Styleforum User reports and questions on technical issues

[LA Guy]

It’s basically impossible to use on your phone. The ads, the refreshes that end up in errors. Terrible

It’s so onerous that I rarely even visit anymore. It used to be a nice distraction from the stressors of life. Now it is just adding to my angst toward technology further.

Hey guys, sorry you guys are having trouble. Fwiw, I’m on an old IPhone SE and streaming a live chess game at the same time, and having no issues, so at least for me, there doesn’t seem to be either a server or user side problem. Could you please contact @admin with your ip, hardware, software, and version info, etc… and he can investigate? If the site is slowing down so much for you, of course I don’t mind you guys using an ad blocker, but we’d hope to be able to fix things in our end. For context, ad rates dropped by about 30% between 2022 to 2023, and then another 20% between 2023-2024 for a variety of reasons, across the entire industry (the reason that say, the NYT has a coupon page and straight up ad emails as well) and we had to increase the number of ads just to keep the doors open. We held out as long as possible, but as a small business, it became untenable to run a deficit month after month.

 

[Darkside]

Hey guys, sorry you guys are having trouble. Fwiw, I’m on an old IPhone SE and streaming a live chess game at the same time, and having no issues, so at least for me, there doesn’t seem to be either a server or user side problem. Could you please contact @admin with your ip, hardware, software, and version info, etc… and he can investigate? If the site is slowing down so much for you, of course I don’t mind you guys using an ad blocker, but we’d hope to be able to fix things in our end. For context, ad rates dropped by about 30% between 2022 to 2023, and then another 20% between 2023-2024 for a variety of reasons, across the entire industry (the reason that say, the NYT has a coupon page and straight up ad emails as well) and we had to increase the number of ads just to keep the doors open. We held out as long as possible, but as a small business, it became untenable to run a deficit month after month.

It’s been like this for months for me. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

 

[LA Guy]

It’s been like this for months for me. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

The best thing to do is to contact @admin. One of the things we have wrestled with, not just for months, but for years, is whether or not to have lazy load, which loads content, and then ads, so that content shows up first. This used to work really well. However, the technology has not caught up with modern adtech yet, which nearly always requires dynamic ads, which is what you see with the shifting. Ideally, this would be very fast, even transparent to the user, but the way the modern ad exchanges work (a story for another day) always has some bidders who simple serve up ads more slowly than we or our partners would find acceptable, and cutting out, putting back in, cutting out again, ad partners who are not adhering to standards is literally full time job from an entire division of an ad team. For sites that are less interactive, this is less of a problem, but we hear you guys.

We'll bring our concerns to the ad partners and see if they could be more vigilant in making sure that ad exchanges that are perpetually slow are not in our bidders list.

I am going to move this discussion to the technical issues thread so that it doesn't clog up this thread.

Cheers,

Fok.

 

[zippyh]

On iOS, try using Brave browser.

 

[Thin White Duke]

Anyone finding this site nearly unusable on mobile?

I use it on Chrome on an updated iPhone and the amount of invasive ads seems to have grown exponentially, and each page randomly refreshes while scrolling.

Yes - and whatever you do, don’t ‘pinch’ a photo on screen to enlarge it as that will set the whole cascade of page reloading into hyperactivity.

I’m neither a techie nor a businessman but with my limited knowledge it would seem that the algorhythm …

- Were getting less traffic to the site so we’re losing revenue
- Let’s add more adverts, invasively so, to realise more revenue
- But won’t that ruin the experience for all our viewers and drive them away?
- Of course not who would think such a thing?

… is only going to end one way.

FWIW I participate on another message board for fans of my football team. It’s ran as a sideline by one individual, has a similar platform, loads of active members, sub fora, etc and after over 20 years viewing haven’t had anything like the crap that’s happened to SF in recent months.

 

[hpreston]

Hey guys, sorry you guys are having trouble. Fwiw, I’m on an old IPhone SE and streaming a live chess game at the same time, and having no issues, so at least for me, there doesn’t seem to be either a server or user side problem. Could you please contact @admin with your ip, hardware, software, and version info, etc… and he can investigate? If the site is slowing down so much for you, of course I don’t mind you guys using an ad blocker, but we’d hope to be able to fix things in our end. For context, ad rates dropped by about 30% between 2022 to 2023, and then another 20% between 2023-2024 for a variety of reasons, across the entire industry (the reason that say, the NYT has a coupon page and straight up ad emails as well) and we had to increase the number of ads just to keep the doors open. We held out as long as possible, but as a small business, it became untenable to run a deficit month after month.

Been having similar issues for months.

Page reloaded several times just trying to read this post.

I’ve messaged with admin with phone platform (iPhone 15 pro, software versions etc.) sometimes things improve slightly, then back to same issues.

It’s been like this for months for me. I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

You are not the only one.

 

[LA Guy]

Been having similar issues for months.

Page reloaded several times just trying to read this post.

I’ve messaged with admin with phone platform (iPhone 15 pro, software versions etc.) sometimes things improve slightly, then back to same issues.

You are not the only one.

Sorry about that. It seems that the issues are mostly with iOS on Chrome, so we are looking into that specifically. I put this into the "urgent" file as our core users are always our number one concern, if just for selfish reasons - this is pretty much the only platform that I use. I am not sure what are the exact issues, but I do have some ideas about solutions if my premises are correct. Implementation will depend on what we are capable of doing with various moving pieces.

 

[mhip]

Safari on my iPhone 15 pro. The site works perfect...

 

[Thin White Duke]

Been having similar issues for months.

Page reloaded several times just trying to read this post.

I’ve messaged with admin with phone platform (iPhone 15 pro, software versions etc.) sometimes things improve slightly, then back to same issues.

You are not the only one.

One more thing. I usually view the site on my phone in landscape mode as I’m a two thumb typist.

With the SF banner across the top, then an inevitable banner ad, then another pop up add across the bottom it’s like viewing the site through a very narrow letterbox.

But adding insult to injury, when you click on the X on the pop up ad at the bottom of the page it refuses to disappear. Sometimes it ‘flinches’ so you know you hit the X, sometimes the X even turns black momentarily, but the ad remains. Click on the X over and over and it might finally disappear but there’s an equal chance that instead the ad itself opens up and now you’re viewing the website of some bloody car dealership! I’m starting to believe that this is some deliberate ploy on the part of ad creators to force you into viewing their website which are a pox on modern life!😀

 

[edmorel]

I don’t mind the ads as much as a business needs money to operate, so it’s either that or a membership fee. My issue is I sometimes try to click on something, but instead it redirects me to an ad. Or I’m posting something and the site refreshes and I lose what I was writing and I also get the eventual redirects/refresh that leads to a blank error page. I’m on whatever iPhone is the last generation and whatever the last safari update is.

 

[ppk]

On iOS, try using Brave browser.

THIS 👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽

 

[Thin White Duke]

How do I stop getting alerts for f**king Luxe Swap?
It’s bad enough the plethora of ads ruining the SF experience without you becoming an unabashed shill for this eBay crap as well.