Ridiculous pop-ups, ads, etc. POSTING

[feldon34]

Folks, I feel your pain.

I wanted to let everyone here read a letter I posted to the EZBoard help forum. Hopefully they will be able to make my decision for me regarding whether we stay here or get roots somewhere else.

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Dear EZBoard,

When CSC was announced, I was interested in subscribing for my board so I could get rid of the banner ads. I was not even aware of the popups at the time.

Then EZBoard announced a server changeover, scheduled to last a day. I'd seen that EZBoard was slow some days and down at other times and hoped that the changeover would "seal the deal" and make me want to upgrade to CSC.

Instead, the events of the last 2 weeks have been:

-about 5 days of downtime and/or extreme slowness

-Suddenly my users and I are seeing 5-10 popups in a typical visit

-There are buttons EVERYWHERE that EZBoard is inserting into my boards about CSC including banners at the top and bottom AND popups, AND a whole row of text between my topic controls and the actual list of topics

-I have received several e-mails regarding CSC

Folks, you clearly have NO interest in keeping your people here. I am seriously considering buying UBB and dealing with the bandwidth costs myself. Even if it cost me twice as much as EZBoard, I wouldn't have to deal with the extortion you have propogated against all of us. Did you honestly think, given all the events above, that people would be signing up like crazy?

I understand EZBoard is a free service and you have to pay for yourselves and stay afloat. But you have done EVERYTHING to piss me and my users off without extending any kind of olive branch or incentive for me to pay. I have seen no increase in stability, only an increased ability to serve more popup windows in a shorter period of time.

As a sidebar, I am still puzzled when I see public service announcements (Smokey prevents forest fires) and EZBoard-related ads in rotation (do either of these make you any serious money?).

The EZBoard search engine is still abysmal and now I have users leaving en masse. I have asked my users several times in the last 2 weeks to give me more time to decide whether to give EZBoard another chance and get on board, or to go UBB on my own server. But I think the pressures you have put on users are too much for even me to endure. I have the money here in my hand to either pay you or hit the door. What's it going to be?

When your investors ask you why things went sour so fast, you can tell them that someone decided to drop everything in the users' and administrator's lap in a span of 1 week, turning all the ads to full volume PLUS have unbelieveable downtime and slowness, giving them no reason to want to pay up.


login.ezboard.com/fezboar...5043.topic

[Pyros9]

Feldon,

I think after the way this board has treated us, we should consider using a different board. I don't know about the rest of the members, but I would be willing to pay a small share to help you get a board somewhere else. We have been together a long time, and with the other screen savers Jim is going to produce, we will probably be together quite a bit longer. I don't think you should have to foot the entire bill for a new board.

[feldon34]

I've actually got the financial backing to either pay up here or move somewhere else. The financial burden is not on my shoulders. It truly was a decision of whether to put down roots here or go somewhere else.

I planned to send money to *someone* this month, but EZBoard are making it very hard for me to put their name on the check.

Feldon,

I totally agree with u and i suggest that u get a new board.

Loyal Fan
Jroztan

[Pyros9]

Don't know too much about board software, but this one seems pretty nice. Here is the link to their homepage: www.vbulletin.com/

Here is a link to a sample board (Powerarchiver)www.powerarchiver.com/for...73175db830

Hope this helps.....

Hi!

Why don't you take free Webspace and install your own Forum Software?

I would suggest Freedom2Surf as your Webspace.
You get 20 MB, unlimited Traffic, PHP4, MySQL, your own cgis, NO ADS. And the best: it's free.
==> www.freedom2surf.com/free...20home.htm

Then I would take Ikonboard as your Forum Software. It's free too: www.ikonboard.com/
And again NO ADS...

[hpman77]

I think we should move to another board, as paying EZBoard would make them win the popup-crap war.

I would even pay more to another company, like UBB, rather than paying those guys, and I support that idea: if you need us to pay something to help you move out of here, I'll help too!

Those stupids popups makes me feel sick!

[hpman77]

Maybe feldon can test this communities free service... some friends of mine are using it, and say it's great.


www.communityzero.com/

[feldon34]

20 megabytes would hold this Forum for about 2 months, then we'd have to start deleting messages. And all of those free webspace services are going bankrupt. Look at how useless Mydrive, I-Drive, Driveway, etc. have become. Geocities and the other webhosts are extremely slow and have annoying floater ads.

I am not interested in hosting this Forum somewhere free, because I know at some point they will pull the plug (which has been happening a LOT lately--with no chance to save the messages) or it will end up with just as many advertisements as EZBoard in a desparate attempt to not go bankrupt.

The well is running dry. I have contacted ClearBlueMedia.com, Fastclick.com and a few other advertisers and they just aren't interested the way they were 9 months ago. The banner ad and popup ad companies are having a tough time getting advertising revenue because all the dot.com companies are going dot.bust. As a result websites that have advertising aren't getting paid as much and aren't getting courted to carry ads anymore.

I've been trying since February to get a single advertising banner at the top of my website. I have 27,000 unique hits a month. So far, no takers.

Ah yes, the point of all this. I want to go to *something* that we pay a few hundred for, that will be stable and handle discussion of all 4 screen savers plus the extra users we get when the Aquarium hits big (more than just website sales).

[feldon34]

Don't know too much about board software, but this one seems pretty nice. Here is the link to their homepage: www.vbulletin.com/

Here is a link to a sample board (Powerarchiver)www.powerarchiver.com/for...73175db830

Hmm, Vbulletin is $160 for lifetime, UBB is $250 for lifetime. I'll have to consider the two. I know UBB's search engine is a bear, but I've also heard that VBulletin has other problems. If UBB went to a database back-end and improved their efficiency, it would be the #1 system right now.

Doesn't prevent me from going to it now though.

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I don't need donations for the hosting/forums, but if you'd like to contact me, just write your name and address on the back of a $20 bill and mail it to...

HTML Comments are not allowed

If you disable javascript in your browser, you will not have any pop-ups. In fact, had I not read everyone's complaints about the numerous pop-ups, I would never have known they existed.

How to disable javascript in Internet Explorer 5.5:
1. Open the internet options menu
......click "Tools" then "Internet Options..."
2. Select the "Security" tab then click on "Custom Level..."
3. Now scroll down near the very bottom of the list until you see "Scripting" "Active Scripting" and choose "disable".

Voila! No more annoying pop-ups.

-robert

...that's right Robert, I never have seen any popups here either, and I also have my scripts as well as many other settings there set to disable. If however there is a site I trust and I need scripts, cookies, or whatever to use things, then I just click that site into my trusted zone is all; but I have no-pop up's on this site either.

--Rick

[Digital Lungfish]

I've had my settings previously set to disable Java script as well, but I don't want to have to toss a site into my trusted zone everytime I come up on a new one that I like.

I know it's not all that difficult to do or anything, but I would prefer to surf at-will without any extra key clicks or mouse motions, call me lazy I guess.

- DL

Robert,

I use Opera with javascript disabled to browse the web. No annoying popups for me either.

-=Andrew=-

[Digital Lungfish]

"I use Opera with javascript disabled to browse the web."

Just out of curiousity Andrew, what is Opera?

-DL

[feldon34]

Opera is the smallest web browser that still lets you view most web pages. It was designed to show that Netscape and Internet Explorer are totally bloated programs. As to whether it will take serious market share away from either is beyond me.

[feldon34]

Wow, only down for 5 1/2 hours that time. I guess I'm learning to accept mediocrity.

[EddieWan]

You can always try an ad removal program. I use adsubtract, and have used adsoff, and norton internet security in the past. All 3 worked for me though I like adsubtract the best. There are many others out there as well. It really is a good thing to use if your on a 56k modem as it'll really speed up page loading since the browser doesn't have to load all the ads and popups.

[feldon34]

I'm using Pop-Up Stopper until our registration goes through.