Would someone tell Rip to make the ads a bit smaller? This is ridiculous. Not one of the other major forums has ads taking up this much space. Either that or we deserve a forum program upgrade - spam blockers, take the flood control off the search function, etc.

I have to admit that the 'new look' with all these ads have made it less attractive to me to come to the forum. I find them very distracting, and they take 'the fun' out of the forum. Smaller would be good indeed.

Yes, I was going to say the same thing. This COMPLETELY sucks. These ads are like a cancer, slowly taking over the entire site.

Doesn't bother me...

But Matt's upgrade suggestions would be nice.

not to mention, banner ads are the #1 security risk as a way hackers can crash sites and infect your pc.

NEVER, ever buy anything online which you access via a banner ad or ad-server. hack-ads can setup and look legit, so you purchase your item and next thing you know your credit/debit card is cleaned out and wire-transfered thru so many accounts by a guy in Singapore they will never track it down.

sortof like if someone calls you at home and asks for your credit card to buy a magazine or make a donation...would you? no, of course not. well, clicking a banner ad and buying something is pretty much the same level of boneheaded move.


Knowing that, defeats the purpose of having ads on the site, right? well, no. there are plenty of compulsive clickers out there I suppose, so the dry hooks remains in the water waiting for the occational fish going after something shiney. - and if you have enough hooks in the water....


so, yes I agree - banner ads cheapen a site. It's an unimaginative way to produce income to a website. In order to increase a website's value, you don't increase the banner-ad real esate. That will have the opposite effect in the long-term.

Less people visiting = less worth of the ad space.

The way to increase revenue is to increase the quality of information contained on the site - in this case, the subject of martial arts. Thereby increasing visit hits and increasing the quality of sponsorship, decreasing the need for being supported by cheap banner marquis.

so what a MA website should be doing is working on the quality and depth of articles they put out on the front page.

i agree these ads are way too big

it would certainly be nice if they were scaled down a bit.

Making the actual forum smaller to allow for more advertising space is a bone headed thing to do. The designers of this site have lost touch with things and just looking at some of the advertisements leads me to believe that they couldn't care a less if this was a martial art site or not. Somebody should be ashamed.