Why all the ads?
 

Why is the forum suddenly all filled up with ads for coupons and promos?

I assume they pay the "freight" at no cost to us. Operating one of these sites isn't free. The new owner probably wants to earn a good return on his time and investment. More power to him, and thanks for the site!
:bigbow:

I do not come here much anymore. Hard to find the post among the ads. This has become a forum where our visits translate into higher ad revenue and more ads. There are forums that are labors of love and enough ad revenue to cover costs is sufficient. Then there are those that are money making enterprises. This is the latter as far as I am concerned and go elsewhere much of the time.

I find this forum quite easy to navigate, and find the ads relatively unobtrusive most of the time. The OP was referring to a barrage of ads in the form of numerous posts this morning.

I'm glad the site is successful. I'm glad local businesses are doing well enough to advertise; and I hope the ads help them grow their business.

Cheers!

:beer3:

You're a smart lady!

There are countless man hours that go into the security, maintenance, and development of the site. I personally spent over an additional 40 hours during December above and beyond my normal daily maintenance time for various development projects. Access to the users is all made available for FREE and it is the desire of the administration to always remain FREE and to have the advertising always be the supporting factor. We thank everyone for their support of the local businesses and advertisers that contribute to supporting the site. Please consider them for any of your future needs.

Well said PT. We're lucky to have this free site. I use TOTV advertisers whenever possible. Hats off to the Admins!

I can also see an improvement in performance since the new owner took over. I suspect there was some hardware improvements for the hosting server etc when the new owner took over. I don't find the ads bothersome and I hope they make a nice profit on the site.

You have freedom of choice.

If you want to read the ads, click on the ones you find interesting.

You also can ignore the ads.

You control the "clicker."

I never ever click on an internet ad. Anywhere. The reason, I don't know if those sites are secure.

Me too:coolsmiley:

Thanks to all
 

I love the site and I'm grateful to the advertisers for supporting it.
This is one of the best websites that I go to and I'm happy that it's free.
Thanks to administration for doing all that they do and hopefully they get reimbursed for all their hard work.

I have setup 3 of these forums in the past, you have buy the software, annual cost for upgrades, pay for a server space & bandwidth, pay for or design the standard format.

That's not to mention the time it takes to supervise the new signups and delete spam posters.

The ads have to pay those costs and the owner should make a few bucks, they aren't going to get rich form it.

? Do you intend to upgrade to vBulletin® 4, it has a lot of nice bells & whistles.

I have seen vBulletin run with paid sponsorships thereby deleting the ads, but that also has issues.

Clicking an ad poses little to no threat to our computers. What it does do in some externally fed ads, is increase the income to the forum as the revenue is based on the number of clicks made to their links. Click away folks! I'm gonna do just that right after I'm through with this post. :D