Genesis Forum Support

[Nikgen]

Must be your computer or browser. I whitelisted this site and things run fine for me - I can handle the ads. If it did not, I would pay the fee.

Agree - same here. And not cool that he posted what was likely a PM from the site owner in his message - what's up with that?

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Dareck. I have the problem figured out. Give me five minutes. I'll be right back...

This forum is so messed up, it gets worse and worse....

- Trying to surf this forum or get to this section, I'm being redirected to index page several time?!
- forum loads up even slower than before.
- blank pages.
- it doesn't matter if I turn my ublock/adblock OFF - it still doesn't help!

but guess what! ..... if I log out, everything runs fast as hell! why is that? I don't think my ISP (Verizon) has anything to do with it.

btw. Blocking access to Forum like this? I don't think this will help you to get new users or more support from them. I could be wrong, of course

As I said above: turning ad-blocker OFF does not solve this problem.

EDIT: I hit "Preview Post" button and it redirected me to index page again!!!

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Okay - directed to Dareck... This problem was happening with one other member and what I did to fix his problem was copy and paste database information from an old backup into his current account data. I don't think it was a fluke and if your account is now working properly I'll be sure it worked. Please let me know if you see an improvement at your earliest convenience...

Thank you!

Sal C.

 

[srobak]

Well - as I said I would the day I joined - if I bought a Genny I would become a supporting member... so now I am.

That being said....

I don't think slamming the door on adblock users with the "deal" page is in good form. In fact - it is likely to cost you more than a few _very_ contributory members - and I do not mean financially. While I understand that it costs a few bucks to run a forum like this - as I run 3 on similarly structured system - let's be real;

The cost of doing so is not overly expensive at all. My annual costs were under a hundred bucks a year on a site with over 3000 members and not charging any "membership" or "supporting" fees. Yeah, sure - it's a hundred bucks I am short - but because it was my passion I was happy to foot the bill. There were a couple of close friends who would regularly kick in a few bucks as well. In the end - if this forum is costing you anything more than $200 a year to run - even before fees/donations/supporting users - then you are hosting it at the wrong place. As you do have more than a few supporting members - your costs should honestly be nil at this point, and I'd be surprised if your host wasn't in fact paying you. Private message me or email me if you want to know more on keeping the costs down by using the right hosting company. Other options also include hosting it yourself (quite easy and cheap), having another member host it on server space and bandwidth they are already paying for or have access to (ahem) or even co-location hosting for a fraction of what this site is probably costing.

Now - please understand the reason people use adblock is not to have the forum cost you (or anyone else running a board) money. The main reason isn't even to block genuine ads. The real reason is to block spam, malware, virii, phishers and crawlers. While you might see the benefit of having ads on the screens of users to keep the costs down - the companies who pay your hosting company for the ad space see it as a target rich environment for exploitation and information harvesting. Nothing more. Your hosting company has no more control over the content of the code that is in that ad space than you do. They simply rent out the real estate - and statistically more than 60% of the buyers of that kind of real estate net-based forum wide use it for malicious and deviant purposes. The key thing to remember is your hosting company is not actually hosting what is in that rented ad space. All that content (and subsequently buried code) is being hosted wherever the would-be ad company is hosting it. If they want to stick malicious code in there that exploits a security flaw in a particular web browser and gains them access to your system and drops a payload on it - there is nothing you can do to stop it, nor can your hosting company.... other than once learning about it - cutting off that ad company outright. Either way - it hasn't prevented the infections, extractions, exploitations and harvestings that have already taken place.

Any time your web browser touches a web page being hosted somewhere (or ad-window within that page that actually is being hosted someplace completely different) - that page can legitimately extract a ton of personal information from settings within your web browser. The protocol has had this ability baked into it from the earliest days of the web - and even stretches back to the days of Gopher. *ANY* personal information/email addresses/settings/preference/system info/browsing history/etc/etc/etc is literally wide-open to be harvested by the site. Understand that by and large - these ad spaces are EXTREMELY dangerous - because no one has any control over them.

It's merely the nature of the beast - and it is the true reason why most of the ad-blockers out there use such products. With that in mind - I urge you to reconsider slamming the door on them and asking for whitelisting. If you don't want to pursue some of the other options listed above - then perhaps set the ad-block detection to delay or throttle the users, rather than cutting them off outright.

Additionally - your payment structure doesn't make sense. While recurring monthly subscribers are nice to have - you shouldn't punish annual subscribers in the process. In fact - as you are getting a larger chunk of money from them up front - you should be cutting them a break, not the monthly subs. Just my $.07 worth from having done this for far longer than I can remember.

As always - these are just explanations, ideas and suggestions. PLease do not take them as attacks or being overly critical. I am just trying to help you, myself and the other members on here - before it ends up costing this community more than what we could never actually be able to put a dollar value on.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

A couple of quick things but I need to get to bed so I'll have to be short.

1. The site is hosted on a dedicated server. So "cost" is on a whole 'nother planet compared to "web hosting". I need the dedicated server.

2. I'm working on reducing the amount of ads for people concerned enough about security to use AdBlockers.

Gotta run for now. Enjoy the site... And thank you for your support...

 

[srobak]

1. The site is hosted on a dedicated server. So "cost" is on a whole 'nother planet compared to "web hosting". I need the dedicated server.

Understand - I am not talking about web hosting.... I am talking about VM hosting - which is most likely what you are running on now. Highly unlikely you have a dedicated, physical server (or 2) & disk via a hosting company (Madison Ross Media Group - which is registered as some dude's house in the middle of a golf course in Royal Palm Beach in FL). A dedicated VM - one of dozens if not hundreds residing on a physical server cluster - yes. But still a small sliver in horsepower, memory and SAN storage of a much, much larger pie. vCloud could present you with a whole "rack" of servers and storage that were virtualized on the back end - and you would be none the wiser on the front end. I've built more than a few of these kinds of environments for hosting companies and cloud based DR sites myself. If they want to make you believe you have a dedicated box for the webserver , another for the db and a dedicated shelf of storage - you will believe it - and would never be able to prove otherwise from the side which things are presented to you on.

Seriously - we should talk. I have no doubts we can get this thing running 100% ad-free, for free, stable, backed up, fatter-piped and even faster than it is now. Hell, I can peel off enough of my test environment that would run it easy.

 

[dareckibmw]

Sal.....I appreciate your assistance on this matter, seems to worked out well this time, Thank you! I don't really mind a few ads here or there, I know the cost of running a web, server, etc. (I run my own website) but if you could reduce some of them....it's really annoying sometimes

I'll let you know if anything changes. (you can delete my other account for now, I won't be using it)

Guys.... there is nothing wrong with my computers and/or browsers that I use. I am pretty savvy with them and know way around them

My car runs fine too and it's still fastest

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Understand - I am not talking about web hosting.... I am talking about VM hosting - which is most likely what you are running on now. Highly unlikely you have a dedicated, physical server (or 2) & disk via a hosting company (Madison Ross Media Group - which is registered as some dude's house in the middle of a golf course in Royal Palm Beach in FL). A dedicated VM - one of dozens if not hundreds residing on a physical server cluster - yes. But still a small sliver in horsepower, memory and SAN storage of a much, much larger pie. vCloud could present you with a whole "rack" of servers and storage that were virtualized on the back end - and you would be none the wiser on the front end. I've built more than a few of these kinds of environments for hosting companies and cloud based DR sites myself. If they want to make you believe you have a dedicated box for the webserver , another for the db and a dedicated shelf of storage - you will believe it - and would never be able to prove otherwise from the side which things are presented to you on.

Seriously - we should talk. I have no doubts we can get this thing running 100% ad-free, for free, stable, backed up, fatter-piped and even faster than it is now. Hell, I can peel off enough of my test environment that would run it easy.

I'm not having one of those "easy to fall asleep" nights so I popped back on and refreshed the page. "Madison Ross Media Group" is simply "me". The "group" is my group of websites. I start a website for almost all of my interests. Though only one other gets the amount of attention this one does. The name was also helpful way back in the day when it was easy to get direct advertisers. It went over better with the organization's boss or marketing department much better than "Yeah, we're paying this guy named Sal to put ads on his website".

My first foray beyond regular web hosting was with Ventures Online way, way, way back in time - and I've stuck with them (through each buy out and new owner as well) until now. They've always treated me well and I'm a very loyal person so I stick with them. I'm not much of a server administrator so I use their managed plan and really don't know a whole lot about the differences between virtual, non-virtual, cloud and whatever else is out there. There's not enough time for me to know everything about everything so I just stick to what I'm good at and call it a day.

Sal.....I appreciate your assistance on this matter, seems to worked out well this time, Thank you! I don't really mind a few ads here or there, I know the cost of running a web, server, etc. (I run my own website) but if you could reduce some of them....it's really annoying sometimes

I'll let you know if anything changes. (you can delete my other account for now, I won't be using it)

Thank you, Dareck. I appreciate the update - and I'm glad to know the solution is now official. If anyone else has the same problem I now know how to fix it...

 

[srobak]

"Madison Ross Media Group" is simply "me". The "group" is my group of websites. I start a website for almost all of my interests. [...] The name was also helpful way back in the day when it was easy to get direct advertisers. It went over better with the organization's boss or marketing department much better than "Yeah, we're paying this guy named Sal to put ads on his website".

Yes, I can agree with that statement & perspective entirely. If you also incorporated that name - it probably also means you get to charge a higher business rate to the ad-spacers than if you were "this guy named Sal". Certainly a good business strategy.

My first foray beyond regular web hosting was with Ventures Online way, way, way back in time - and I've stuck with them [...] I'm a very loyal person so I stick with them.

I can completely respect that. It is a trait that is hard to find in both customers and businesses anymore. Hopefully they do reciprocate that to you in kind.

I'm not much of a server administrator so I use their managed plan and really don't know a whole lot about the differences between virtual, non-virtual, cloud and whatever else is out there. There's not enough time for me to know everything about everything so I just stick to what I'm good at and call it a day.

Also completely understandable. For most people "turn key" is best and allows communities like this one to flourish when it is easy to run. From a day-to-day aspect - even if this forum were hosted somewhere else - the management of it would essentially stay the same... this is the part of vBulletin that is "customer facing" and would not change from your perspective.

The part that would change is in the installation and configuration of the software and database. That is where other members of the forum can come in handy to help make that happen. That being said - it also isn't terribly difficult to do. vBulletin has improved their deployment package time and again over the year and it is why it is categorically the most popular web forum suite on the planet. It is easy to set up, it is easy to manage, it is easy to use and it keeps things with a common enough thread across completely un-related forums that once you learn how to use it or manage it - you can pretty much use them all without any problems. This is a huge part of the appeal & draw to such forums that are powered by vBulletin or something similar.

So - all that being said.... your site, your choices... I am simply making suggestions for user retention (even if you do stay hosted where you are) and offering help (both here and elsewhere). When you get time - read again through my first post earlier tonight and let me know if you want to chat about possibilities. My only interest is in keeping the community strong and the users happy & the knowledge flowing.

 

[LandoAWD]

I now have the "options" of constant redirects to the homepage after "making your deal", the page not loading when clicking from an external or internal link, or with AdBlock where it should be (blocking slew of ads), seeing two hands shaking.

The site is virtually unusable.

______________________________

Help support this site so it can continue supporting you!

 

[goochylittlepig]

Now every page I go to loads the "Let's make a deal" page even after I added the entire domain to not have adblocker run.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

I now have the "options" of constant redirects to the homepage after "making your deal", the page not loading when clicking from an external or internal link, or with AdBlock where it should be (blocking slew of ads), seeing two hands shaking.

The site is virtually unusable.

Your account should be working fine. I've now made the same changes to several accounts and I believe your issues should be resolved from this point forward.

Now every page I go to loads the "Let's make a deal" page even after I added the entire domain to not have adblocker run.

I imagine you got in to post this message (no redirect) and your account should also be working better with AdBlock off now.

 

[LandoAWD]

Redirects appear to have ceased, so less griefing...

Failed loads still present.

The good news is I see an ad in every post, at the top of the forum, and on the sides. :/

 

[OneFunGenesis]

Not to add to the crap here, but the lets make a deal pages are killing me.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Redirects appear to have ceased, so less griefing...

Failed loads still present.

The good news is I see an ad in every post, at the top of the forum, and on the sides. :/

Try logging out and logging back in again. And/or clearing your cache and cookies for genesisowners.com. You shouldn't be seeing failed loads anymore and since you are I'm thinking the changes I made haven't taken affect - which points to cache/cookies...

Not to add to the crap here, but the lets make a deal pages are killing me.

You're still seeing it with AdBlock turned off? I've been working with several people on this - this morning - and it appears there's a setting or two that people are missing at first. Because once it's officially "off" or the site is properly "whitelisted" - the redirect goes away.

 

[OneFunGenesis]

Not using adblock. Can't whitelist your server side as I am at work on corporate servers. But I have actually never used adblock lol

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Not using adblock. Can't whitelist your server side as I am at work on corporate servers. But I have actually never used adblock lol

I don't know why you're seeing that page but I'm going to need to make some changes. I'll let you know when the changes are made.

 

[dareckibmw]

I disabled ublock completely on genesisowners.forum and now getting this page "Let's make a deal" again, randomly, browsing new threads.....not to mention the ad - looking for a hooker?

This is one of the reason I am using adblock/ublock in my browsers. Sorry guys but I'm out of here until it's fixed.

 

[MT-Genesis]

Darick, It's not just you.
I have tried with three different browsers: IE 11, MS Edge, and Google Chrome. I don't use any ad-blocker but am registered and the nag page comes up at random times for me also. It started yesterday afternoon and like you, I'm on the verge of leaving unless the situation clears up.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

I apologize for the frustration, people. I'm working on solutions that'll hopefully make everyone happy - at least as many people as possible. To those who stick around - I greatly appreciate it. To those who decide to move on - I don't blame you. Best of luck...