I just had someone tell me that our Forum is looking terrible after we upgraded our website last month. He said the Banner Ads at the top are all messed up and the Google Ads on the right side that pay for this Forum are missing.
Please help us improve our Forum by replying to this with a note if your session looks messed up on your end and what browser you are viewing it in. Also please let us know if it looks fine to you as well.
Thanks for your support. We strive to do the best we can to keep improving the Forum, the Website as well as our Magazine.
Thanks.
Gary
I've not noticed any difference, but I only last month got back on here frequently--retired and getting on the bus project. About half the time I'm probably on my android phone. All I can say is everything's working
It looks okay for the most part, but since the latest update there is one REALLY annoying feature.
When I go to BCM I do so by following a link to my unread posts. As soon as I click on the first one in the list, I'm now presented with a pop-up ad which must be dismissed before being able to proceed to the page.
My general way of reading the various unread posts I have is to middle-click each of them to open them in a new tab. Since this new pop-up ad started that doesn't work anymore - as soon as I middle-click the first post the pop-up gets in the way and screws up the whole process.
Looks ok to me. I've viewed the site on Windows and Linux using latest Chrome. About once per visit I get a full screen modal ad that pops up, but the other ads on top and RHS look good. I've posted, uploaded pictures, etc. without any problems over the past few months. I'll try on Firefox when I get a chance, but I'll leave Edge to somebody else. ;)
Mine looks fine, banner ads top and side as expected. The on-click pop-up ads are only really a nuisance because I like to middle-click or ctrl-click topics to open them in a new tab, and the ad screws that up. Not a big deal.
I never get an ad of any type and never have,, I use Chrome with a Duck Duck Go override and PCMatic ad blockers..>>>Dan
All looks normal here, great job team. :)
Gary and crew,
I am only 6 months on, but all computer items working same as day one. I use Crome and no problems with the adds. When I spool up, there is one small ad in the middle of the screen. I just click the "X" in the corner of that box, it goes away, and can jump around to several sections add free.
Father in law, who just handed me hard copy of his FMCA magazine, still snivels he wants hard copy of BCM. I told him to get over it. But he is 90, so that's not happening. I printed two with 4106 articles like he had for 30 years. Bad idea. He wants more. If anyone wants to sell around 10 of them, old GM or Flx heavy as far as content, I'll pay the shipping!
Great job on the website and magazine!!
Quote from: Tedsoldbus on April 27, 2021, 05:59:24 PM.
Father in law, who just handed me hard copy of his FMCA magazine, still snivels he wants hard copy of BCM.
Well I think the same, but I can see why the move was made to digital. But. You can't sit down and pour over a digital magazine.
Website is working fine
My older smaller Samsung tablet, just shows the replys as it always had, with one add on top and a few on the bottom after the reply. the new 10" Samsung tablet shows a more vertical opening page with adds on the side, Thanks for adding the duplicate, bus topic click here, on the bottom, tom...
Quote from: 6805eagleguy on April 27, 2021, 07:13:05 PM
Well I think the same, but I can see why the move was made to digital. But. You can't sit down and pour over a digital magazine.
Website is working fine
There were several reasons for going to the digital format and the reasons get stronger all the time. If you have not tried it, you should. We offer a full money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied. Here are the reasons that get stronger all the time.
Why we no longer offer a printed version of Bus Conversion Magazine.
By going to an all-digital format in May of 2018, as many publications are now doing, we were able to more than double the page count. We can also embed videos and add additional content including hyper-linked display ads, classified ads, bus events, and more. We also cut the subscription price by more than 50% to make it affordable to more people.
More and more people were signing up for the digital edition, as printing and shipping rates kept rising so it became prohibitive to print and deliver the magazine anymore. BCM is a specialty publication with limited circulation because not as many people are converting buses like they used to, as we all know. Printing fewer copies of a magazine costs a lot more per unit item than printing thousands of magazines, as National Geographic does.
There was also the cost of resending several magazines every month because people moved without telling us, or their magazine was lost, stolen, or damaged in the mail. Sometimes subscribers would be missing months, not just one. Sending one or two individual issues costs significantly more than sending many issues using bulk mail, and also takes a few minutes to process each one to get it ready for the mail carrier.
Of course, we also had to print about 100 extra issues each month because we never knew exactly how many we would need after the mailing. By providing an online magazine only, we can simply email them another copy very easily if someone misses an issue, which rarely ever happens anymore.
Producing a printed magazine was also challenging because we have to adhere to a specific number of pages every month that is a multiple of four pages. It was a very time-consuming process to cut out content and deciding what photos to leave out. We ended up tossing out some very good material to fit all of our stories into a 32-page format. The print edition requires a multiple of four pages and to add four more pages could easily cost us several hundred dollars.
With the digital edition, this is not a concern. We just add or remove pages as necessary to include all of the material that we believe people want to be included in the articles, as our page count can vary with each issue. With a printed magazine, adding four more pages was significantly more time-consuming and costly per month, so that was not an option.
Also, by going digital, we do not need to keep track of when people change addresses, as we only use their email, which seldom changes. This saves time too as many snowbirds change their address twice per year.
The digital edition makes it easy to make changes after it is released if we realize there is a mistake in the magazine which has happened a couple of times, we just make the change and upload the new copy. This is not possible with a printed edition.
The great thing about going all-digital is that we now can provide all subscribers access to over 150 back issues online with searchable content so you are not only getting one issue each month but also access to hundreds of issues 24/7, which is a ton of bus conversion information. The digital content is all searchable in a matter of seconds, rather than searching through over 300 printed magazines to find one article. 300 printed issues also take up a lot of space in your house or bus.
Subscribers also now have FREE access to several Books on PDF; with all the information you would ever need to convert any kind of bus into a home on wheels. That is a LOT of value and is included with every subscription.
Printing and mailing the magazine was not the only cost of offering a print edition, which many people do not realize. There is also the cost of maintaining an office to store over 5,000 magazines, having a space for shipping the magazines, storing extra envelopes, boxes, scales, etc. Office space is very expensive. With a digital-only magazine, many of our employees including myself work out of our buses to help keep costs down.
We now have more subscribers from Canada, Mexico, England, Australia, and other countries because the cost to ship printed copies was very high, but the digital edition opened up the world to us.
We also have an option where you can read BCM for free every month. Simply send us an article and we will give or extend your subscription for 1-5 years depending on the length and complexity of the article, so you can read BCM for free as long as you send articles, as many people now do. We are always in need of interesting articles.
We also have a very active Forum where there are over 400,000 posts all about bus conversions which is available 24/7 as well. You can check it out at https://www.busconversionmagazine.com/bcm-forum/
If you wish to have a printed copy of BCM, then you are welcome to print it out each month as that is an option, we allow for our PDF files.
Thanks for your understanding.
I started the print mag back when it was started by the original owner (not to be named)
When Gary went to digital I was less than enthused,, but I see it's working out and it sure beats a total shut down..>>>Dan
Quote from: Utahclaimjumper on April 28, 2021, 10:24:00 AM
I started the print mag back when it was started by the original owner (not to be named)
When Gary went to digital I was less than enthused,, but I see it's working out and it sure beats a total shut down..>>>Dan
Folks have no idea how close it all came to not being here, magazine or forum...
Quit yer bitchin and get with the program?
Busnuts are (and always have been) too cheap to pay what the print magazine would cost, if Gary priced it for proper sustainability. It wasn't properly priced when it was being printed before Gary owned it.
It is no small miracle that the BCM empire continues to amuse and abuse us.
Gary, stay the course.
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Forum displays fine with no aberrant behaviour for me on Firefox.
I like the forum and have no legitimate complaints about its layout.
However, because you asked, I have never experienced so many ads in one place. Its kinda crazy.
I just close and I'm happy.
E
What epretot said...
I dislike pop-ups as much as anybody and probably even more. I was not even aware they were there.
I have asked our Forum guru to remove them. Hopefully, they will be gone soon so the only ads remaining will the two Display Ads at the top of all of our pages. They are the ones that pay to keep this going. And the Google Ads on the right side of the Forum which pay for maintaining our Forum.
Thank you for your support and we are always open to suggestions. You can use our Contact Us button at the top of the page if you would like to reach us quickly. I cannot always read the Forum on a daily basis as believe it or not, it takes a lot of hours in a week to produce a high-quality magazine, website, and Forum to the best of our abilities.
I see no differents
Starting to have problems with ads again. Using Safari on a MacBook, and until today it was just the annoyance of an occasional full-page popup ad that needed to be dismissed before moving on.
Today I started to see ads rolling up from the bottom of the screen, sometimes blocking a third of the screen with no way to get rid of them. When it happens the site is not easy to read.
The interface looks fine.
However, I have never experienced so many ads.
The FB ads that cover my entire screen are the worst.
But no real complaints. 1st world problems
I get a big one on center of page with buttons to open or dismiss or close. Once I close it, no more come up for rest of session.
I do get a gofundme page for Gary to help him buy a Prevost......🤣
Seems to work fine for me but thanks for asking.
However, when in doubt about making upgrades, just leave it the way it is otherwise things tend to get putzed up when upgrades take place. That's been my experiences for decades with workplace and home computer systems.
Works fine in Firefox, Edge and Chrome. All is good. :^
Here's a screen shot of what I'm seeing. That ad at the bottom will at times cover 1/3 of the screen.
Quote from: CrabbyMilton on July 20, 2021, 03:57:46 AM
Seems to work fine for me but thanks for asking.
However, when in doubt about making upgrades, just leave it the way it is otherwise things tend to get putzed up when upgrades take place. That's been my experiences for decades with workplace and home computer systems.
While Microsoft and Apple leave a lot to be desired with the crappy updates they push out you really ought to run them to keep your information secure. Those updates close up any new security holes that get found before anyone uses them. Obviously your personal computer being compromised won't affect us as much as on at a certain pipeline company... but they could still get your credit cards, bank information, tax information, and anything else that can be scraped from your machine. They can even encrypt all your family photos and demand you pay a ransom to ever get them back.
Seriously doubt any Apple updates are to blame here. The ads I'm seeing roll up from the bottom of the screen are clearly Google Ads. There is no way Apple is responsible for them, and I'm not using a Google browser product.
I use Chrome, and same as Chessie (except for the Prevost thing... LOL)
see you in Ohio. I'm site 42
I don't see any ads in FF with all security/privacy settings maxed. IE displays broken header ads (someone's been messing with the forum), but those are not Google ads. Google ads are set up to display in right column and at bottom, I see only blank right column in both browsers. It's possible the forum's been hacked (anything's possible on GoDaddy), but I'm not seeing it. Also possible that Google is pushing unwanted/intrusive ads through Adsense. I've disabled all Google ads, you should only see header ads above forum, and they may be broken in some browsers.
We're in the process of moving everything to a better host but it's slow going because Gary's on the road. Once that's done I'll clean up the forum, repair damaged header, and see what can be done with the ads. Not much point in doing any major work til we're off GoDaddy.
How the beepity did you get Gary weaned off GoDaddy???
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Quote from: Krash on July 22, 2021, 02:27:07 PM
I don't see any ads in FF with all security/privacy settings maxed. IE displays broken header ads (someone's been messing with the forum), but those are not Google ads. Google ads are set up to display in right column and at bottom, I see only blank right column in both browsers. It's possible the forum's been hacked (anything's possible on GoDaddy), but I'm not seeing it. Also possible that Google is pushing unwanted/intrusive ads through Adsense. I've disabled all Google ads, you should only see header ads above forum, and they may be broken in some browsers.
We're in the process of moving everything to a better host but it's slow going because Gary's on the road. Once that's done I'll clean up the forum, repair damaged header, and see what can be done with the ads. Not much point in doing any major work til we're off GoDaddy.
Is IE still out there or are you talking about Edge?
When I had a PC I used FF with all the ad blockers and privacy settings. Now that I'm using a MacBook with Safari for a browser I'm just running with it as it comes, and it's amazing how many ads there are all over the place.
What ever you did has removed the more annoying ads, and all that's left are the two across the top right now.
Richard, I'd 100% recommend you switch to FireFox or Chrome on the new Mac. I've done tech support for years and Safari is just an endless source of problems with no benefits. I got out of direct user support right before the pandemic hit. That combined with all the crap MS and Apple are pushing now makes me glad I did.
Quote from: benherman1 on July 23, 2021, 06:04:26 AM
Richard, I'd 100% recommend you switch to FireFox or Chrome on the new Mac. I've done tech support for years and Safari is just an endless source of problems with no benefits. I got out of direct user support right before the pandemic hit. That combined with all the crap MS and Apple are pushing now makes me glad I did.
I would except that FF or Chrome are not optimized for the new M1 chip, meaning that they cause an excessive use of the SSD and system resources. Much smoother sailing using Safari since it's designed to be run on the M1.
Quote from: richard5933 on July 23, 2021, 12:18:38 AM
Is IE still out there or are you talking about Edge?
Only browsers I have installed are FF and IE11 (Win 8.1). Strictly speaking FF does not contain an ad blocker, but it does a good job of blocking trackers. They're not just ads, and I don't see them anywhere.
Quote
What ever you did has removed the more annoying ads, and all that's left are the two across the top right now.
That's what should happen. Right column and bottom ads are Google Adsense in portal blocks, they're disabled. Header ads were originally hardcoded into forum index template, someone's messed with formatting so they don't display correctly in some browsers, will fix that after we're moved.
Quote from: buswarrior on July 22, 2021, 07:43:47 PM
How the beepity did you get Gary weaned off GoDaddy???
Wasn't easy. ::)
It seems to work ok for me. Thanks.
Mines ok now.
Maybe while you are working on things. See what it takes to remove these supplemental social security, car extended warranties, law suits, medical prescription ads from tv channels.😁
Not a problem, I stopped watching tv 15-20 years ago.
I've restored the sidebar ads, most of the complaints have been about bottom ads, those remain disabled. Sidebar ads are displaying normally for me in IE with all tracking protection disabled. Let me know if there are any problems.