advertising on the forums

by calmage January 6th 2016, 9:37 pm

what is up with the linked words with advertising all over anything to do with forumotion now..??

I'd expect that type of thing on some 10th rate low class rip off page... and here I have to interact with it every day.

The banners were bad enough...
and hey.. I get the forums are free and you need to recoup costs somehow..
but those link advert words are cheap and cheesy... and offensive... occasionally.

I wish to own my forum .. so I am not subjected to the whim of the money thing. Can someone please inform me how this can happen..??

by **Ape** January 6th 2016, 10:02 pm

calmage wrote:what is up with the linked words with advertising all over anything to do with forumotion now..??

I'd expect that type of thing on some 10th rate low class rip off page... and here I have to interact with it every day.

The banners were bad enough...
and hey.. I get the forums are free and you need to recoup costs somehow..
but those link advert words are cheap and cheesy... and offensive... occasionally.

I wish to own my forum .. so I am not subjected to the whim of the money thing. Can someone please inform me how this can happen..??

Hello maybe i can help here

can you please tell me where you are seeing this Ad's a screen shot would be a good move of the problems your getting.

If you want to remove your ad's on all your pages you will need to buy credits and pay for the ad's to be removed for one year at a time.

If your not talking about the banner ad's that are at the top of your forum then i will need more data from you as we Do not use other ad's in your forum.

by **brandon_g** January 6th 2016, 10:04 pm

Hello,

Fm does give forum administrators the option turn off these guest underline ads. The option can be found in ACP (Admin panel)-->General-->Configuration .

Forumotion is a completely free forum host, the amount of money needed to run all the servers that are required to host so many forums has to come from somewhere. Since money doesn't grow on trees, that comes from advertising. The underline links are optional and allowed to be turned off by an admin and will only display for guests.

Before we start going into 'cheesy and 10th class rip off page' why don't we look into the cost of running millions of forums and consider the fact that maybe those underline ads which only display for guests and of which can be turned off , help keep forumotion and its forums from being 'cheesy and 10th class rip off pages'. Wink

-Brandon

by calmage January 7th 2016, 12:11 am

well.. golly gee...
the linked words with pop up advertising are now gone from all over my forum.

I went into the comments to see if there was anything attached to the word.. and there wasn't.

I saw it all over this forum as well when I opened this thread... and now it's gone from here as well.

are we being messed with..?

and I totally get the advertising thing to pay for the free forums.
The banners I have no problem with.

Plus I just noticed the credit buying option thing to turn off the ads.

It's the linked words that are everywhere... and impossible to not activate.
Will they be back tomorrow I wonder..?
Were you hacked..?? Or was it an experiment..?

anyway.. things are fine for now.

No one answered my question though about owning the database of my forum..???

by Take Notes January 7th 2016, 12:32 am

If you'd like you can turn off the ads for you if you are an administrator.

by **Ape** January 7th 2016, 12:39 am

YOU CAN NOT own the database of your forum it is not Free to anyone other than FM we do not have any rights to the servers that hold to data.

The data is not for sale it never has been and never will be SORRY

As for your underline Ad's they will no longer show on your forum if you have ticked to have them removed. As for the main ad's they will show to all your members and guests until you pay for credits to have them removed.

Not sure what you are saying about hacked the forum here has never had the underline ad's or main forum ad's as its server side support Not a forum site like yours and mine and 1000's of ohers

by **brandon_g** January 7th 2016, 12:44 am

No you can furn off the linked ads. They do not appear for members and up, only GUESTS. Once logged in they no longer appear. As I said, if you are the admin of a site, you can turn off those ads altogether for your forum/site. It is really simple to do (I provided the admin panel location in my above post). If you turn it off for your site, it will not appear again ever, even for guests. If you don't turn it off altogether for your site, then they will appeqr for guests on your site. Once someone logs in or signs up and then logs into their account on your site, they will no longer appear.

I hope this explaination helps you better understand this system?

-Brandon

by **SLGray** January 7th 2016, 2:04 am

Did you say that you saw them on the support forum? If yes, are you using a mobile device?

by calmage January 8th 2016, 3:11 am

Can one of you go to my forum and check out the portal.. ??
Go to "statistics"..
there are 3 words there with double lines under them.

the word... "registered" throws a well endowed single asian girl up.. pretty much a quarter of the page.. you can't miss the cleavage.

The other two double underlined words is another ad..

http://clarity.forumotion.com/

So.. this is what I would like clarified.
Is this forumotion doing this..?
or have I been hacked by google..??

by **SLGray** January 8th 2016, 4:31 am

Are you talking about the widget:

StatisticsWe have 32 registered users
The newest registered user is harqun

Our users have posted a total of 34041 messages in 1328 subjects

I do not see anything out of place. You did not answer my question about the mobile device. It sounds like your device might be infected. Run some scans.

by calmage January 8th 2016, 5:27 am

no.. I don't' use a mobile.

and the linked words move around.
the members of my forum can see them as well.
and they are currently on this page as well... on your forum.

and all the advertising banners are gone on my forum. now I have linked words with extremely annoying thing popping up when you accidently touch one of them.

by **SLGray** January 8th 2016, 5:37 am

brandon_g wrote:Hello,

Fm does give forum administrators the option turn off these guest underline ads. The option can be found in ACP (Admin panel)-->General-->Configuration .

Have you check this out? I believe it says text ads?

by **SLGray** January 8th 2016, 5:44 am

Do you mean every single member or just some that have reported it?

Since guests can not see your forum, could you open it up to guests?

by **brandon_g** January 8th 2016, 5:51 am

calmage wrote:no.. I don't' use a mobile.

and the linked words move around.
the members of my forum can see them as well.
and they are currently on this page as well... on your forum.

and all the advertising banners are gone on my forum. now I have linked words with extremely annoying thing popping up when you accidently touch one of them.

This is not from forumotion then, as the only text ads forumotion has is only viewable to guests. May I suggest running a virus and malaware scan on your computer to make sure it is not infected with anything, also try a different browser. If your pc has a virus or there is a browser issue of some sort, it may causing things to appear for you.

SLGray wrote:
brandon_g wrote:Hello,

Fm does give forum administrators the option turn off these guest underline ads. The option can be found in ACP (Admin panel)-->General-->Configuration .
Have you check this out? I believe it says text ads?

Yes it does say 'Text Ads' Wink

.

-Brandon

by **Ape** January 8th 2016, 9:59 am

Hello can you please take a screen shot of what you are seeing as we are not seeing the underline ad's the only time i see anything underlined is when there links then it will show as underlined and Usernames,

If you are still getting them and it's on here aswell then i can tell you it is something to do with your browser or your computer its self fry and do a spyware Clean on your computer here is a link to our thread
https://help.forumotion.com/t140325-how-to-clean-your-desktop-delete-virus-and-malware#953780
you can also see if your browser is set to link things by key words
This is a page you will need to read
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/underlined-words-popup-ads-removal/

by calmage January 8th 2016, 7:50 pm

okay.. wow.. lots of things to consider.

It's gonna take me a bit to plow through all this.. as it's like trying to describe a thingamajig to a whatchamacallit.

Yes.. I did just have a virus situation on my compy... which I thought was fixed.

I will read all the comments you all have left, carefully.. and will try to work on some of the suggestions to rectify this. As the use of my forum is not compromised... it's not a life or death issue...
but I did want to inform forumotion of it... just in case.

Thanks to all for taking the time to try to understand this.

by **Ape** January 8th 2016, 7:52 pm

Your welcome

Can i consider this as solved ?

EDIT: i use spybot on my computer aswell as mcafee i run a scan every other day to make sure all my laptops and home PC is safe and i make a backup every 2 weeks Wink

Running a scan on your laptop /PC Tablet may be a little time consuming but think about it this way you can still do all you want when your computer is doing a scan ...

by calmage January 9th 2016, 1:05 am

Yes Ape.. you can consider this issue closed.
I so appreciate how patient you all were with it.

And I truly appreciate hearing about your efforts to keep your compy safe.
If you do this.. then I need to do this.
I will heed your points.

blessings.

by **Ape** January 9th 2016, 2:19 am

you are so welcome that is what we are here for.

our aim is to try and do all we can to make sure you and your forums run a smooth as we can.

APE
Topic solved and archived