Something of an idea.

[Chairman_Tiel]

As some of you might be aware, the forum itself is on free webhosting and we've had some minor issues over the past few days. I believe these problems would be resolved if the forum's hosting was upgraded to a paid plan, but asking for donations would just be...wrong and peasantly.

I realize ads are something of an annoyance and one of the reasons I put forth for switching to begin with, but it's very likely that even just a small adspace on the right of the page would provide sufficient funding on a monthly basis for premium hosting. However, I would also point out that outside of a few hiccups here and there the board has been running quite smoothly on the free plan.

So with that, I put up a poll, as this is ultimately a matter of sacrificing one convenience for another.

(That other being faster server speeds and a .com domain, among others.)

[Iv121]

I have an adblock anyway so it's not an issue for me. How will we get paid ? Monthly or by view rate or something ? Because in the last case we might have problem with adblock. I'll abstain and let the others to decide couse it's not an issue for me.

[Chairman_Tiel]

There are two options, Clicks Per thousand iMpressions, and CPC, Cost Per Click.

Google randomizes the two under the premise of trying to get you the better deal, but they're just trying to guard against fraud. So yeah, a mixture of payouts being based on user clicks and how many times a company's ads are served. Even though we're a relatively small community, I'm sure with twenty people we could view ads enough times to conjure up five bucks for hosting a month. Any excess would go towards hosting for the next month, and so forth. The goal here is self-sufficiency.

[Ivan2006]

I´m not annoyed by ads, because I know they serve the purpose to keep a service free while having it high quality.
I am for ads. Like everyone else who voted yet.

[Iv121]

Yea but I'm not sure google is responsible for the contents of the ads. Whoever makes em is so desprate ...

[Chairman_Tiel]

@Iv Ads work on an auction basis. Advertisers compete for spots for their ads on popular sites by increasing payouts, etc. So essentially the only stuff that filters down from those shenanigans to small sites like both of our forums do tend to look rather desperate, I agree.

[Prototype]

If we get money for doing nothing I say go for it

[Iv121]

We can disable the ads t any time ayway if it makes problems for us ...

[Richard_cypher]

I have no script installed so advertisements likely won't appear for me. I think this would be a good idea though.

[Dr. Mackeroth]

Personally, I don't think we need adds. The forum is running just fine with out a premium account, and until something seriously messes up, I don't think we need one.

[Shadowcatbot]

Personally, I don't think we need adds. The forum is running just fine with out a premium account, and until something seriously messes up, I don't think we need one.

SHHHHHHH!!! as soon as you say that something bad will happen!

[Chairman_Tiel]

This is happening. I'm impressed by the speed and stability of the paid webhost as opposed to 000.

Also, I may install a script to impede access to the forum if it detects you're running an adblocking utility. It's practically a three step process to just disable it for this specific site, and I don't intend to make it too obtrusive.

[Iv121]

Put it in the bottom of the page so that people won't even see it , after the precence of the ad on the page is important right ? Interesting if it is possible to hide it a bit and still make it count ... google probably made an algorithm to detect such things but how cleaver can it get ?

[Keon]

Yes on ads. I couldn't care less unless its "you are the 1001985709th visitor; just for you, one click to meet girls living in your city, +pics."

[Avenger_7]

The space between the Reply buttons and the Jump-to box on the bottom of the page would work good for ads, but you need slightly more visibility than that to attract buyers.