeding up. We had Bingbot hammering our site search with random and mostly japanese words. We've added specific protections in our Cloudflare config to fix that. Among other things.