planetf1.com

Covalent wrote:

Option or Prime wrote:

Siao7 wrote:

Mod Yellow wrote:

JN23 wrote:I've visited the forum quite a lot today due the news and each time I've been logged out despite my browser having my login details saved and usually not having to do so. Not sure if this is linked to new advert software (?) or if I've just been a bit unlucky.

Its looking like the age old issue of forum.planet-f1.com logging different cookies to forum.planetf1.com has finally been 'dealt' with by redirecting one to the other, however this will cause an issue with saved passwords attributed to the former. I can't provide a definitive answer because, basically, I simply don't know for sure, but logging in and saving your login details again is probably the way to go.

I do that every time and it keeps asking me for password every time I refresh. Oh well!

Ditto, its each visit for me, was resolved for a time but back now.

Same here, I have to login every time I visit the forum.

Don't know if it's more annoying than the ads.

same issue with the log in and the Ad banners are pretty annoying. take up A LOT of space on mobile.

Mod Blue wrote:From a Mod point of view, can I add:

The issue with being logged out after every refresh is affecting me too.
The adverts taking up so much real estate on the screen, and them loading after the forum, thus moving everything down are infuriating. I will not be browsing the forum on my mobile going forward.

These issues in particular are going to affect our ability to properly moderate the forum on race days. I fear it may be practically impossible.

Plus, for me at least, the adds loading at slightly different speeds each time often means I go to click on something and just as I click, the page fairy cakes so I click on something totally different!

Feedback has been passed on to the techies, keep it coming!Thanks everyone

not to pile on, just saying i too have to log in each time, and about 30% of the screen on the right is nothing, or ads

Thought it was just me with the login issue, but clearly not.

The ads are a tad annoying, but I guess you can't complain too much about them on a free forum?

Anyway, just in case you needed a count of people having login issues, you can add another one to the list

SteveW wrote:Thought it was just me with the login issue, but clearly not.

The ads are a tad annoying, but I guess you can't complain too much about them on a free forum?

Anyway, just in case you needed a count of people having login issues, you can add another one to the list

I 'resolved' my issue with ads on the forum, but can imagine it frustrating for most, and still limits the site to 3/4 width.

Count me to the list of people with login issues if this helps for further feedback as well.

I've reiterated the login issues, but please keep 'piling on' with these complaints, we need to see when things change. Repeat complaints will be helpful in this regard, so please don't feel you're overreporting things. The more we hear, the more we can guide the techies.

Ok, as requested, still having to log in each time, adverts taking up an incredible amount of space and they don't load instantly, leading to the screen shifting a few times over a couple of seconds, often leading to me clicking in the wrong place!

P-F1 Mod wrote:I've reiterated the login issues, but please keep 'piling on' with these complaints, we need to see when things change. Repeat complaints will be helpful in this regard, so please don't feel you're overreporting things. The more we hear, the more we can guide the techies.

thank you

Right, from time to time I'm getting a huge Stay Alert UK Corona Virus advert around the forum, but not only is it across the top and down the right, but also down the left. This makes the forum even smaller. Then, when I click to go somewhere in the forum, it goes and the normal annoying adverts return!!!!!

Asphalt_World wrote:Right, from time to time I'm getting a huge Stay Alert UK Corona Virus advert around the forum, but not only is it across the top and down the right, but also down the left. This makes the forum even smaller. Then, when I click to go somewhere in the forum, it goes and the normal annoying adverts return!!!!!

I get this. literally i'd say over 50% of my screen is adverts right now. It's very annoying if you don't have lightning fast broadband as they load at different speeds so the forum moves around all over the place.

I too, like everbody else am experiencing the same issues with the screen moving about at random intervals due to the time it takes to load some of the adverts. Some of them seem to be far worse than others; i've had the top banner take over 8 seconds to load the 888poker advert (and more on that in a bit). My internet connection is far from slow and my hardware is more than perfunctory so to have slow loading ads, of random sizes moving the page about while I am attempting to navigate it is the kind of thing that drives people to find ways to totally disable adverts (rendering them pointless really) or find a new place to post.

I've tested the moving page behaviour in every major Windows browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, the 'new' Edge broswer, the original Edge browser and also an old copy of IE) and it's identical in all of them so this isnt a particular browser issue, its a random sized ad taking ages to load for no apparent reason issue. Not good enough i'm afraid.

Secondly, the size of the ad space compared to the actual forum space is a joke right now
Thats a 1920 x 1080 display and for me to only be able to see first 6/7 topics on the page with greatly reduced width compared to just how much advert I can see is overdoing it a touch in my opinion; again, I come here to talk about F1, not to watch adverts, so stuff like this makes me want to circumvent them or not come here at all.

Now we get onto the actual adverts themselves, and i've got a pretty big problem with the content of some of them (and i've looked at the site using a UK based VPN so only been served ads for the UK, it sounds like there are some bad ones for people in other countries too). This is a forum where the age requirement to post here is 16, so why are we being served ads for:

Virtual Sex Games: Gambling: And then there are adverts that are advertising plain malicious software: Immoral at best, possibly illegal in some countries.

You'll also notice in all of those screenshots that I am not logged in.... alas, I to am a victim of being unable to stay logged in for any length of time.

All in all, the only way I could recommend anybody to use the forum right now is with an adblocker firmly enabled... do adverts tastefully and make them fit in with the forum structure properly and people will leave them on..... use eye raping gigantic banners and sidebars while squashing the actual content and people will block the lot.

Edit: I've had to change the images to links, they are over 1280px wide and the forum wont let me embed those.

P-F1 Mod wrote:I've reiterated the login issues, but please keep 'piling on' with these complaints, we need to see when things change. Repeat complaints will be helpful in this regard, so please don't feel you're overreporting things. The more we hear, the more we can guide the techies.

Thanks for this Mod, appreciate your work

The having to log in every time I visit the site is annoying but I can live with it but the adverts are an absolute pain. Like AW, I'm finding that I am clicking the wrong link because the ads take too long to load. I am also not impressed with gambling ads considering the negative impact gambling can have on people's lives.

I'd say the actual forum is about 66% of my web browser at the moment.

The adverts are even worse for me today. I've got a rap around NHS banner at the top and going down both sides, another advert underneath that at the top and another banner on the right hand side. If I scroll to the top of the page none of the forum is actually displayed. It's literally just a page of ads.

Flash2k11 wrote:I too, like everbody else am experiencing the same issues with the screen moving about at random intervals due to the time it takes to load some of the adverts. Some of them seem to be far worse than others; i've had the top banner take over 8 seconds to load the 888poker advert (and more on that in a bit). My internet connection is far from slow and my hardware is more than perfunctory so to have slow loading ads, of random sizes moving the page about while I am attempting to navigate it is the kind of thing that drives people to find ways to totally disable adverts (rendering them pointless really) or find a new place to post.

I've tested the moving page behaviour in every major Windows browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, the 'new' Edge broswer, the original Edge browser and also an old copy of IE) and it's identical in all of them so this isnt a particular browser issue, its a random sized ad taking ages to load for no apparent reason issue. Not good enough i'm afraid.

Secondly, the size of the ad space compared to the actual forum space is a joke right now

Spoiler (click to show)

http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/adspacevsforumspace.png

Thats a 1920 x 1080 display and for me to only be able to see first 6/7 topics on the page with greatly reduced width compared to just how much advert I can see is overdoing it a touch in my opinion; again, I come here to talk about F1, not to watch adverts, so stuff like this makes me want to circumvent them or not come here at all.

Now we get onto the actual adverts themselves, and i've got a pretty big problem with the content of some of them (and i've looked at the site using a UK based VPN so only been served ads for the UK, it sounds like there are some bad ones for people in other countries too). This is a forum where the age requirement to post here is 16, so why are we being served ads for:

Virtual Sex Games:

Spoiler (click to show)

http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/lovelyad.png

Spoiler (click to show)

http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/lovelyad2.png

Gambling:

Spoiler (click to show)

I've misplaced my screenshots of these, will find them and edit them in, but there are several different ones for 888

And then there are adverts that are advertising plain malicious software:

Spoiler (click to show)

For the love of god never click on an advert like this to try and update your drivers
http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/maliciousad.png

Immoral at best, possibly illegal in some countries.

You'll also notice in all of those screenshots that I am not logged in.... alas, I to am a victim of being unable to stay logged in for any length of time.

All in all, the only way I could recommend anybody to use the forum right now is with an adblocker firmly enabled... do adverts tastefully and make them fit in with the forum structure properly and people will leave them on..... use eye raping gigantic banners and sidebars while squashing the actual content and people will block the lot.

Edit: I've had to change the images to links, they are over 1280px wide and the forum wont let me embed those.

Remember, adverts are often different for different users depending on their internet history, cookies etc. Just sayin'!!!!!!!!!

Asphalt_World wrote:

Flash2k11 wrote:I too, like everbody else am experiencing the same issues with the screen moving about at random intervals due to the time it takes to load some of the adverts. Some of them seem to be far worse than others; i've had the top banner take over 8 seconds to load the 888poker advert (and more on that in a bit). My internet connection is far from slow and my hardware is more than perfunctory so to have slow loading ads, of random sizes moving the page about while I am attempting to navigate it is the kind of thing that drives people to find ways to totally disable adverts (rendering them pointless really) or find a new place to post.

I've tested the moving page behaviour in every major Windows browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, the 'new' Edge broswer, the original Edge browser and also an old copy of IE) and it's identical in all of them so this isnt a particular browser issue, its a random sized ad taking ages to load for no apparent reason issue. Not good enough i'm afraid.

Secondly, the size of the ad space compared to the actual forum space is a joke right now

Spoiler (click to show)

http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/adspacevsforumspace.png

Thats a 1920 x 1080 display and for me to only be able to see first 6/7 topics on the page with greatly reduced width compared to just how much advert I can see is overdoing it a touch in my opinion; again, I come here to talk about F1, not to watch adverts, so stuff like this makes me want to circumvent them or not come here at all.

Now we get onto the actual adverts themselves, and i've got a pretty big problem with the content of some of them (and i've looked at the site using a UK based VPN so only been served ads for the UK, it sounds like there are some bad ones for people in other countries too). This is a forum where the age requirement to post here is 16, so why are we being served ads for:

Virtual Sex Games:

Spoiler (click to show)

http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/lovelyad.png

Spoiler (click to show)

http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/lovelyad2.png

Gambling:

Spoiler (click to show)

I've misplaced my screenshots of these, will find them and edit them in, but there are several different ones for 888

And then there are adverts that are advertising plain malicious software:

Spoiler (click to show)

For the love of god never click on an advert like this to try and update your drivers
http://moonbase.hopto.org/img/maliciousad.png

Immoral at best, possibly illegal in some countries.

You'll also notice in all of those screenshots that I am not logged in.... alas, I to am a victim of being unable to stay logged in for any length of time.

All in all, the only way I could recommend anybody to use the forum right now is with an adblocker firmly enabled... do adverts tastefully and make them fit in with the forum structure properly and people will leave them on..... use eye raping gigantic banners and sidebars while squashing the actual content and people will block the lot.

Edit: I've had to change the images to links, they are over 1280px wide and the forum wont let me embed those.

Remember, adverts are often different for different users depending on their internet history, cookies etc. Just sayin'!!!!!!!!!

This is true but hardly any of the adverts I’ve seen on here have any relation to anything I’ve searched on my laptop/phone. For example right now I have an advert for industrial leak testing.

Asphalt_World wrote:
Remember, adverts are often different for different users depending on their internet history, cookies etc. Just sayin'!!!!!!!!!

Hence why I used a VPN (as noted in my post), so any results would be untainted by any of my own cookies. Using that to identify from a different country certainly does produce different results, although not always of the good kind. They are certainly being served based on location identified by your IP though.

So it seems we have three issues:
1) Ads
- a) loading causing the page to move and makes you miss what you're trying to click
- b) being just damn annoying in general
2) Reduced surface area of the actual forum
3) Login required all the time.

An adblocker fixes 1a and 1b, but does someone have any tricks for rectifying 2 and 3?

Far worse for me today too, screen jumping about all over the place due to the ads.

I'm trying to condition myself back to dial-up days, so i click something then wait 30 seconds before I click anything else at the moment, because if I don't, I end up clicking an ad I don't want to.

Not sure I could use an adblocker as I'm viewing the forum from a work laptop that is pretty well locked down with regard to software etc that can be installed on it.

Oh, and also still have to log in every time I refresh page after a few minutes of inactivity.

I've just installed an ad blocker on my Chromebook and it's made it usable again! I still need to log in each time I navigate away from the forum.

Covalent wrote:So it seems we have three issues:
1) Ads
- a) loading causing the page to move and makes you miss what you're trying to click
- b) being just damn annoying in general
2) Reduced surface area of the actual forum
3) Login required all the time.

An adblocker fixes 1a and 1b, but does someone have any tricks for rectifying 2 and 3?

2 can be fixed with some css trickery (pretty much the same way I was reskinning the forum a few years ago using Stylish, which was effectively a frontend for a UserStyle.css file for the forum) but its a fairly convoluted process that can be easily broken on the fly by anyone with access to the html/css files for the site. There are more advanced ways to go about changing the way websites display themselves but at that point the work required far outweighs the benefit of gaining back 200 pixels of space.

3 can't be fixed user side at all afaik

Flash2k11 wrote:

Covalent wrote:So it seems we have three issues:
1) Ads
- a) loading causing the page to move and makes you miss what you're trying to click
- b) being just damn annoying in general
2) Reduced surface area of the actual forum
3) Login required all the time.

An adblocker fixes 1a and 1b, but does someone have any tricks for rectifying 2 and 3?

2 can be fixed with some css trickery (pretty much the same way I was reskinning the forum a few years ago using Stylish, which was effectively a frontend for a UserStyle.css file for the forum) but its a fairly convoluted process that can be easily broken on the fly by anyone with access to the html/css files for the site. There are more advanced ways to go about changing the way websites display themselves but at that point the work required far outweighs the benefit of gaining back 200 pixels of space.

3 can't be fixed user side at all afaik

Ok thank you, seems we just have to wait and hope for the best.

I've had a really constructive conversation with the various tech people over the last 24 hours or so, and things are being changed to reflect feedback. Keep it coming, but I think we have the main issues resolved for the most part.

P-F1 Mod wrote:I've had a really constructive conversation with the various tech people over the last 24 hours or so, and things are being changed to reflect feedback. Keep it coming, but I think we have the main issues resolved for the most part.

Thanks Mod

Asphalt_World wrote:Ok, as requested, still having to log in each time, adverts taking up an incredible amount of space and they don't load instantly, leading to the screen shifting a few times over a couple of seconds, often leading to me clicking in the wrong place!

ditto

Any chance there will be some kind of improvements before the season starts?

As things stand, I don't think so. I may be wrong though.

Ok thanks. Expect plenty of complaints when the season opener draws in the crowds...

Forum seems very slow for me today...

Looks OK here but it's possible I'm just not noticing the difference. Hopefully slow means work is being done.

I'm still struggling with having to log in every time I visit. Not sure if it's still a universal problem or just affecting few.

Schumacher forever#1 wrote:I'm still struggling with having to log in every time I visit. Not sure if it's still a universal problem or just affecting few.

I think it is everyone. And yes, rather annoying

Firefox has just refused to connect me to the forum without making me accept the risk involved.... looks like the site's certificates have expired

Web sites prove their identity via certificates, which are valid for a set time period. The certificate for forum.planetf1.com expired on 29/06/2020.

Error code: SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE

Probably one to get the tech guys onto.

Flash2k11 wrote:Firefox has just refused to connect me to the forum without making me accept the risk involved.... looks like the site's certificates have expired

Web sites prove their identity via certificates, which are valid for a set time period. The certificate for forum.planetf1.com expired on 29/06/2020.

Error code: SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE

Probably one to get the tech guys onto.

Me too on chrome on my laptop and safari on iPhone. I didn’t bother logging in and then just tried again now a couple of hours later and I got in without any warnings.

Update: now getting the error on chrome but fine on safari on my phone.

SSL certificate expired yesterday.

Flash2k11 wrote:Firefox has just refused to connect me to the forum without making me accept the risk involved.... looks like the site's certificates have expired

Web sites prove their identity via certificates, which are valid for a set time period. The certificate for forum.planetf1.com expired on 29/06/2020.

Error code: SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE

Probably one to get the tech guys onto.

Same here, using Chrome. And it prompts me to accept the risk after every link I press.
Struggling to think how this website could get any worse.

I'm getting the same thing on Chrome. I'm getting redirected after every single link I click. The forum is completely unusable for me like this.

May I gently suggest that this is dealt with ASAP as the forum has been so quiet recently we are kind of relying on people coming back for the first race weekend and if they are confronted with the same thing as me they just won't and may well not try again.

Same here on my Chromebook. What on earth is going on with this forum recently?

Guys until the SSL certificate is renewed for this site (expired yesterday) EVERYONE will get the connection issue from ANY browser.

I think the SSL is fixed, as it let me get in without issues.

Anyone else?