Ok, I've always thought a subscription arangement here was a bad idea but..... I use Weather Underground for my weather site and they have a deal where you can pay $5.00 annually and you get the site advertisment and pop-up free along with some added features. At first I thought it was dumb but I paid and now I love it!

How about throwing that back into the ring here again? Honestly, I'll never buy any of the junk that adversites on these pop up ads; they just make me mad. The one thing I did buy to support the site was the ill-fated magazine deal and we all now how that ended. I think about $5.00 a year is better than nothing and wouldn't cause anyone to complain if they:
1. didn't have to pay if they didn't want to and
2. made browsing easier by eliminating pop ups and the more annoying ads.

soap box mode off

I would happily pay $20 a year to privatize this forum and get rid of the ads. In fact I just donated $20 via PayPal about 2 months ago (never did get a thank you card).

Actually blocking ads violates the forum membership agreement:

Autumn,

I wasn't trying to 'call you out' on this one, just reinforcing the point that the ads pay for what otherwise we'd have to charge for.

The idea of a private membership for people without ads has been discussed but until the forum software maker releases their next major upgrade we realistically can't offer that kind of thing.

I have no problem with reasonable pop-ups. It's the advertisers who have to worry about antagonizing their audience. For instance, I refuse to buy, rent or even watch for free FearDotCom because of their unecessarily obnoxious pop-up ad campaign. I had some interest in the film because I like that genre, but their advertising pissed me off so much I actively boycott this film and encourage others to boycott it as well.

Otherwise, I'm all for Geoff making some well-deserved cash for this site.

If one was to make a donation to dvdtalk how would they go about doing it? and how do I make sure it doesn't go to fattening up Sally Struthers

I'm glad to hear that it's been discussed. I know that I wouldn't hesitate to participate and I've got to be the cheapest, bullheadedest person on this forum.

That's for taking the time to read suggestion.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=230086

I bumped it up from the depths of the otter (for those who just click read new posts)

Just get a pop up blocker. I have a free one, and don't have to worry about ads on this or for the most part, anyother site.

Please read this thread. If you don't want to read the whole thing, just look at the posts by gkleinman.

My pop-up blocker lets the pop-up load first, and then automatically kills it. I assume this is still acceptable.

How is what you're talking about not "...ad blocking or suppression software"?

Does it count if I just ignore the ads?

The ad still loads completely. Geoff still gets $$ from this. It saves me from having to click it away. Everyone wins. I sure as hell am not going to buy anything off of a pop-up ad ever so it's not like he's losing cash from me.

Geoff, I understand your "need" for the pop-under ad, but all it's doing is pissing the hell out of me. When it pops up (which is about every other time) my eyes are focused on right clicking that window and closing it. Sorry, but you aren't getting the ad to me as you desire.

Is the ANY other way you can run this site without the pop-unders? Aren't the ads at the top of the page enough? Many other sites don't need the pop-unders.

I would gladly pay a subscriber fee to be a member here. The pop-unders though are going to cause me to not come here.

I agree completely

There has been a wealth of empirical statistics to show that pop up and pop under ads do not generate nearly as much attention as simple TEXT ads. People are more willing, by leaps and bounds, to click on the text ads at webpages than graphical ads and, especially, pop up type ads.

Geoff, Any chance things will change sometime in the (near) future? The pop-ups are aggravating. Not only won't I click on the ads, but I am making it a policy to NOT do business with companies that have requested their ad be a pop-up/under.

I would pay $30 annually in order to avoid all ads.

I was thinking the same thing. Does the forum membership agreement mean that you can avoid the ads for $30?

(emphasis added):

It sounds like you could paypal dvdtalk $30 and then use all the methods you wanted to block ads since you paid your membership fee to the site for the year.

I will not do it till I hear a real "this is true" from Geoff. However if it is then $30 is on the way

Sure would be nice if Geoff would respond wouldn't it?

I can't speak for Geoff, but the next version of vBulletin includes features that would make such a change very easy to implement.

Right now, I'm not aware of a way to disable popups for a particular user while keeping them on for everyone else. Such a hack would probably not be terribly difficult to write, though.

the pop ups and ads, generate 30$ per regestered member a year?

As I've mentioned before I am very much considering offering an optional ad free membership to people!

This 'project' hasn't moved forward too swiftly as I've been waiting to see what the next version of the forum software will feature in regaurds to making this a reality.

In the meantime I HAVE found a way to do this manually, so if there is a big delay in the next version, perhaps we'll do a beta test or something.

Early (AND I DO MEAN EARLY) thoughts on this are:

1) Paid members would get an 'AD FREE" version of the forum
2) We'd have a special private forum area for Paid Members
3) Perhaps ability to use more advanced features (Private Messaging?)

Still working on it... But I'm open to ideas. So post your suggestions.

Perhaps a forum where the fun could be brought back? (i.e. Padding type threads - birthday threads, etc)

How about, for paying members, an option not to censor words? Most people paying with credit card are 18+