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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