Ad Blocking on this website?
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I've been asked how this works.
Internet browsers (every one that I've tested) uses the "hosts" file for domain name resolution, FIRST, before going to domain lookup online.
When you type a text web address, the browser needs the corresponding numeric IP address. The browser has to get it someplace, right? Everyone assumes that it is acquired online, as they have seen the messages to that effect.
Fortunately, the IP address can be provided by the "hosts" file, if you add them to it. The only primary advantage is faster access, since web-based domain lookup is avoided. This was the initial reason for the "hosts" file.
If, however, you put a text web address in the "hosts" file, and provide the WRONG numeric IP address, the browser will go to the wrong address. If you look at the example I provided above, and look in your own "hosts" file, you will see that the numeric IP address provided, for EVERY entry is, "127.0.0.1"
"127.0.0.1" is the IP "home" address for your OWN COMPUTER !
This causes the browser to look for files on your computer - files that aren't there.
When an advertisement is supposed to load, the browser can't find it (on your computer,) so it just skips it. (Some browsers show an error message, some just a blank graphic box.)
By the way, you can download "hosts" files, from online sources, that are already packed with hundreds of the the most common "bad actors." I've been doing this for decades; long before ad-blocking software came along. If you find yourself blocked from a necessary website, edit the "hosts" file, to permit routing to the proper address.
-Taff
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Taff originally wrote...
@unknownuser said:
Here is the solution, which I just confirmed on my Windows machine.
There is a built-in site-blocking file on EVERY Windows machine, called the "hosts" file (no extension.) Macs may use a similar file. On my Windows XP machine, it is located in the following directory:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
Look for the "hosts" file. Open it for editing with Notepad. Use <ctrl>-F, to open Notepad's "find" window, and search for "buysellads". (I found two instances in my hosts file.)
Append a "#" character to the beginning of the line. (This will cause the line to be treated as a comment line, rather than a valid block entry.)
My case:
...
127.0.0.1 buytraffic.cn
127.0.0.1 s3.buysellads.com
127.0.0.1 stats.buysellads.com
127.0.0.1 buzzclick.com
...
When edited:
...
127.0.0.1 buytraffic.cn
#127.0.0.1 s3.buysellads.com
#127.0.0.1 stats.buysellads.com
127.0.0.1 buzzclick.com
...
Save the file. Reload your browser. (I use Chrome, and don't have to reload. A page-refresh is sufficient.)The problem: Uploaded images and attachments being stored at an internet address that is a recognized ad/spamming source.
Many ad-blocking programs revise the "hosts" file, as part of their blocking methodology. You can always edit yourself, if you encounter a website that is being blocked, and you need to permit access.
If SketchUcation is going to continue to use "buysellads" or comparable host for file storage, these instructions need to be posted as a "sticky"
-Taff
This post was removed in error.
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Hunted for the 'hosts' file without success, I'm using windows 8.
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Did Taff or Rich post the Notepad workaround, whichever one of you it was,
In Notepad, is that Ctrl F, or Ctrl -F to search for buysellads?
wow, in Notepad I see maybe 1,000 entries in that Hosts file! While in that Hosts file in Notepad I clicked Edit>Find and entered buyselladd but it found nothing.
hope this workaround works, from the time I clicked the email notification for this thread till I arrived here was over a minute, with Adblock turned off .
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@solo said:
Hunted for the 'hosts' file without success, I'm using windows 8.
Solo,
See these links, for help with Windows 8:
Editing Hosts File in Windows 8
You can’t block Facebook using Windows 8′s hosts file
While the last one mentions Facebook, the article is really about how Windows 8 is treating the "hosts" file differently than previous Windows versions.
The location of the "hosts" file doesn't appear to have changed, however. You should find it in the aforementioned directory.
-Taff
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@joe wood said:
Did Taff or Rich post the Notepad workaround, whichever one of you it was,
In Notepad, is that Ctrl F, or Ctrl-F to search for buysellads?
wow, in Notepad I see maybe 1,000 entries in that Hosts file! While in that Hosts file in Notepad I clicked Edit>Find and entered buyselladd but it found nothing.
hope this workaround works, from the time I clicked the email notification for this thread till I arrived here was over a minute, with Adblock turned off .
Joe,
Careful with your search. It's "buysellads" not "buyselladd"
You can search for just "buysell" and it will still find the entries.
-Taff
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So do I do Edit>Find while in that hosts file, or do I do that Ctrl F while in that file? Or is it Ctrl -F ?
EDIT- when in that hosts file I did Edit > Find, buysell and all it found was buyselldomain.net
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@joe wood said:
So do I do Edit>Find while in that hosts file, or do I do that Ctrl F while in that file? Or is it Ctrl -F ?
Joe,
You used "Edit > Find" while in Notepad (editing "hosts") which is the same thing. In other words, "<Ctr>+F" is simply a keyboard shortcut.
(If fact, if you click on the menu "Edit" and pause to look at the list of commands, you'll see the keyboard shortcut right-beside the "Find" entry in the list.)
-Taff
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@joe wood said:
So do I do Edit>Find while in that hosts file, or do I do that Ctrl F while in that file? Or is it Ctrl -F ?
EDIT- when in that hosts file I did Edit > Find, buysell and all it found was buyselldomain.net
Joe,
You may have an ad-blocker that is using some method, other than adding entries to the "hosts" file.
In that case, you need to modify your ad-blocker settings, to always allow access to "buysellads" address(es)
Otherwise, try disabling your ad-blocker, altogether, just to see if it's the culprit. If that works, then you know, for a fact, that you need to fine-tune the ad-blocker, so that "buysellads" address(es) are permitted. The instructions vary, depending on what ad-blocker you are using.
-Taff
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Windows users should note that Microsoft "Defender" is an ad-blocker, or, at least, has some ad-blocking functionality.
For more information, see the second link that I provided to Solo, in my post, above.
-Taff
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@solo said:
I clicked 'Reply' and it took 1 minute 13 seconds for the reply page to load,on the bottom left of page it showed 'David laser' displayed for 42 seconds before 'Buy sell ads' taking 11 seconds then finally Sketchucation and page loaded eventually.
i'm wondering if you're saying that every page takes 70+ seconds to load?
(if so, i don't suppose we'll be seeing you reply to this anyway.. i sure wouldn't
)i mean, i'll occasionally get a page to hang here as well.. and i assume if i just kept waiting for it to load, it may very well take as long as you're describing..
so, if this doesn't happen all the time, you can prod it to load faster.. just refresh then it will load right away..
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For some reason everything's working as it used to for me, pages loading real fast actually, and I didn't Edit anything in that Hosts file. Did you folks change anything?
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well, now it's back to taking a long time to load any page.
About finding those buysell entries in the hosts file, and finding using notepad- In FFox I went to my Extensions, clicked Options for Adblock, and checked Disable Everywhere.
Closed FFox, used notepad but still didn't see any buysellads entries. I don't use W defender.
Darn ....
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@unknownuser said:
@solo said:
I clicked 'Reply' and it took 1 minute 13 seconds for the reply page to load,on the bottom left of page it showed 'David laser' displayed for 42 seconds before 'Buy sell ads' taking 11 seconds then finally Sketchucation and page loaded eventually.
i'm wondering if you're saying that every page takes 70+ seconds to load?
(if so, i don't suppose we'll be seeing you reply to this anyway.. i sure wouldn't
)i mean, i'll occasionally get a page to hang here as well.. and i assume if i just kept waiting for it to load, it may very well take as long as you're describing..
so, if this doesn't happen all the time, you can prod it to load faster.. just refresh then it will load right away..
I am becoming very tired of this buy/sell problem since the ads have been forced upon us, to the point of only looking at attachments selectively on a 'need to know' basis. The timeline for stats.buysell stretches to 1.4 min. before giving up and letting the page load. This happens ~75% of the time.
I looked up the Mac way to deal with host files but I am a bit shy around Terminal, has anyone else ventured there?a couple examples from today, with Adblock enabled pages load within seconds.
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@wind-borne said:
I looked up the Mac way to deal with host files but I am a bit shy around Terminal, has anyone else ventured there?
nah.. it's almost like why bother.. jean said somewhere that he hopes it doesn't turn into a cat and mouse game and i can see that scenario happening..
my own take on the ads is sort of 'whatever'...
i don't watch tv very often.. those ads do bother me.. but the ads online aren't so bad.they're like if you're watching a movie on tv except the commercial comes up at the edge of the screen every now and then... but the movie keeps playing.
we agree to live in a capitalist society.. ads are a huge part of that setup.. so we agree to having ads..
(or go buy, say, a book for ad free content.. but then again, that's not free either.. etc..)[edit] continuing.. don't get me wrong.. i probably dislike ads more than many of the people here.. but an online forum which has banners and a fake member isn't the battle ground.. eliminate the need to have advertising in general and this forum will no longer have ads.. and neither will tvs.. or every sq.ft of nyc.. etc..[/edit]
[edit2]..hahah..
a lot of you guys are talking about the time the ads are making you wait.. i.e.- it's the same as how tvs make you wait.. yeah man. that's not good.. sucks in fact..[edit3].. man.. read this again a few hours later.. how embarrassing
..so @wind-borne i don't even know what a host file is... @people complaining about ads for other reasons.. the above still applies.. -
All right, I have tried to apply some magic I have learnt recently about asynchronous loading of javascript files. Since I have never really experienced what you do with BSA, I cannot tell if it works.
Please, try to load the pages and let me know if they still load very slowly due to BSA not loading properly (i.e. in time).
The other day I could not connect to the site at all. It was not BSA but Google. More exactly Google servers probably worked correctly but for some reason, the connection between Google servers and my ISP seemed to be down.
Nothing loaded here as a web page does not load until all the js files are properly loaded. Now I have set the Google Analytics code to load asynchronously too. I wonder what the effect would have been if I had known this when this happened to me.
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@wind-borne said:
I am becoming very tired of this buy/sell problem since the ads have been forced upon us, to the point of only looking at attachments selectively on a 'need to know' basis.
Hi Wind Borne,
I am sorry for the inconvenience our Anti-AdBlock measures are causing to some SCF members and I hope we will be able to solve the problems over time. I note Csaba is working towards this end.
As regards your comment 'the ads have been forced upon us', I could not agree totally with this as adverts have become part of SketchUcation for quite some time, its just that you were not seeing them because you were using AdBlock.
Advertising is how we finance the hosting and running of the site apart from the new Shop sale items and our Premium Member subscribers which have the option of switching AdBlock on or off.
From what I gather most Premium Members leave the adverts on as they find them relevant and useful, however I am working on an advert link listing page that they will be able to view in one swoop thus allowing them to leave AB in place permanently if they so desire. I also hope to deliver some product discounts as I achieve / negotiate them on the Premium Members advert link listing page which I trust will encourage them to visit regularly.
The bottom line for us is that we are receiving advertising revenue from our advertisers and feel that we must make all efforts to deliver value for their advertising buck. If we did not do this, I feel we would be taking money under false pretence.
On the other hand we are receiving very few complaints when one considers the total membership we have in SketchUcation. I imagine most members just did a simple AB switch off for SketchUcation and I also imagine that many were pleasantly surprised at how little the adverts actually impact on their view experience here. Still, we will continue to try and help those that are having problems.
Mike
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@unknownuser said:
nah.. it's almost like why bother.. jean said somewhere that he hopes it doesn't turn into a cat and mouse game and i can see that scenario happening..
my own take on the ads is sort of 'whatever'... i don't watch tv very often.. those ads do bother me.. but the ads online aren't so bad.
they're like if you're watching a movie on tv except the commercial comes up at the edge of the screen every now and then... but the movie keeps playing.
we agree to live in a capitalist society.. ads are a huge part of that setup.. so we agree to having ads.. (or go buy, say, a book for ad free content.. but then again, that's not free either.. etc..)
I agree with a lot of what you say Jeff. I do watch a fair old amount of TV (while working on my laptop) and also find the full-break adverts slots annoying. There are some that I find interesting also but most are of no interest to me. I also notice the the sound level increases for some reason. I normally have the sound level set at a comfortable level for the program I am watching and then when the ads come up they are set at a much higher level. My solution is to just hit the mute sound button on my hand controller for the duration of the ads ..... problem solved. However if I see an interesting ads I will listen to it
I have not come across the movies that show the ads at the side of the screen. Like you, I don't think this would bother me too much.
Yes, we do live in a capitalist society and ads area huge part of the set up. Members also agree to having ads here on SketchUcation. Check out the SketchUcation TOS - Basic Terms here,
Very few have ever read the TOS let alone adhere to them in the case of using Ad Block
As you say, books are mostly advert free but one has to pay for books unless the public library is used but again someone has to subsidise the public library aslo
I honestly don't think that the adverts we have here are obtrusive or too large. As a matter of interest we insist that they must be sub 150Kb in size. also not too 'flashy'. I would go as far to say that all are well designed and to my mind add a 'splash of colour' to the site.
When complaints have been voiced by various members about adverts, I have always asked them for an alternative site financing measure. To date a viable alternative has not been suggested but I live in hope. When one is, we shall seriously consider immediate cessation of advert placement but I can't see that really happening with the current system we have to operate under ........ capitalism!
Mike
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@gaieus said:
All right, I have tried to apply some magic I have learnt recently about asynchronous loading of javascript files. Since I have never really experienced what you do with BSA, I cannot tell if it works.
Please, try to load the pages and let me know if they still load very slowly due to BSA not loading properly (i.e. in time).
The other day I could not connect to the site at all. It was not BSA but Google. More exactly Google servers probably worked correctly but for some reason, the connection between Google servers and my ISP seemed to be down.
Nothing loaded here as a web page does not load until all the js files are properly loaded. Now I have set the Google Analytics code to load asynchronously too. I wonder what the effect would have been if I had known this when this happened to me.
Thanks for your effort.
First test this morning the page loaded in 1.9 minutes, the worst of any test ever.
Later, worked properly for a few pages, loaded in less than 3 seconds when tested.
If while loading I scroll to section and see the dashes beside stats.buysel... it's the long wait.What I need is a better balance of decent load times versus unacceptable
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@gaieus said:
All right, I have tried to apply some magic I have learnt recently about asynchronous loading of javascript files. Since I have never really experienced what you do with BSA, I cannot tell if it works
...Not sure how you load third party scripts, but seems "load third party scripts async, after onload" is a working strategy, not just "load third party scripts async"
http://www.aaronpeters.nl/blog/why-loading-third-party-scripts-async-is-not-good-enough
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3323888/delay-the-loading-of-3rd-party-javascript
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