Celebrating Seven Years Of Phoronix

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Celebrating Seven Years Of Phoronix

On Sunday, the 5th of June, Phoronix.com will be turning seven years old. Here is to an early happy birthday for Phoronix, a look back, and what is coming up.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=16087

[d2kx]

Still the most important Linux/Hardware-related site out there!

[KrisWragg]

I kindly disabled adblock on phoronix but its made me appreciate how much I love adblock! Some of these adverts are huge, ugly and distracting!

[d2kx]

I kindly disabled adblock on phoronix but its made me appreciate how much I love adblock! Some of these adverts are huge, ugly and distracting!

I also use adblock, but I donate every now and then, like I have done this very morning. I doubt Michael would have anything against it that way.

[mendieta]

So, where is the beer?

[madjr]

Happy BD in advanced and wish for many more years of phoronix to come!

[Max Spain]

This site is one of my daily reads. Thank you and congrats.

[allquixotic]

I'm a premium subscriber (after a short few months of letting my subscription lapse) so I don't feel at all bad about using adblock when I first visit the frontpage and am not logged in. OTOH I really wish that premium subscribers would stay logged in to the main site -- it's been a long-requested feature.

Phoronix could grow and be a lot more than it is if we had more than just Larabel and Tippett running the show. As much as you do manage to get done, there's always 10 things you'd love to do but lack time for. Growing from a 1 or 2 person show into a 6 or 7 person small business is a big step, but it would enable you to cover a lot of the bases you aren't able to find time for alone. You should try it.

[DanL]

I kindly disabled adblock on phoronix but its made me appreciate how much I love adblock! Some of these adverts are huge, ugly and distracting!

Well, they are meant to get your attention.. I've whitelisted phoronix on systems where I have a fast connection, but I still custom block ads that are really obtrusive like the ones that dim the screen if your mouse is over them. Ads like that are unacceptable.

[allquixotic]

Well, they are meant to get your attention.. I've whitelisted phoronix on systems where I have a fast connection, but I still custom block ads that are really obtrusive like the ones that dim the screen if your mouse is over them. Ads like that are unacceptable.

When there are four or five ads on the page that are spinning and whizzing and making sounds and taking up my bandwidth, that's equally unacceptable. I'd be fine with one banner ad along the top (ok, maybe two), but Phoronix has way too many. I refuse to watch ads (whether I'm a premium subscriber or not; although in fact I am) that are so annoying. Praise Adblock and the relative freedom and control we have on the web, or else we'd be stuck watching ads that are as obtrusive and irritating as TV commercials. In the case of web ads, we can still say "NO", so that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Web advertisers (and webmasters who allow advertisers onto their website) should be aware that, since users are in control of whether ads are displayed or not, you need to make your ads sufficiently unobtrusive so as to keep users from wanting to block them. After a certain threshold of irritating elements in the ad is reached, people will be reaching for their ad blocker, or will simply stop visiting the site if they don't know about ad blocking.

What you have to do is to narrow down your target market to those who won't just filter all ads indiscriminately (some do, and some don't). Of those who are willing to view your ads or not technically knowledgable enough to block them, you need to determine a safe level of irritation to insert into your ads. Interactivity, sounds, and popups are among the worst offenders for irritation; video and animated GIFs are up there too. Still images and plain text are least likely to be blocked, and can be directly embedded in the webpage (originating from the same domain that hosts the website) to make it difficult for ad blocking software to detect them. I actually don't mind text or still images (as long as they don't take up a lot of horizontal space), so if you want to beat AdBlock with those, go right ahead.

Of course, I doubt advertisers are smart enough to know what's good for them, so the whole business will probably get wiped out within a few years due to the prevalence of AdBlock. Either that, or Microsoft will come out with some kind of DRM Web where you can't alter the contents of webpages or decide for yourself if you want to see the ads. And then everyone will be forced to either live without the sites supporting it, or submit to tyranny.