Advertisements on STORM2K

[vbhoutex]

As of today, in case you haven't noticed, we have begun running advertisements on STORM2K. This is something that has been discussed among the staff previously and we made the decision to implement this to insure we have enough revenue to keep the site open. This has taken longer than we thought to implement and since we first began the discussion our donations have upticked nicely to the point we are comfortably ahead on our being able to pay our server costs. However it has not given us enough of a cushion to look at adding other weather information sources to the site to bring us up to an even higher level than we have been at. I am hoping this venture into advertisements will take us to that level without the ads being intrusive to the point of getting in the way of discussions. If that happens we will figure out what we need to do to change the ads to an acceptable level.
We will always be open to constructive discussion concerning this major change so please feel free to make your thoughts known.

[Hurricaneman]

I feel this needed to happen, I don't want to lose this place due to insufficient funds

[Houstonia]

Hi VB -

Two questions:
1) where is the donate tab/button? I know it's like right in front of me somewhere, but for the life of me I can not find it!

2) Have you considered making the ads go away for people who pay? just an idea.

Thanks!

[tolakram]

You can find a donate button in the talking tropics forum.

viewforum.php?f=31

You can also copy one into your message using the PayPal button above the message box.

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[gfsperpendicular]

Congrats on this change. This is a great site that I didn't want to lose, even(especially?!) in my many years as a lurker. As for the ads, they are unobtrusive and do not cause lag, which is nice and much better than other sites .

[bevgo]

I am relieved. In was able once tobfonatebbut the lastb3 years have been harem no was laid off. Tookn90 days to find job. Then hubby....Oppenheim a yearns onevwantsvto firewood folks that are highly skilled and he has 20 years and his master's in his field. Lol as soon as he began working took fmla .anni have a severe back issues I was at the point of putting my monitor and keyboard on the floor just to keep going. Thankfully I worked at home. I finally resigned after a year as I had filed for SSDI. I didn't want to stop but no choice. Can't sit, stand, walk enough to do it anymore. I finally could no longer lie on the floor because I could not get up
It helped to know y'all were. Here!

[Kalrany]

Th embedded ones are ok, but the full screen pop-ups on the mobile devices are really frustrating. Totally understand why you went this way, but it is still difficult to maneuver at times.

[tolakram]

Th embedded ones are ok, but the full screen pop-ups on the mobile devices are really frustrating. Totally understand why you went this way, but it is still difficult to maneuver at times.

Are you using our website on mobile or tapatalk. I don't like the idea of full screen popups and AFAIK this should not be coming from our site.

[Kalrany]

Are you using our website on mobile or tapatalk. I don't like the idea of full screen popups and AFAIK this should not be coming from our site.

Chrome on an Android phone. I have problems connecting with Tapatalk too often for my usage. Never have issues just going to the website to load pages.

[weathaguyry]

I would say that by far this is the least invasive site for advertisements, with no popups, videos, things that get in the way, or any of that nonsense.

[Ralph's Weather]

Th embedded ones are ok, but the full screen pop-ups on the mobile devices are really frustrating. Totally understand why you went this way, but it is still difficult to maneuver at times.

Are you using our website on mobile or tapatalk. I don't like the idea of full screen popups and AFAIK this should not be coming from our site.

Chrome on Android does have full page pop ups.

[TexasBreeze]

Seems they started full page popups about a week ago on my device.

[AnnularCane]

Seems they started full page popups about a week ago on my device.

Same here. Also the ads seem a lot bigger, or maybe I only just started noticing that.

[tolakram]

Working on it with our host, thanks for reporting the problem.

[tolakram]

Seems they started full page popups about a week ago on my device.

Same here. Also the ads seem a lot bigger, or maybe I only just started noticing that.

It's against Google's terms of service to allow popup ads. Can you get the URL of these ads? Is there any tool on your device to report the ad? Can you tell us if these are Apple or Android devices?

[AnnularCane]

I can't seem to get the URL on most of them unless I open them, which I don't want to do, but one of them was americangreetings.com. Sometimes I'll tap on something and get a full-page ad, but I don't know if that's a popup or if I accidentally tapped on an ad. My phone is an Apple iPhone.

[tolakram]

I've been forced to use an iPhone for work after years of Android. Not a fan. A popup would be something you can't scroll through. I have yet to see them on my iphone but still checking often. I assume you're hitting the web page directly and NOT going through tapatalk? If you're going through tapatalk then all bets are off, they started injecting ads earlier this year, causing many to abandon the service.

[tolakram]

Is this what you mean by a popup?

[tolakram]

For reference, here's the tapatalk support thread indicating that non VIP forums and or users will indeed see ads.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tapatalksupport/pop-up-ad-for-vip-t42835.html

I would love to remove tapatalk support but many here use it.

[AnnularCane]

Is this what you mean by a popup?

https://i.imgur.com/4PgAiq8.png

That's what I usually get (although for me it's on the top of the screen). But occasionally a full-page ad shows up, but again, I may just be accidentally clicking on an ad on the page. I don't get any popups on my regular computer though.