[Sticky] The New Forum

This is WPForo 2 
We are currently testing 3.0 on our dev site. It looks very good so far. But lots of testing to do. It’s officially still in Beta so could still be some weeks before it’s ready to go live. 

Trying to log-in on my laptop. I now get an ad pop-up Powered by UniConsent.

I can either Accept & Continue or Reject & Go ad-free.

I'd just like to log-in but to do so I think I have to accept tracking cookies (accept & continue) and then log-in.

Is there anyway not to do this so I don't accept tracking?

Posted this via my phone which was still logged in, but not sure of the best way to log-in on my laptop.

^^^^ Me too, but i suggest that pop-up isn't kosher. I somehow managed to get rid of it and logged in the normal way. I’m now going to change my password. 🤬  

Posted by: stumpy01

↑

Is there anyway not to do this so I don't accept tracking?

If you bookmark the log-in page none of that shows up. 👍

Trying to log-in on my laptop. I now get an ad pop-up Powered by UniConsent.

I can either Accept & Continue or Reject & Go ad-free.

I'd just like to log-in but to do so I think I have to accept tracking cookies (accept & continue) and then log-in.

Is there anyway not to do this so I don't accept tracking?

To reiterate something I explained a few pages back, if you are an existing subscriber then you can simply click accept and then login as normal. As soon as you are logged in, all ad tracking scripts are removed from your browser. The fact you accept does not mean than you suddenly allow 900+ trackings scripts/cookies to invade your device. A cookie is placed only if an ad is shown. SO at most, if you accept, see few ads, you will have a few cookies on your device - not hundreds. I appreciate that for some, even one is too many. If you go direct to our login page

you will bypass the consent popup completely. Once logged in there's no ads and therfore no tracking scripts on the page. The only cookies that will be placed on your device are the ones we need to make the site function - like telling our site that you are a subscriber and remembering that you are logged in etc.

Once you are logged in your logged in cookie has an expiry setting of 1 year, which means you should stay logged in and shielded from the consent popup on that device. If you use Chrome and have a gmail account then there is a good chance that this logged in cookie will be copied across onto your other devices so that they can remember that you are logged in too.

If you don't have those settings enabled then you may find you need to login on your other devices too. 

The consent cookie that is set when you click consent or otherwise on the popup also has an expiry setting of 1 year. Which means once your consent has been set you should not see the popup on that device for a year. There is also a little icon in the bottom left of the screen that links to your consent choices so you can change them at any time. Again, if you have cookie security set very high that may or may not be present.

If you clear out cookies or use any software that does that then you need to be aware that if you erase our Singletrack cookies then you will start from scratch when you next visit the site and you will need to login again.

My advice for subscribers who wish to avoid third party cookies is to bookmark the login url and cme to the site via that link.

Also, a reminder that subscribers should NOT click the login link in the popup consent form as that takes you to the AdAfree login system. That is NOT a Singletrack subscription login. You can subscribe to that if you wish for £15/year, which is less than half the price of our annual digital subscription. That subscription enables ad free access to our site but it does not include any Singletrack subscriptions benefits or paywall access.

Posted by: Mark

↑

That is NOT a Singletrack subscription login. You can subscribe to that if you wish for £15/year, which is less than half the price of our annual digital subscription. That subscription enables ad free access to our site but it does not include any Singletrack subscriptions benefits or paywall access.

I'll be honest Mark, that does sound attractive and I might be tempted* to consider it at the next renewal.  That has got to be a real threat to your business model surely? I recently went from a print to a digital subscription, because I found the magazines were stacking up before I got around to having even a cursory read.  I thought, "there's always the digital magazine for me to look at whenever", but tbh I haven't bothered since I changed to digital.  My main interaction with STW is the forum and if I'm honest, I subscribe primarily to avoid the ads. The other "benefits" mostly don't interest me and I doubt I'm alone.  

*In reality I probably won't, as I'd far rather the money went to a small, ethical business in Todmorden, than some faceless internet company. And because I want you guys to continue to make a living and for the forum to continue to be here in future. For many others though, making a decision purely on a purely financial basis, paying less than half of your subs to get an ad free experience is going to be very attractive is it not?  Especially in the current financial climate where a lot of people are taking a very close look at all those discretionary monthly subscriptions for leisure activities which soon accrue.

Is there another ad provider which doesn't risk poaching your subscribers in such a blatant way?

Thanks for the support - your commenst are appreciated.

Pricing wise - I've designed the Singletrack subs prices carefully to ensure that our margins are preety much equivalent between digital and print. So, there's no need to worry about which one is best for us. Just pick the one that is best for you. 

As for the new sub provided by AdFree via our consent popup, we get the majority of tha tcash less the VAT element - Because it's a digital service and not tied to a media publication (You get our journalism as a core aspect of our Singletrack subscriptions - magazine access, paywall etc.) the AdFree only sub means we have to add 20% VAT on top. So that £15 you pay is only worth £12.50 to us. There are some fees to be deducted but we get the lions share of it. I'm still not happy with the text and how obvious (it's not) it is to existing Singletrack subscribesr that they should click the link and login as normal - but that's not something I can edit for here - I have to wait for those changes to happen and it's a pretty glacial process.

TLDR

Pick the sub that is right for you. As far as we are concerned we are developing the site for the principal benefit of our subscribers. New features in the pipeline will most likely be released to Singletrack subscribers first, including forum developments (Google WPForo.3.0 for a heads up there). 

My advice, if you just want to use the forum without ads then pick the ADFree sub. BUT, there are already features of forum use that only Singletrack subscribers can access and there are more of those coming. That's not me trying to market anyone into a Singletrack subscription - it's honestly what we are working on.

If you want to future proof your forum use and you want to make sure that 20% of your sub payment doesn't go in VAT to the tax man, then a Singletrack sub is the way to go. 

Ah, so you get most of that £15, I thought it all went to the ad provider. No so bad then! I'll continue with my digital subscription for the foreseeable. I'm glad you get as much from that as from a print sub 👍

I'm glad you get as much from that as from a print sub

ahhh..... i didnt know this.  i never read the mag these days but have a full print sub thinking that its best for stw.  i may as well just go digital only then come renewal time and save a very small part of a very small tree 😀 

  So now I can't even try to PC log-in through the subscriber link, that screen appears and then this pop-up blocks everything....even if I I disabled ad- lockers it just keeps appearing 

This really really doesn't need to be so hard to sort does it? 

is that Brave browser you are using?

if so it’s blocking ads by default. You can deactivate that for our site by clicking the shield icon in the address bar. 

Could you not make the clickable link in subscribed thread e-mail alerts go to to the post in question instead of the current palaver of having to find a way to get to the latest post in the thread, made doubly annoying by the replacement of the 'latest post by...' link with the referral code thing. The dog thread, for example, has more than 20 pages, but the link simply takes you to the first page with no clear way of reaching the more recent post without going back out to forum latest. 

Ignore this, I can't read.

Posted by: Mark

↑

To reiterate something I explained a few pages back, if you are an existing subscriber then you can simply click accept and then login as normal. As soon as you are logged in, all ad tracking scripts are removed from your browser. The fact you accept does not mean than you suddenly allow 900+ trackings scripts/cookies to invade your device.

Thanks. That was all I needed to know but I appreciate the detail 👍
Sorry if you are having to re-post stuff, but I don't dip into this thread very often & I didn't really fancy trawling through pages of info on the off-chance of finding something that might be relevant.

Trying to click the big X to close any of the pop up advert seems to load it anyway and open a new window. Once or twice I can imagine I’m fat fingered but happened consistently.

Posted by: Mark

↑

is that Brave browser you are using?

if so it’s blocking ads by default. You can deactivate that for our site by clicking the shield icon in the address bar. 

No, I'm using Firefox. I have turned off everything, turned off the enhanced protection in the shield icon, opened in a non-facebook container tab, and deleted all my cookies, and still i just get that pop up. I click the accept button and it just pops up again. 

Seems to work on chrome, but i tend not to use that for socials, just work related. 

Bizarre.

It's actually good because it's meaning i am using the forum less out of frustration, and weaning myself off

I think i've realised what the problem is - I have been using a link on my new tab page that takes me to the forum, and because i am not logged in, the AdFree popup appears. There is no way for me to click  the subscribers click here link cos the big pop up appears. Only searching back in this thread for the usual log-in page allows me to actually log-in. Maybe you need to redesign the pop-ups so it takes you to an option for subscribers to log-in or sign up for ads or something.

Messages for classifieds. Arrrgghh. Cannot see DMs via either SW website on Edge browser or Chrome.

Someone sends a message, it appears, I reply. It's gone forever. 

Where are the messages please? I need to contact a purchaser but have no idea/way to do so. Can't use the 'workaround' above as I don't know the username of the purchaser.

I'm not sure if this is new, i suspect something to do with the adverts or a particular type of advert, but first time I've been using my phone + earbuds (android, not apple if it makes any difference) for a while so first time I've experienced it. I'm browsing STW on Chrome and listening to streaming at the same time, and the sound keeps dropping and then increasing, and then dropping and then increasing. It makes it unlistenable.

I don't often travel on trains and hence use the earbuds, but I don't think it's anything to do with the streaming because in the car when I'm not browsing STW (obvs) it doesn't do it. And browsing other sites, including other advert laden ones doesn't seem to make it happen. I can't claim to have tried every other site but is this unique to STW?

What is going on with the bot verification,  it comes up every time and then returns to the same page with all the text gone, all except this time.  Does it operate on an initial assessment then one allowed it won't do it again for a while? 

@Mark the ad-block pop-up seems to be somewhat random on Android/Firefox

If the thread is one that takes an age to load, eg Ukraine, then it pops up several times.

If I persist then eventually it settles down, without me changing any browser settings.

Shorter threads don't lag and trigger the pop-up 

Is this linked to the speed of an individual thread, which slows the ads down and is detected as ad-blocked?

Update - apparently it is at random now with the verification.  Using Firefox with no vpn and I might as well not bother using the site to post now.  Have to copy the text just in case to then repost when it fails

The other thing that's really annoying is the site going back to the top of the thread index every time you've read a thread.

I used to be able to go back to the thread index and land where I'd left to easily scroll down to the next thread. Not any more 🙄 

I see that DMs has changed / changing ?

I cant see any envelopes etc and when I go to messages I get

You do not have permission to view this page

Mark et al is busy with the messaging system, I get the odd test message. Hopefully be the new one is in soon, it seems much slicker. 

On Chrome, I'm not seeing the latest posts on threads, compare to Opera.

For example in this thread, Opera see's Drac's post at 1302 today, Chrome shows the latest post being fazzini's post at 1708 yesterday!

There is a very detailed explanation for that https://singletrackworld.com/forum/bike-forum/the-new-forum/paged/42/#post-13717050

Well adFree refunded my payment because I was having so many issues with it, I don't know if anyone else has gone down that route and finding it ok.

A bit like Susepic I have been weaned off the site with the problems and trying out other forums as alternatives. They just work and they are so fast. I know the story about the linking of various functionality on this site but as a 'forum' user...

Posted by: fazzini

↑

Messages for classifieds. Arrrgghh. Cannot see DMs via either SW website on Edge browser or Chrome.

Someone sends a message, it appears, I reply. It's gone forever. 

Where are the messages please? I need to contact a purchaser but have no idea/way to do so. Can't use the 'workaround' above as I don't know the username of the purchaser.

Me too, I can see the notifications but not the messages. Also discussing a purchase... 

From reading the above, are some users on the 'new' system of messages, and some on the 'old'? I managed to message a user ( @onehundredthidiot ) about a FS item using the 'message' link on

he seems to have tried to reply, and I get  a link in the email notification of the reply to https://singletrackworld.com/participant/onehundredthidiot/messages/121 where I get an error 'You do not have permission to view this page'

Does he then need to try and message back at https://singletrackworld.com/user/submarined ? It's kind of rendering the classifieds unusable at the mo as I can't contact any users. 🙁

I agree it's useless. I got a notification in my email that @submarined had messaged me but cannot in any way find the message. I tried messaging back obviously not worked either. I even subscribed, something I've toyed with but now realise is a waste of time.

Anyway @submarined email is user name at Gmail dot com

Posted by: mutley

↑

Posted by: fazzini

↑

Messages for classifieds. Arrrgghh. Cannot see DMs via either SW website on Edge browser or Chrome.

Someone sends a message, it appears, I reply. It's gone forever. 

Where are the messages please? I need to contact a purchaser but have no idea/way to do so. Can't use the 'workaround' above as I don't know the username of the purchaser.

 

Me too, I can see the notifications but not the messages. Also discussing a purchase... 

 

@nikafish can you try and send me a message? 

Came to see what was going off with messages. I appreciate it's probably built in functionality to the website template, but how hard can it be?

Posted by: jimmy

↑

but how hard can it be?

Sorry that might sound cockish which it wasn't meant to be , referring to any inbuilt design rather than stw work. (I work with 0racle cloud and I'm amazed every day how they're so "successful")

Am having an issue that I cannot go on singletrack forum on my laptop as a popup keeps appearing that stops us logging in (allow ads or pay to get rid of ads to continue etc). I used spybot to scan my laptop as I do every week and issue has just started now.

I cannot log in as the popup overrides my login (I am a full member).

I did try disabling my adblockers and vpn then refresh but popup keeps happening.

There is a long running issue with the pop up text, Mark is trying to the company who look after that side to change it. In the txt there is highlighted part for a link to take you to the full member log in.

I’ll try to find the direct link that mark posted on here.

Found it, try this on your laptop.