Boards is slow! (was:What is Star-adserver.com)

KTRIC · 13-07-2005 8:57am #1

Every boards.ie page i try and open i get the message "waiting for www.star-adserver.com" or "transfering from www.star-adserver.com" at the bottom of my browser and it's soooo bloody slow.

Would someone like to shed some light on what is going on.

Thanks,
K

seamus · 13-07-2005 9:01am

It's the ad in the top-right (you may not be able to see it). It's downloaded from star-adserver.com.

monkeyfudge · 13-07-2005 9:07am

I was just about to start a thread on this myself.

It has become incredibly slow. Any page just hangs on it for ages when loading.

Is there any chance it could be set to be the last thing to load in on a page?

13-07-2005 9:36am

It's making browsing boards.ie on broadband similar to 56k

Something needs to be done about it

This thread should have a better title to draw admin attention to this problem.

"star adserver slowing boards to a crawl-please fix!!"

seamus · 13-07-2005 9:56am

For the time being, install adblock on Firefox and add *.star-adserver.com/* to your filter list.

KTRIC · 13-07-2005 10:02am

seamus wrote:

For the time being, install adblock on Firefox and add *.star-adserver.com/* to your filter list.

Will do, thanks Seamus.

ixoy · 13-07-2005 10:33am

That made a huge difference, cheers Seamus. Still for the many folk unaware of the root cause, or how to fix it, I think it's something the admins might wanna check out.

dudara · 13-07-2005 10:46am

Thanks for the info Seamus, normal service has been resumed!

phenom · 13-07-2005 10:47am

Thanks Seamus, This was getting very annoying.

seamus · 13-07-2005 10:49am

ixoy wrote:

That made a huge difference, cheers Seamus. Still for the many folk unaware of the root cause, or how to fix it, I think it's something the admins might wanna check out.

It did for me too. I noticed it was slow, but put it down to other factors

No ad actually appears - star-adserver.com is either under load or not up. It's owned by www.salesonline.ie and the Administrative contact is david_at_salesonlineDOTeye-ee
Probably best to give him a nudge and tell him his server is unhappy and his clients will be even moreso soon enough.

John R · 13-07-2005 12:01pm

Alternatively put the following line into your hosts file, located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc in XP.
127.0.0.1 www.star-adserver.com

quarryman · 13-07-2005 12:28pm

adblock worked great. strange how not everyone is affected by this.

Chalk · 13-07-2005 12:31pm

i reckon they are.
i was affected, nut instead of complaining i was going to write a cheque for a few grand to buy a new server.

saved me some moolah there lads

NotMe · 13-07-2005 12:34pm

I blocked those ads ages ago.

quarryman · 13-07-2005 12:53pm

so what does this star-adserver.com do? Does it follow the pages I visit from boards, track what forums i visit and display ads that reflect this?

spyware like?

Inspector Gadget · 13-07-2005 2:14pm

I've been having the same problem. I don't want to adblock stuff on boards, primarily because it's not too obtrusive and "for a good cause", but to be honest it was driving me nuts, so I had to. If any of the admins are reading this, can anything be done?

Cheers,
Gadget

unkel · 13-07-2005 2:18pm

Thanks Seamus, huge difference

Only thing is that Dev et. al. might not be pleased with this suggestion? Surely that site generates revenue for boards.ie?

monkeyfudge · 13-07-2005 2:20pm

It's not generating any revenue at the moment as it's invisible because of the problems that were happening with the drop down menu.

Personally I'm a subscriber, so my conscious is pretty clear with using the adblocker.

Trojan · 13-07-2005 2:32pm

Regards ads, I block anything that interferes with my browsing experience. If it doesn't interfere, it doesn't get blocked. My conscience is clear on this one too

Trojan · 13-07-2005 2:34pm

Oh, except for doubleclick. Block *.doubleclick.*/*, the feckers, first thing I do on Firefox install.

pickarooney · 13-07-2005 2:35pm

It's still fairly slow here, after blocking that server.

seamus · 13-07-2005 2:51pm

unkel wrote:

Only thing is that Dev et. al. might not be pleased with this suggestion? Surely that site generates revenue for boards.ie?

Not when it's broken

We know from past experience that DeV is an unhappy man when people's ads interfere with boards. If/when this is fixed, I'll happily remove the filter from adblock.

DeVore · 13-07-2005 8:14pm

Ads disabled until the system is back up and working ok. Sorry about the inconvenience.

To clarify, yes I get annoyed when people block our (inobtrusive ads) simply *because* we make them inobtrusive and respectful. Afaik there is no tracking or naughty things being done by Salesonline (who are selling ads for us). They are under clear instruction that such things will lead to anger from us. They seem like good guys in general so I'll cut them slack for the moment.
I understand that if there is a technical problem then people should block them to continue using Boards. But if they want to continue using Boards long term, then they need to unblock them when they are working ok again. We simply cannot possibly exist beyond the end of this year without generating at least enough revenue to replace hardware. Thats not to speak of other costs we have.
We'll get this sorted and back on the road.

DeV.

Mercury_Tilt · 13-07-2005 8:53pm

This post has been deleted.

seamus · 13-07-2005 9:42pm

DeVore wrote:

Ads disabled until the system is back up and working ok. Sorry about the inconvenience.

......

/me makes note to update filter tomorrow morning

Villain · 13-07-2005 9:48pm

Still seems slow to me, top menu loads then it just sits there for about 5 seconds?

Sleepy · 13-07-2005 9:54pm

Happening to me too. Sites been slow for the last two days. Browsing on Firefox here at home and on IE in work but it happens on both.

Is there any way of serving the ad after the rest of the page has loaded?

The Free Man · 13-07-2005 9:57pm

ahhh, adblock worked for me, thanx seamus

Sparky · 13-07-2005 11:39pm

mad slow for me aswell, top banner works then a 10sec. wait for the rest of the page

Sparky · 13-07-2005 11:50pm

sorted it with the firefox adblock

XDA · 14-07-2005 9:49am

Still very slow here as well, every page load is taking at least 30 seconds, making boards nearly unusable, installing adblock now ...

XDA

b3t4 · 14-07-2005 10:20am

Slow for me as well. Can't adblock in firefox (work related stuff) which is forcing me to use IE to browse.

A.

jonski · 14-07-2005 10:47am

Gonna have to resort to the adblock aswell now as it's driving me mad , thanks for the tip .

Hobbes · 14-07-2005 11:07am

DeVore wrote:

To clarify, yes I get annoyed when people block our (inobtrusive ads) simply *because* we make them inobtrusive and respectful.

Fallout to be honest. I would for example block "*/advert/*" and it would take out a load of sites. Would be here all day otherwise.

Site is still slow btw. Even with adblock. Might try installing ScriptBlock on this machine and see if that has any effect as well.

Neil_Sedaka · 14-07-2005 11:23am

Very, very slow for me too, using IE6

netwhizkid · 14-07-2005 11:28am

Get rid of it ! It is causing boards to download at dial-up speeds and i'm on 1MB a sec, why is it that every time an ad comes on boards it causes havoc, Before they were covering the dropdown menu for people, (and they still do for some afaik) They are sa annoying, i know they are boards life blood, but don't let em drain the blood out of us members.

BossArky · 14-07-2005 12:22pm

I counted 21 seconds after clicking on "reply" before I could post this message. Painfully slow.

Oryx · 14-07-2005 12:29pm

God bless you feedback people, this thing was driving me berserk. Adblock sorted -aint firefox great. You should post an advisory or something or people will leave in droves if they dont know whats wrong :eek:

seamus · 14-07-2005 12:46pm

KatieK wrote:

God bless you feedback people, this thing was driving me berserk. Adblock sorted -aint firefox great. You should post an advisory or something or people will leave in droves if they dont know whats wrong :eek:

`
No they won't

Ideally this idea would be distributed to the minimal amount of people, and those who will kindly remove the block when the problem is sorted.

the_syco · 14-07-2005 12:58pm

seamus wrote:

For the time being, install adblock on Firefox and add *.star-adserver.com/* to your filter list.

*\o/*
Thanks Seamus.

It took 1.5 seconds for the reply box to come up, rather than the usual 3 to 7 second delay.

meepmeep · 14-07-2005 2:03pm

Seems to be fixed now.....just started working again for me anyway.

Villain · 14-07-2005 2:19pm

Yep back in business

Neil_Sedaka · 14-07-2005 2:25pm

Much better for me now

pickarooney · 14-07-2005 3:11pm

DeVore wrote:

Ads disabled until the system is back up and working ok. Sorry about the inconvenience.

To clarify, yes I get annoyed when people block our (inobtrusive ads) simply *because* we make them inobtrusive and respectful. Afaik there is no tracking or naughty things being done by Salesonline (who are selling ads for us). They are under clear instruction that such things will lead to anger from us. They seem like good guys in general so I'll cut them slack for the moment.
I understand that if there is a technical problem then people should block them to continue using Boards. But if they want to continue using Boards long term, then they need to unblock them when they are working ok again. We simply cannot possibly exist beyond the end of this year without generating at least enough revenue to replace hardware. Thats not to speak of other costs we have.
We'll get this sorted and back on the road.

DeV.

I've never been able to understand how ads work for the site owners. Does boards.ie get an amount for every browser that displays the ad, raher thana fixed amount per month? How exactly is this calculated, I thought adblock only stopped displaying the blocked content after it had been transferred (but I'm starting to think otherwise)?

mike65 · 14-07-2005 6:20pm

Weird I started on Opera with no ad blocker and it was flying, but then BANG! now its at a crawl again for me. So its back to Firefox and adblock.

Mike.

mike65 · 14-07-2005 8:31pm

hmmmmmmm, just a glitch it seems. Okay now.

Mike.

Neil_Sedaka · 15-07-2005 9:36am

Bad again for me now, very slow to display a page

Neil_Sedaka · 15-07-2005 11:19am

Fine again now

zAbbo · 16-07-2005 10:07am

Camino and Safari, both not loading, only Firefox with the ad blocking works

mike65 · 16-07-2005 10:17am

Yep its borked unless you have adblock.

Mike.

16-07-2005 10:19am

Seems to happen to me in the first 1/2 of the day, and go away in the last 1/2.

Boards is slow! (was:What is Star-adserver.com)

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