too many stinkin' ads!
 

How does one view the posts without having to navigate through a plethora of ads? Every BF post I view has numerous ads that pop up before I can read the post. Isn't there someway I can view them without all the ads for something that I have no interest in or will never use? /s/ Frustrated in central Illinois

Are you logged in? I only see the (VERY annoying) ads when I'm looking at the forums and I'm not logged in. When I log in, they're gone. The forums are practically un-useable with the ads.

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use the Brave browser - it kills them all and is free


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Run a free ad-blocker browser plug-in.

This website is unusable without one. Also, a subset might be malware.

Ah, yes- I also have popups blocked.... so maybe it's not just being logged in...

Signing in every time is annoying, but better than the ads. The ads on here are so nasty and aggressive that I actually hold it against the products being advertised.

What ads?

Adblock Plus works for me.

I log into Bikeforums from multiple browsers between my phone and computers, and don't recall seeing ads for a long time, if ever... This is confusing.

-Gregory

I use this app as well and it pretty much eliminates all the ads in BF. I always hesitate to block ads because they are a source of revenue for the site; however there is a threshold of ad insult above which I will block, especially if the ads are political.

Yeah the powers that be should looks into the ads .. i get they need $$ to run the site but they could tone it down. Anyhow, as others have said just get an ad-blocker or become a full paid member it's cheap.

+1 :thumb:

fwiw - not all subforums & threads are visible if you're not signed in. the site made some changes over the past year? for example. the bloggers subforum is hidden, unless you sign in. if you have it bookmarked, you can still get in to see it, w/o signing in, but it's not visible to the casual browser (meaning human, not app). to see everything, you have to sign in

Agreed with becoming a full paid member. Browsing the site on my phone would be otherwise impossible. Hosting costs money, for a site I use this much a membership is a tiny fee compared to how much I enjoy it.

Complaining about ads on a free forum?

I'm another full paid member, which also allows me to advertise stuff for sale. It's cheap.

I see zero ads. I do not use an adblocker.

just do DNS blackholing. Very effective, free, and no performance hit.

I was a paid member of BF and generally agreed with supporting a service that I use but managed to get locked out and did not see the benefit of paying for a service that I could not access.

/markp

And why so many views on the hooker spam ads?

You don't have to sign in...your browser can log you in automatically.

How hard is it to just stay signed in? Seriously...

i know, right? how are they supposed to run the site without a) ads or b) people paying?

i choose b.

I'm a paid member, and I finally gave in and checked the auto-sign-in on one of my devices, but I don't usually like to have my browser retain passwords and such. If you buy and sell on this site, your private messages have a lot of personal information.

Before I decided to pay the very little token sum of money to end advertising, there would sometime be some video ads that made viewing a thread impossible. Usually I was able to click the little "report ad" symbol in the top right corner of that ad and the ad would go away and not be seen again or at least for a while.

Logging into the forum is a better experience than not logging in. Let your browser automatically log you in when you come here. IMO, there is generally no reason to not check the remember me box when logging into the forum. There is no credit card information or banking information even taken by this website. And the only personal details will be the details you might put in your profile or randomly disclose in posts you make. And your only concern about the info you might disclose in private messages is if you use public computers in a library or somewhere that can be accessed by others.

But if you are on your own private computer or cell phone, then your security risk for letting it log on automatically is very low. At best or worse, after your death, your spouse or kids might find out that you had a lifestyle or side of you that they never knew about.

uBlock Origin is enabled in my browser for all sites, so there are no ads regardless of being logged in or not.
But I enjoy supporting the site as a paid member. Such a small cost to show gratitude for all they do here.

I recall that they hid some forums unless you are logged in because the lawyers told them to.

If you click the "remember me" button when you log in, it doesn't remember anything other than the fact that you successfully logged in.
I'm not saying their password database is secure.

Something the forum owners should keep in mind. They won't be making as much money from the ads if they are horrible and intrusive, precisely because they turn people off. If they want to run ads responsibly, they might consider taking a page from the Paceline's book. Their ads are all bike-related, simple buttons locally hosted (so I actually see them — see below). They feature a vendor-specific classified section, and actively encourage their users to shop their advertisers. It's an easy lift because most of their advertisers are well-known to the user base.

​​​​Like others, I use Brave. I also run a Pi-hole instance on a Raspberry Pi as my DNS server (protects the entire network in our three flat pretty well, including our tenant and AirBnB guests). On my phone I run the DuckDuckGo VPN to further block trackers (helps when I'm away from home).

Every now and then a site will complain that I run an ad blocker. That's too bad for them. Maybe they're totally legit, but there are enough bad actors out there that I don't feel I have any choice. (Get in bed with fish, after awhile you're going to stink.) I don't feel I can trust any of them at this point. It's kinda like being out in car traffic on your bike. Sure, most drivers mean no harm and drive reasonably, but there are enough terrible drivers out there that I simply can't trust any of them. (They don't all drive BMW's, so it's not always obvious who the bad actors are.)