I’m getting conflicting reports and I need community input. What do you physically see when you come on this website? I have heard two things: 1) There is a broken up screen with ads interspersed between stories; 2) Everything looks normal. Maybe both are true.
I know I have seen both screens. I was alarmed at the broken up screen, naturally, but when I went back it was normal. Denis said he had the same experience. Durrati, on the other hand, says his screen always looks broken up. So please, readers, do us an enormous favor and tell me in the comments below, what you see?
We have been tweaking ads lately and trying out a new ad company. We will continue to refine the process of adding ads and videos to the site. If I win the lottery tomorrow we can go to an ad-free site but in the event that doesn’t happen, we will continue to have ads and solicit subscriptions and donations because that’s the only way we can stay in business.
Please let me know what kind of screen you see here on PZ, right now. You should see our regular front page, the cluster of seven articles at the top, and then a list of articles underneath that and the Most Popular articles roster off to the right.
If you see a fragmented mess, let me know.
I can’t see the messed up screen. I HAVE seen what Durrati is talking about. Both Denis and I saw it, but then it straightened out for us and we see things correctly. So let me know what you see. If there are enough problems for enough people, obviously, I’ve got to go explore what is causing this.
Also while we’re here, we have not met our goal for fundraising. We’re only 37% there. If you can afford to contribute, you can either become a patron on Patreon or you can make a one time donation by going to PayPal and depositing to [email protected].
We will get all the kinks ironed out and we will keep bringing you the best political news and commentary that we can cobble together. We just need a little help from our friends and right now, I desperately need information on what you see.
Thank you.
Every 2-3 paragraphs there is an ad. This started about 2 weeks ago.
That’s normal. We always had ads interspersed in the articles. It’s the Bizarro World fragmented front page that has me in a panic.
Thanks for responding, Marie. I need all the information I can get.
Are you asking mostly about the home page? Yes, I went there just now and ads are mixed in with icons for stories. It does look like a jumbled up mess. On this story page, there are more ads then I have seen in the past and they are now every 2 paragraphs. I hope this helps you.
Let me be clear: You’re saying that you DON’T see the usual front page, with the seven articles clustered together?
If so, can you come back to PZ a couple of times today and tell me if you still see the mishmash? My problem is I don’t know WHY some people are seeing this and some not.
Yes, I just now returned to the front page and initially, for a split second, it appeared normal. Then, back to the mishmash. I’m using chrome on windows 10.
There is apparently some mechanism which causes the mishmash. A lot of people are seeing it in “normal” mode, a lot are not.
I’m looking now on my IPad. Everything looks good.
Thankfully, everything appears normal for me. I’m on a laptop, using Firefox to access Politizoom and it’s working as it always does for me. No glitches.
That’s good information. I was thinking that if this phenomenon was widespread that people would be writing me screaming emails. That hasn’t been the case. So maybe this is sporadic.
Over the weekend (I think it was Saturday), I had that experience with the broken up screen with the – usually same – ad over and over again, both with Safari on the MacBook and the iPhone. But that was only for a short time; when I returned some hours later, it was back to normal and has been ever since. So the problem might have been temporary, who knows?
This is good to know. Because I saw it twice, myself, and haven’t seen it since. Thanks, Kitty.
I’ve never had a problem! Carry on…
Good to know. At least the system is working somewhere. Thanks, Diane.
I’m on an iPhone. The front page is jumbled and ads everywhere. Lots and lots of ads.
It’s an improvement over a few months ago. The site was unusable. Sometimes I could get to the front page, but when I clicked on a story I got an error message. It worked on my laptop, but that’s usually not an option. The contact info button didn’t display contact info.
I reluctantly quit the site for a few months. Maybe that’s why revenue is down. Some users may have quit the site and never checked back.
I hope this helps.
Tell me, please, in as much detail as possible what happened.
1. Do you remember when? You said a few months ago? Can you be specific? (If you can’t I understand. I can’t remember when anything happened, unless I can link it to some other event.”
2. It was on the phone only, or on both phone and computer?
3. This is important: HOW MANY TIMES did you click on a story and get an error message? That is crucial.
4. When you say Contact Info doesn’t give contact information, tell me about that. It should say to write with problems to [email protected]. I am planning to get a P.O. Box and I’ll do that soon.
I appreciate all the detail you can give me, Piren. Please. I can’t fix this with specifics. Thank you
I’ll try, Ursula. The memory ain’t what it used to be.
1. Maybe 4-5 months ago. I’m leaning toward four.
2. Phone only, iPhone with Safari, the default browser. I notice that other users in this comments thread also said that they had no problems using their laptops.
3. If I clicked on a story and got the error message, I would get the same error message if I clicked on the story again. I got the error message(s) on almost all the stories. If I did get to the story, I couldn’t read comments or forward. IIRC, the error message was “Bad Request.” Same on my sister’s T-mobile phone, so I suspected it was a handheld device issue.
4. When I clicked on Contact Info I got nothing at all. Blank. This was on my laptop.
I hope this is helpful. When I got back on the site, I wanted to have a party! That was a couple of months after the problem started, but it may have resolved during my reluctant PZ holiday.
I didn’t answer 3) fully. If I got the error message twice I gave up. If I logged out and logged in again later, I would get the same error message on that piece every time.
Jesus. I don’t know what that could have been. But I’ll ask a few people and see if they know what would cause a Bad Request message to show up.
Always normal, Firefox with AdBlock+ on W7
Music to my ears, believe me. Thanks, North.
I am also seeing repeated ads stacked on top of each other.
That may be a minor bug. We’re trying different things so I’ll worry about details later. Right now I need to do the broad brushstrokes.
Normal here. (Chrome, Android)
Though the normal list of stories (after ‘1st 7’ – which looks more like 1st 3 on phone) do right now alternate with ads, which didn’t used to so much.
I’ve noticed recently that the ads may be more frequent, & especially are often repeated ad nauseam within the same article, even 4 times in a row with virtually no content between – whereas it merely duplicated them for say months before that.
Marie said above that the ‘every 2-3 paragraphs’ started a couple of weeks ago, but I’d have thought it has always been that!
I don’t know what the point of a dozen occurrences of the same ad in one article is, which gets wearing. They’re very slow to realise I’m not interested in them, as if trying to wear me down, and even when it varies it’s mostly the same advertiser – it’s often as if you only have one! (And I’m sure there are supposed to be rules over here – how long should an “opening sale” be allowed to last?)
I’ve not seen the ‘mess’ you refer to though. And mercifully the automatically-playing small videos have largely subsided.
We’re going to go back to a video but I’ll make it as discreet as possible. The problem is, we have to roll with what the industry is doing or we don’t make any money. I’m looking at different video companies, and will pick the one that fits here. Hopefully.
Six ads within the article and six click baits before “leave a reply”. It has been this way for awhile.
I see you got on to comment. Good. The only thing I’m worried about right now is the front page appearing in two different “formats.” I put it in quotes because screwed up is hardly a format.
Up until today, I was getting ads both sides of the screen along with top and bottom.
Today it’s ads on left (and a lot of blank space on the right) with the main body sort of squished in the middle.
Oh and FIFTEEN clickbait ads between the article and the comments (in blocks of three)
But you do see the front page (the seven most recent articles all clumped together) in one piece, right? That’s the main thing I’m trying to fix.
Everything looks fine to me, both on this page and the politizoom home page. But then I have an adblocker extension which works great with Firefox! So I have to suspect it is your ads that are screwing things up. Ads that are scrolling or animated are especially notorious for doing that.
Thanks for weighing in, Daisy. I am dutifully reporting all these comments to the technical people I work with and we’ll figure out what’s going on.
I have seen (and still do) the disjointed homepage when I get on the site. I scroll down to the latest news (where it looks normal) and select a story to read. When I exit the story, the homepage looks as it should. I have noted this for 1-2 weeks.
I’m on my Samsung Galaxy S21 + 5G. On the home page, it’s article. ad, article, ad, etc. Pretty much the same ad. Still able to read your content so I’m not bothered really. Hope that helps.
Well using safari on iPhone 7. Stopped commenting and visiting before current setup. Was getting weird google free stuff (scam) “ad”. Getting block of stories then ads.
Lando314, were you getting the Google ad that took you to a separate page congratulating you for being xxx user (complete with falling confetti)?
I was seeing it with almost every click on a different site. When it showed up here I thought “oh sh*t, not this again!” After about five times it went away and never came back. I’m on an iPhone too. Maybe we’re special.”
Right now there’s an ad blanking out one of the top seven boxes, then I have to scroll down past some stacked ads to get to the rest of the page, which looks normal. Mildly annoying but not a big enough problem that I would have contacted you about it.
I have no such problems with the home page. Firefox on Linux with ad-blockers. I do pay to help support the site. Before I started using ad-blockers, I saw many web pages messed up by ads.
I’m using Firefox with Adblock and the home screen looks normal and just right to me. I just tried to upload a screen shot but for some reason it won’t upload to this reply box.
Well, ok, it worked.
The picture at the top is merely A train on a trestle. Nothing special about it.
No problems on my end. I get here by clicking on articles in the newsletter. The ads are on the right. Again,looks perfectly normal.
I virtually never visit the home page (of any site from which I get newsletters) butin this case i ,ade an exceptio. Rather than try to tell you, I’ll show you in 6 images:
https://www.politicsplus.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1.jpg
https://www.politicsplus.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2.jpg
https://www.politicsplus.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/3.jpg
https://www.politicsplus.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/4.jpg
https://www.politicsplus.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/5.jpg
https://www.politicsplus.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/6.jpg
I see no advertising. BUT the browser I use is Poers, and it has a built-in ad blocker Some sites won’t let me in unless I disable it, but I can do that for any site individually without affecting the rest of the Net.PolitiZoom has nwvwe asked me to disable it.
If you hadn’t managed to see the chaos verion once, I would attribute the discrepancy between who can see what to ad blockers – and that still could have something to do with it, but there may also be something else. If you have any questions, you have my email.
Sorry for the poor proofreadin – that browser name is “Opera.” As much of a fan as I am of actual opera, you’d think I could do better.
Srn Pic
I’ve been logging on daily, for some time now, and nothing has changed. I rarely see ads. I’m using a Chromebook. I love your site. I never miss it. Thanks for what all of you do.
Of course, when I get the newsletter, the articles are littered with ads, sometimes two of the same together, interspersing the whole article. On the web page, I have to get past six ads right away before getting to the listed articles. But after that, I didn’t see any ads mixed in with the usual format of that page. Good luck with the financial campaign. I remain a patron. Keep up the good work!
My view of the home page looks fine. Not broken up. I still hate the occasional far-ring-wing ads on your site. The last time that I noticed them was when you ran an article with right wing in the headline.