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

zAbbo

There are 3 solutions as i see it.

1. Edit your hosts file (simpliest)
2. Use firefox with adblock
3. Boards pull the star advertising

option 3, should have been done 2-3 days back, but the admins here are possibly busy(devs in vegas!, others maybe have RL stuff).

Any problems in the past have been sorted out quick enough, in boards we trust

I'd disagree with the opinion that just because we don't pay for it, we can't complain, thats certainly not how this community has evolved.

Gordon

mike65 wrote:

Hmm, its free so put up or shut up. Not a great model for success. Maybe its time to take a leap into the unknown (be that known or unknown) and go for a big meaningful subscription drive. Nothing crazy, 20 euro p.a. or you only get After Hours and The Cukoos Nest!

It would sure beat having to rely on third parties' software behaving itself.

Mike.

I wasn't implying 'put up or shut up' btw.

I think the Admins have always been against forcing payment for the regular boards stuff tbh.

What ways, other than adverts, of keeping boards afloat are there?

mike65

Devs in Vegas???????????? Flips sake no wonder I can't get any joy out of him (regarding another matter entirely).

Mike.

Villain

I think a bit of fundraising would be easy to arrange and should get in quite a few quid. I don't think most people here would mind donating €20 at least.

Gordon

irish1 wrote:

I think a bit of fundraising would be easy to arrange and should get in quite a few quid. I don't think most people here would mind donating €20 at least.

We could have a night-with-Sarky auction. That'd get some hens clucking!

Or how about a speed dating night? akin to Cuckoos Nest's thread.

Villain

I hate speed dating too many choices not enough time

Seriously though I think the admins would be really surprised if they sought a few quid.

Sarky

Gordon wrote:

We could have a night-with-Sarky auction. That'd get some hens clucking!

What? HEY! HEY!

















Go on...

PiE

seamus wrote:

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

You beauty.

CuLT

irish1 wrote:

I hate speed dating too many choices not enough time

Seriously though I think the admins would be really surprised if they sought a few quid.

Never know which head to follow...

Mutant_Fruit

course, i'm sure star-adserver.com won'tbe too happy if they find out users are being told to block their servers

Which i've just done, and now boards is just as fast as usual I was just about to write a rant on how slow it was.

netwhizkid

OMG to the previous poster i don't know your name now and i'm not wading through the treacle to find out, on my boards.us post i was referring to Staradserver as being muppets not the mods here, lol I understand fully that boards need cash to thrive, heck its not running on air. this is just a glitch and i'm sure it'll be fixed by monday anyway. The google ads worked fine in thye past and i'm sure these will too. As for charging for boards usuage, i think that a good debate on that is needed (when boards is fixed that is) I however and it was i highlighted the issue a while back wouldn't mind buying boards branded clobber, baseball hat, t-shirts etc. These would be a handy way to raise cash for the site. Keep up the good work fellas.

Le Rack

mine is still slow, firefox dealy is on and the star thingy doesn't come up on the bar but its stil taking forever and I cant post a new thread, I can use quick reply but not New Thread?

zapata

If someone is on a mission (or back-hander) to promote firefox - well it's worked for me. I've installed firefox and the adblocker and i'm cruising the boards again. IE6 had me nearly insane.... Thanks Seamus

Kare Bear

Im finally moving to firefox aswell.:)

angelofdeath

just seen this now, was wondering why it was so slow today, thought i had all those adds disabled already

pickarooney

mike65 wrote:

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.

I got adblock working on Opera. It took me about three weeks, but it does the job

Sleepy

Can the admins let us know when starserver get their act together? I've blocked it using that adblock. tbh I feel a bit guilty denying boards.ie of the revenue but surfing without it blocked is unbearable, it's taking 25-30 secs to load a page over a DSL connection.

Bamboozled

Yeah i'm archaic but using IE :rolleyes: This problem is so frustrating. Surely there's another that can get into the templates and sort this problem out.Or not even that far and go to the control panel. Please?

L5

just saw this thread, blocked staradserver too. thank god i saw the thread, boards has been terribly slow, 15-20 seconds to open a page on broadband. for shame.

Basq

God bless Adblock for Firefox!

Adding 'http://www.star-adserver.com/*' to block list speeds up Boards tremendously!

(* being a wildcard)

Devious

Iv had firefox installed for ages but never felt compelled to use it. Until now!

causal

seamus wrote:

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

Trojan wrote:

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

Thanks guys I will gladly remove the star-adserver block once their bug is fixed.

Everybody sing to the tune of 'Grandma we love you':
- Seamus we love you Trojan you too
- Firefox we love you Adblock you too

causal

DonkeyStyle \o/

Oh I miss my adds

klingklang

Site was absolutely crawling this morning on 2MB DSL.
Thanks for the FF adblock info - much improved

Hotblack Desiato

I'm on 1MB DSL and still can't get any forum pages or the boards homepage to load at all on Opera 8. All I get is the boards logo and then "waiting for star-adserver.com", I left one page for a couple of hours yesterday but it still never came up UserCP comes up fine though.

This morning I tried to read the Feedback forum using the Google cache, and it was affected too, had to use the text-only Google cache to find the tip about adblock!

Using FF with adblock for now, but I hate FF and want to get back onto Opera ASAP...

mike65

I find I'm getting into FF but still need Opera as my Mail client.

Mike.

zAbbo

Whu not use an ad blocker for opera?

http://www.operaadfilter.com/



Anyone usings windows, and wants the quick fix

Here it is(from memory)

You need to edit the HOSTS file, its located here

Windows XP = C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
Windows 2K = C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
Win 98\ME = C:\WINDOWS

Open this file in notepad, and add the following lines

127.0.0.1 www.star-adserver.com

Save and thats it.

Here is my complete hosts file - http://members.boards.ie/bazh/HOSTS.zip
Which includes an update hosts file taken from here - http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

No need for switching browsers

Hotblack Desiato

Thanks but that's windows only, I use Linux anyway enabling ad-blocking isn't the fix, it's the workaround, and in the long run boards.ie loses out on revenue. Hope the adserver crowd get it sorted soon. Dunno if there's anything that boards.ie can do on their end to overcome this problem if an adserver is very slow or down?

Could be worse though, a few months back The Register's third party adserver was hacked and served up malware for a while :eek:

RicardoSmith

After editing the Hosts file its a lot quicker in IE but its even faster in FF with adblocker. Was unbelievably slow before.

mike65

Maybe I did something wrong but editing HOSTS file has made no difference to Opera for me.

Mike.