Please ATS Members and Non-Members alike, STOP Blocking Ads- Or there may be NO ATS at ALL

a reply to: TNMockingbird

They are slow loading pages, because they are heavy ad content, but I know people are always reading and clicking them. I do it often if the pictures or story is good enough to put up with a 5 second to 10 second page load.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Ok, well it is just an idea for you. Maybe you could link off to a cheaper server for those types of pages.
I am clueless as to how that works, but it was something I had not seen suggested, so I thought I would throw it out there.

a reply to: Darkblade71

They drive me bonkers, I'm sorry. I always give up after about three pages no matter how good the story is. What if there was a compromise and only BTS got ads? Would that work?

a reply to: beansidhe

Yeah, about half of the time I only get through a few pages.
I'm sure someone is making money off of it though.

a reply to: Darkblade71

They must be, who knows how these things work ? (ie not me )
It's a good idea though, at least you're trying to help instead of just moaning.

a reply to: theySeeme
Yep, I own a web development company. $20 bucks a month could host this site. Screw ads... They are annoying.

If I visited every advertiser link I would never be able to use the net. I have hundreds of sites without any ads at all and they still make money. Products sell products.

Subscriptions? I would never come back...
The Internet is about free information quit trying to change that!

a reply to: samlf3rd

The Internet is about free information quit trying to change that!

Worth repeating

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Can you tell us about software you use? Like is it apache server? What caching system you use? What kind of forum script is this?

For 3000$/month for a vps you can have your own data centers. I'm not sure what IT firm said that but you need to see more opinions.

Yes I understand now that things with mysql can be stress and I see your point, but 3000$ per month sounds like someone's trying to milk you out.

originally posted by: saadad
Can you tell us about software you use? Like is it apache server? What caching system you use? What kind of forum script is this?

It's a LAMP stack.

Caching was a failure, both with mCache and cached queries. Two years ago I hired an mCache expert to help set it up (that's what he did when he was at Facebook), and we ended up with millions of objects in the datastore, and fetching the cached content started taking longer that the actual MySQL queries. Similar thing happened with cached queries.

With mCache, we also started having issues with new posts not appearing in threads for several minutes, sometimes longer. Our expert and I tried several tweaks, decreasing the object expiry, and that's when it all started taking up more resources than just keeping it all dynamic.

The script is mine, custom. Optimized over years of improvements and tweaks. I'm looking at an alternative caching solution that would sit on an SSD Raid-0 array... but it's going to take some time to put together. If successful, that would eliminate the need for the high-end iron we're using now.

For 3000$/month for a vps you can have your own data centers. I'm not sure what IT firm said that but you need to see more opinions.

Not really. When people try to presume to guess at how much cheaper our hosting costs would be, they don't consider the 840GB database, and 2.7 TB (and growing daily) of asset storage. Amazon S3 for our images alone would exceed our current total hosting costs. The datastore costs at Google App Engine would be over $500/month... just to store the data and assets.

Hell, even maintaining daily backups of all that is rather expensive.

Yes I understand now that things with mysql can be stress and I see your point, but 3000$ per month sounds like someone's trying to milk you out.

I have direct experience with using a large datastore and high-frequency queries on Google App Engine (different project). Based on our actual data, the price is not high.

I just ran a tail on our HTTP log. Here were are, at a slow time in the wee hours of Monday morning, and we're seeing 100 lines, 73 of which are for dynamic page content, in 6 seconds. And it looks like at least half are indexing bots of some type.


In the end, our custom iron setup was/is the most cost effective. It's less than $3,000 a month.

originally posted by: TrueAmerican
Is that what you want? No ATS? I sure don't want that.

While things are in transition and revenue streams are figured out, the very least you can do RIGHT NOW to help is to disable any ad-blocking software. The management has said many times that this is critical to help finance the tremendous costs of running this great site. It is big and takes a lot of resources.

No, let me repeat that.

THIS SITE IS BIG AND IT TAKES A LOT OF RESOURCES TO KEEP RUNNING.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT? DO YOU?

Then stop what you are doing, RIGHT NOW, and disable your ad blocking software. Simply click "Disable ad-blocking on abovetopsecret.com"

There. Now, Don't you feel better? You did your little part. And even though that may still not be enough in the long run, at least you did that. And it would also help to actually CLICK on an ad that interests you either once in a while and go check it out.

I placed this in this forum so that non-members will see this as well. Considering that some 75% or more of hits (according to management) are from non-logged in members or non-members, it would seem prudent to do so. Consider it Education of the masses that Media costs money. Nothing is free forever. Except maybe air. And who knows how long that will last either.

And to all you takers out there, yeah the ones that always just read and never or hardly ever start threads, how about considering contributing a thread once in a while? It takes that too to keep this site running. Or are you just going to keep taking and taking until there is nothing left to take? New trees have to be planted or the forest will die. So help. HELP, dammit. Stop just reading, and actually go out and get an interesting topic and bring it here, or write one yourself. Let's keep this site alive. At least, that's the way I feel. It is worth it.

No i don't feel this way at all. This is a dying site, there are far better sites. You only have to look up what people are saying about this site on the internet. Some have scrubbed it as being any good because there is no free speech, and i don't wonder why. Just watch how quickly this post vanishes. The mods take it down as quickly as you can put it up. Well only if you tell it the way it is. Conspiracy site? lol

a reply to: TrueAmerican

always use ad blocker, always will
its optional so i will do as i please

you will make a lot of money either way, i think you just looking to maximise profits. greedy greedy.

Charge for the service. It is a good site and if you have a tight community, people wont mind paying will they?

I went and clicked all of the ads in the first 5 pages. Does that help? Lol. I lurk all the time but barely ever post. Hope I made ATS a couple cents.

I'm interested in what features of ATS are disabled while using adblocker...can anyone enlighten me? At this stage I have noticed no difference in functionality, but that is probably due to the way I use ATS in the first place.

originally posted by: aorAki
I'm interested in what features of ATS are disabled while using adblocker...can anyone enlighten me? At this stage I have noticed no difference in functionality, but that is probably due to the way I use ATS in the first place.

The only thing I have yet to notice is the ability to upload pictures. I haven't seen anything else as of yet.

Funny though... If I REALLY needed to upload the pictures, I could just turn off AB then turn it back on right after the upload. Seems kinda a pointless thing to take away from AB users.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Can you switch to lemp? I think it is worth a try, I know many big sites that solved they problems with switching to nginx.

But your main problem is huge mysql database. Switching to nginx and using dedicated server with huge amount of ram could solve your problem.

I'm not a big expert but it hurts seeing someone paying so much money while maybe there is solution.

originally posted by: StallionDuckThe only thing I have yet to notice is the ability to upload pictures. I haven't seen anything else as of yet. Funny though... If I REALLY needed to upload the pictures, I could just turn off AB then turn it back on right after the upload. Seems kinda a pointless thing to take away from AB users.

Mm.. just testing.. uploading proof..



Yup. Seems to work just fine. So, perhaps somebody came to his/her senses and switched it back on.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I wish I had screen capped it. Had to close out an ad to put in my password. Was very strange

a reply to: aorAki

A number of experiments were done: clicking the links on the front-page has been disabled for a short while, a HUGE banner was put on top of the site, some disturbing pseudo-ads were put up, and yes, uploading pictures was "banned" too.

Quite puzzling, as after all, "We, the Users" provide free content for ATS. It seems rather silly to hamper us in doing so.

Since everybody seems to know the owners business better than he.

Here's my two cents...

Hold a live event in the middle of nowhere.

Have Bands, sell crap, hell why not try and contact ET ?

Here's the hook...make giant pillows. Build a giant ring.

Cause, I would pay a bundle to pillow smack the crap out of a few members.

originally posted by: Selevon
a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I wish I had screen capped it. Had to close out an ad to put in my password. Was very strange

Some "ad providers" are actually quite good at phishing, so perhaps you just incidentally gave your password away ..

You might consider changing it, using the regular features provided by ATS.