Hello,

I note suddenly today that the forum pages are filled with empty boxes with an X at the corner, and things that I used to recall seeing are no longer present. maybe they were in the boxes. Also I am beleaguered by the same type of ads that follow me on other commercial websites, likes ads for a  rental car on an upcoming trip , pants, etc. and I really do not remember those before. I like the ads for flight simulator stuff but am  dismayed to see those other ads which dramatically slow down the webpage loading.

 

Has something changed at AVSIM to cause this. The issues are the same in IE 11 and Edge. Using Windows 10

 

Greg

2 hours ago, greg100o said:

I note suddenly today that the forum pages are filled with empty boxes with an X at the corner, and things that I used to recall seeing are no longer present. maybe they were in the boxes.

This was most likely not caused by AVSIM but the advertising service (Google).  They are responsible for maintaining advertisements on AVSIM.  They may have been updating their advertising.  I have not seen it yet and all of the commercial advertising on my computer can be seen so think the problem, if it existed, has been fixed by the advertisers.  It also could have been caused by your computer system not accepting cookies or other issues. 

2 hours ago, greg100o said:

I like the ads for flight simulator stuff but am  dismayed to see those other ads which dramatically slow down the webpage loading.

The CEO, AVSIM decided to commercially advertise to help pay for the many expenses in owning and running a website.  The other Flight Simulation related websites run this commercial advertising and I believe AVSIM was the last of the FS sites to take advantage of this additional revenue (I did a lot of research!).  I was the first to note the advertising on all of the other sites over a year ago and made the recommendation and the CEO recently agreed.

I can guarantee you that the ads do not slow down the site one bit.  In fact, the site is running faster than it ever has and we continue to get performance gains even when we have 1100-1300 guests and members on board and viewing the site. I remember the days when the site would come to a crawl and we would have to move to performance mode when more than 1000 members and guests visited.  AVSIM has made several investments to improve the performance of the site with the many donations received from our membership.  If we can find other opportunities to increase the revenue to maintain this site, we will try to implement them.  So far we have not had to go to making our members pay for downloading files faster or using the site like at FlightSim.com or FlyAwaySimulations (I have seen many AVSIM Library files at FlyAwaySimulations so make sure you do not pay to download files that existed in our Library with the AVSIM readme still in the download from the developer stating the file was only uploaded to AVSIM Library and cannot be placed in the libraries at other websites!!)  Come here to the AVSIM Library and download for free and much faster.  Everything is still free at AVSIM and we intend to keep it that way!

Best regards,

Jim

Thanks for your  detailed explanation, Jim. I appreciate it and understand the rationale.

 

Greg

opss big problem