Sponsored links are back?

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StardogChampion

StardogChampion

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I noticed this when making a post today. Are they back for good?

If you're strapped for cash, you could probably make a thread in every forum once a week called "CLICK THE BANNERS!" or something, and the hundreds of people that view the thread will click them. Is that against Google's policy?
 
I’m doing a week trial of IntelliTXT to see how well it works out. It just replaces some text words with links in the same way censored words are replaced by stars. These advertising links are shown in green so you can choose to ignore them or not.

This advertising method is more focused towards the site and will hopefully give us the income needed to purchase more web servers and gaming servers for the community to use. At the moment google ads simply don’t get anywhere near that.

What is it?

IntelliTXT works by analyzing the text on the page, identifying keywords in relevant areas of the page, and then matching those keywords against suitable adverts. When IntelliTXT is applied the HTML in suitable areas is replaced with a modified version containing the IntelliTXT. The modified version looks the same apart from the addition of the highlighted IntelliTXT keywords.

When a user mouses over the IntelliTXT keywords, a box appears showing brief advertising information with a clickable link that takes the user to the advertiser's site.
 
seriously, that is not cool - I don't want my posts to advertise things without my permission :|
 
Munro said:
This advertising method is more focused towards the site and will hopefully give us the income needed to purchase more web servers and gaming servers for the community to use. At the moment google ads simply don’t get anywhere near that.
Click to expand...

Surely, you mean more domains?
 
theGreenBunny said:
Rumour has it that Munro loves money.
Click to expand...

He must, seeing how he deleted 20 replys how to remove them already.

And i dont like them.. eather..

-NSF
 
Feath said:
Surely, you mean more domains?
Click to expand...

It's pointless having domains if you haven't got the hardware to support them.
 
when did these damned this start showing up? i leave the forums for a few hours and sponsored links show up...what'll they think of next
 
Personally I don't mind. Just ignore them..As much as HL2.net has done for you, and ads are too much?
 
Does anyone have a list of all the words that trigger this?
 
TST_Devgru Seal said:
Personally I don't mind. Just ignore them..As much as HL2.net has done for you, and ads are too much?
Click to expand...

well since munro unbanned me i guess that i can go along with the program...but that still doesnt mean that i like it

Erestheux said:
Does anyone have a list of all the words that trigger this?
Click to expand...

edit: they arent showing up anymore...YEA!!
 
Ahhh well, welcome back adverts, i did enjoy being told to buy stuff while reading through a random post. So i guess this is good :thumbs: gj
 
Ultimately, blocking ads and reducing the income of this site - which is purely for the benefit of the site and nothing else - could become the death of this place. We're in a very secure position right now. We're lucky to have our hosting paid for us, we're lucky to have lots of visitors, but if we lose our hosting for whatever reason then this site is ****ed. There probably won't be a Halflife2.net. The kind of revenue required to run a site like Halflife2.net - considering we get through 5.4GB of bandwidth a day and at peak times up to 11GB a day (in the past even upto 40GB in one day) it would certainly mean the death of Halflife2.net.

Additionally, Half-Life 2 is going to be round for a long time. If this site stays along the same lines as it is now then the whole place will get stale and boring very quickly. With no new features, no new equipment and technology, with nothing fresh to offer then we'll quickly be overtaken by sites like HLFallout. Other sites like CSNation are doing the same thing with IntelliTXT, so have IGN been. Other sites are likely to follow as well.

I won't stand up for Munro unnecessarily. If I see him doing something wrong, I'll have a go at him. The amount of times I've called Munro a ****ing twat -- well, I've lost count. He just wants to trial this for a short period of time, and it'd be nice to have people's support just for a short while. So please, cut the stuff about blocking ads and just help the site out for a bit.

However, if you have any ideas that you think would be better than IntelliTXT that would enable the site to move forward then please make a new thread and tell us. If there is something that everyone agrees is a better idea, it will be done. At the moment though, this is the best idea so please let us know if you have a better one.

We really would appreciate the support during the trial anyway so give it a go. Remember, it's only a trial... Bare with us.
 
I hope you're not suggesting that all advertising revenue is simply to line Munro's pockets. That would be completely out of order.
 
Chris_D said:
Ultimately, blocking ads and reducing the income of this site - which is purely for the benefit of the site and nothing else - could become the death of this place. We're in a very secure position right now. We're lucky to have our hosting paid for us, we're lucky to have lots of visitors, but if we lose our hosting for whatever reason then this site is ****ed. There probably won't be a Halflife2.net. The kind of revenue required to run a site like Halflife2.net - considering we get through 5.4GB of bandwidth a day and at peak times up to 11GB a day (in the past even upto 40GB in one day) it would certainly mean the death of Halflife2.net.
Click to expand...

I don't see Valve/Limelight cutting the hosting on the prime HL2 fansite anytime soon, especially not if it's getting such a large amount of visitors. I don't think you can ask people to put up with rather intrusive advertising just because there might someday be a time when the site may not be hosted for free anymore. If I'm not mistaken (I don't exactly have access to huge amounts of info on this), hl2.net has been hosted for free now almost exclusively for several years.

Additionally, Half-Life 2 is going to be round for a long time. If this site stays along the same lines as it is now then the whole place will get stale and boring very quickly. With no new features, no new equipment and technology, with nothing fresh to offer then we'll quickly be overtaken by sites like HLFallout.
Click to expand...

One might wonder if the cause of the site going stale is mismanagement instead of money shortages, but let's assume it's the money. What kind of new features do you intend to introduce, using money? Contests with prizes? Big deal. Only a few would profit from that while the large majority has to put up with intellitxt. Game servers? There are quite enough of those already. I really can't think of anything else. Perhaps a thank you-mail from Munro to all the members, to thank them for lining his pockets? That would be nice I suppose, but I wouldn't dare putting an even higher workload on the poor man.

Other sites like CSNation are doing the same thing with IntelliTXT, so have IGN been. Other sites are likely to follow as well.
Click to expand...

Bandwagon fallacy. Just because everyone else does it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. Besides, IGN is a website business, their readers are their source of money. HL2.net isn't (right?). Can't really comment on csnation as I never go there.

I won't stand up for Munro unnecessarily. If I see him doing something wrong, I'll have a go at him. The amount of times I've called Munro a ****ing twat -- well, I've lost count.
Click to expand...

Well that's very interesting, but it doesn't have anything to do with this, even if people may think your head is quite a ways up Munro's behind. Let's not dwell on that and get on with the fun.

He just wants to trial this for a short period of time, and it'd be nice to have people's support just for a short while. So please, cut the stuff about blocking ads and just help the site out for a bit.
Click to expand...

The feature is on trial and the users respond. Do you expect everyone to sit around and smile until you give them permission to voice their opinion? As for advert blocking (damn wordfilter), people who block the ads are annoyed by them. People who are annoyed by something aren't going to click on it. Therefore blocking is unlikely to cause a major income loss. The silent majority will only think "hmm links" and continue their browsing, and they're the ones who are a potential source of advertising income.

However, if you have any ideas that you think would be better than IntelliTXT that would enable the site to move forward then please make a new thread and tell us. If there is something that everyone agrees is a better idea, it will be done. At the moment though, this is the best idea so please let us know if you have a better one.
Click to expand...

Make people pay for larger avatars and custom titles. All joking aside though, money is not going to help the site move forward, unless it's Munro moving forward into the land of the rich.

We really would appreciate the support during the trial anyway so give it a go. Remember, it's only a trial... Bear with us.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but no thanks.
 
theGreenBunny said:
I don't see Valve/Limelight cutting the hosting on the prime HL2 fansite anytime soon, especially not if it's getting such a large amount of visitors. I don't think you can ask people to put up with rather intrusive advertising just because there might someday be a time when the site may not be hosted for free anymore. If I'm not mistaken (I don't exactly have access to huge amounts of info on this), hl2.net has been hosted for free now almost exclusively for several years.



One might wonder if the cause of the site going stale is mismanagement instead of money shortages, but let's assume it's the money. What kind of new features do you intend to introduce, using money? Contests with prizes? Big deal. Only a few would profit from that while the large majority has to put up with intellitxt. Game servers? There are quite enough of those already. I really can't think of anything else. Perhaps a thank you-mail from Munro to all the members, to thank them for lining his pockets? That would be nice I suppose, but I wouldn't dare putting an even higher workload on the poor man.



Bandwagon fallacy. Just because everyone else does it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. Besides, IGN is a website business, their readers are their source of money. HL2.net isn't (right?). Can't really comment on csnation as I never go there.



Well that's very interesting, but it doesn't have anything to do with this, even if people may think your head is quite a ways up Munro's behind. Let's not dwell on that and get on with the fun.



The feature is on trial and the users respond. Do you expect everyone to sit around and smile until you give them permission to voice their opinion? As for advert blocking (damn wordfilter), people who block the ads are annoyed by them. People who are annoyed by something aren't going to click on it. Therefore blocking is unlikely to cause a major income loss. The silent majority will only think "hmm links" and continue their browsing, and they're the ones who are a potential source of advertising income.



Make people pay for larger avatars and custom titles. All joking aside though, money is not going to help the site move forward, unless it's Munro moving forward into the land of the rich.



Thanks, but no thanks.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your support. I dunno why I ****ing bother sometimes.
 
Totally agree with theGreenBunny on this... I'll post something more substantial in a minute :)
 
OK..

As tgb said, and is well known here, the site is hosted by limelight and paid for by valve. Unless something major happens, the hosting is always going to be here.

Personally, I think it's taking the piss trying to make a profit when valve are paying for the site to be here, and we're not giving limelight anything. You can say that no one's trying to make a profit but you know for a fact that it isn't true. I don't want to bring up the staff discussions from last time that the site was going to be used to generate revenue.

The only outgoing this site has is a vbulletin license, which is covered by the google ads. We've never been told how much the site makes (sorry, how much Munro makes) from those ads, but we know it covers the vbulletin license.

Intrusive advertising like this does annoy people. I for one don't want to have my posts advertising things that I don't endorse. If a newbie clicks a link in one of my posts and gets shafted by the company, I dont want them to think badly of me because it looked like I was endorsing the product.
If people don't like the ads, then give them the means to switch them off. Why force them on people that have absolutely no interest in them. Blocking the name of the popular firefox extension to 'block ads' is just petty and forcing this down peoples throats is never the way to go.

I'm not going to support this because as an insider, I know exactly what will happen to any money generated. We have a very decent setup at the moment with our own dedicated server. There are plenty of game servers out there so it really isn't necessary to pay for those. I'm not against Munro making money out of his site, I just dont like the fact that forum mods and content writers do a hell of a lot more towards the site than Munro (not including me, I do **** all except restart apache every week or so and make the mail server stay alive) and they will receive nothing out of this.
 
Yeah about those game servers....converting any of them to BF2 servers? :D

Edit - And about Munro's monies and d00dz... I think anyone in his position would be doing the same thing, I know I would. It's kind of silly to be unessecarily over-righteous about it.
 
I don't like the sponsored links, intrusive advertisements bother me. The text ads are fine, but not the sponsored links.

Now. Chris_D, as I don't want to be another person who's just denouncing what you have to say without offering alternatives, here's what I'd like.

First, other people aren't going to flock to CSnation and IGN because they have intellitext ads and we don't - so I don't see why you put that there, unless you're trying to say that they'll do better because they make more money.

My solution to your problem of less content is this. Add some. If you can't add it yourself, recruit more content writers to do so and fire the ones who don't pull their weight. I was busy with writing for an online magazine (ModZene, which mysteriously died right before we were to release our first issue, with several articles by myself and several by other people, including numerous big-name interviews) last time you called for more content writers, but as I have more time on my hands now I would be happy to write for the site if it will help us stay on top.

But please, for christ's sake, remove the damn intellitext ads.
 
Chris_D said:
Thanks for your support. I dunno why I ****ing bother sometimes.
Click to expand...

Erm sorry, who do you think generates those words for inteltxt or whatever to gloss over and make links out of them?

Us.

Do you really think money is going to make this site move forward? I don't, you get this site for "free" valve are not going to pull the plug to the "biggest" "safest" advertising and support community they have.

I tell you what, you tell us what this money will enable for "us" and then we will decide if we like it.

Because honestly I can't see what "money" is going to-do to better this site unless you and Munro are going to use it for beer money.

You give me a list of features that will be used for with this money and I will decide wether to block it.

I had to write this in a hurry so my spelling and grammar sucks ass.
 
Meh, I can't comment as I don't know how the Valve/Limelight deal operates.

I know first hand that websites get a lot of (usually undeserved) flak for their advertising methods, but as I'm genuinely at a loss to understand HL2.net's funding situation I can't comment.

I will say that I'll live through this trial period because, if it truly is necessary, the community's need to survive outweighs my irritation at the odd textual link.
 
I agree with pretty much everything The Green Bunny and Starmonkey said
 
Big deal, there are links in your post. If you don't like them, don't click them. If other people click on them, they're not going to be stupid enough for blaming you for putting it there, you underestimate people on the internet (I never though i would say that). And if they do, it's their problem not yours, and just tell them the advertising scheme. If it means a better HL2.net, then let it be done.
 
Ol'Master said:
Big deal, there are links in your post. If you don't like them, don't click them. If other people click on them, they're not going to be stupid enough for blaming you for putting it there, you underestimate people on the internet (I never though i would say that). And if they do, it's their problem not yours, and just tell them the advertising scheme. If it means a better HL2.net, then let it be done.
Click to expand...

Your opinion doesn't count you rarely post. Probably rarely come around too.
 
I don't want to be a human advertisement. That's my problem with all this. I also don't want to be a human advertisement because Munro is a greedy man who is trying to milk money out of this site.
 
Chris_D said:
Thanks for your support. I dunno why I ****ing bother sometimes.
Click to expand...
I think Munro should do what you're doing with the PayPal button. http://www.narutofan.com used to be run entirely from donations, and there was a list down the right of every donators name.

The names help show people visiting that there are other people who donate. Any extra cash made went into a small monthly prize for donators only. They have a different system now though.

Try http://www.naruto-kun.com to see an example - the list on the right.

I'm not sure what kinda money you're looking for, or if you'd make anything near naruto-kun do though.
 
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