Removal of Ads for Members with 5 Posts

[Carl]

The recent issues where flash causes the text boxes to hang has prompted me to go ahead and remove the last Ad for all our members who have over 5 posts. Before this, it took 25 posts and everyone still had the advertisement on the bottom. This Forum is largely non-profit and has ads just to cover the bandwidth and server bills. Guests will see them, but they don't need to type! If members want to donate, there is always that option on the top right. The banner above it is a sort of an ad but doesn't load that way, it is just an image link to allow us to get credit for Origin purchases

I do not want our members who enjoy this place to have a bad experience just because they "roll" a flash ad at the bottom of the page and I was already considering doing this for our members anyway. Please don't make junk posts to get to 5, just use the Forum normally and contribute to discussions.

As a result of this change, the Forum should be lightning quick for most of you! Sometimes there's a minor server hang, but with no scripts on the page you should see a noticeable speed improvement.

Sorry to Pam and Metro, but we will still face this issue as we have "permission" to view ads because we're Admins. If it occurs, you have to reload the page until you do not get an advertisement that is animated.

[justproud2b]

Thank you for this. This is why I come here over other places you are all about the users over the profit or fame. For you guys you could always use adblock and do it the way I do having it off for most pages then specify the sites it blocks (do this for some sites that I know for a fact have used bad ads or things with virus)

[Carl]

That is nice of you, to blacklist sites that have too many or are intrusive as opposed to just leeching bandwidth. I would hope most would at least whitelist our site so that the Guide is not consuming bandwidth with no return. As more and more people use that, many sites could actually go out of business over it.

Edit: I also shrunk the Sims banner in the top right so that it has less chance of overlapping content on the left for people with smaller screens. It now does a search for The Sims as opposed to Sims 3, so that players will see all Sims products there.