White space on left hand side of page

[gustavo]

Seeing a load of blank space on the left hand side of every page

Using Firefox 3.0.14


http://i33.tinypic.com/353cwti.jpg

[Dunny]

Same here. IE8

[John83]

Me too. I cleared my cookies. No change. Firefox 3.5.3 here.

[A face]

I think Adams doing a bit of work so i'm guessing he knows this.

[dahamsta]

I'm experimenting with different ad types. They don't load in immediately for some reason. The ad at the bottom is gone too. I'll tidy it up tomorrow.

[thischarmingman]

Yeah, it's frying my head!

:)

[Magicme]

Phew thought there was something else wrong with my laptop.

[dahamsta]

Regular users should be seeing ads in that space now. Club members shouldn't.

[micls]

Regular users should be seeing ads in that space now. Club members shouldn't.

Stll white space for me Adam.

[passinginterest]

Are the ads/whitespace staying on the left? It's pretty awful, even the right hand side would be more bearable.

*nevermind seems to be gone now. :)

[Keen2win]

If those ads stay on the left for us "regular" (No money) users I'll be fit to kill!

:D

[dahamsta]

Whitespace is gone for members now passinginterest.

Keen2win, I need more than that for change. If you're saying they're worse than that ones at the top, you need to explain why. Foot.ie is a busy site that uses lots of bandwidth, which needs to be paid for somehow. I accept that a balance need to be struck between visibility and annoyance, but making ads more inconspicuous is counter-productive, somebody's got to click them and that's not going to happen if they're hidden away.

adam

[dahamsta]

BTW, I guarantee that no further banner ads will be added to the site, and you can backreference this post in future if you wish. They may move around a bit, but there'll never be more than 3 banner ads.

[Keen2win]

It just looks awful in fairness and you have to scroll accross the screen to see all the page so it's an annoyance! I'd say it would put people off coming onto the site! But if it has to be done, it has to be done I suppose!

[dahamsta]

You must have a very low resolution Keen2win, the banner ads just 130 pixels to the page width, which leaves 894px for the rest of the page. (Most modern websites use 960px containers to target monitors with resolutions of 1024px and higher.) Foot.ie is fluid with a large area set aside for content, so anyone with that res or even slightly lower should be ok.

I've attached the Google Analytics data for screen resolution for last month, which shows that the top 10 screen resolutions account for 92.52% of visitors, and 88.26% of users in that top 10 have a resolution of 1024px and higher. If you extend this out to 50 resolutions and take into account that many smaller resolutions will be on mobile platforms, the number reaches nearly 95%. That's a pretty hefty majority imho.

(I didn't just do this on a whim.)

[Keen2win]

You must have a very low resolution Keen2win, the banner ads just 130 pixels to the page width, which leaves 894px for the rest of the page. (Most modern websites use 960px containers to target monitors with resolutions of 1024px and higher.) Foot.ie is fluid with a large area set aside for content, so anyone with that res or even slightly lower should be ok.

I've attached the Google Analytics data for screen resolution for last month, which shows that the top 10 screen resolutions account for 92.52% of visitors, and 88.26% of users in that top 10 have a resolution of 1024px and higher. If you extend this out to 50 resolutions and take into account that many smaller resolutions will be on mobile platforms, the number reaches nearly 95%. That's a pretty hefty majority imho.

(I didn't just do this on a whim.)

I must have so!

[Dunny]

Thankfully I'm not on the notebook anymore!

[Keen2win]

Actually seems to be ok now! Sorry bou that Dahamsta!

[dahamsta]

Probably just a caching problem from when I was making the changes then.

[Acornvilla]

i think if you move the banner to the right hand side it would look better? im blind in my right eye so i see mostly the left side of the screen properly so is just annoying me but i'll live:D

[Dunny]

I agree it would be better on the right.

[dahamsta]

Moving it to the right-side to make it less obtrusive is kinda counter-productive lads. The ads aren't there for decoration like. If it was all about aesthetics, they wouldn't be there at all.

[Acornvilla]

Moving it to the right-side to make it less obtrusive is kinda counter-productive lads. The ads aren't there for decoration like. If it was all about aesthetics, they wouldn't be there at all.

were not saying that they will be out of the way on the right. they would just better over there i think? butting an add just belov the top post in a thread wouldnt work would it?

[dahamsta]

Be honest with you I don't know why it would look better on the right. I put it on the left because that's how people read, left to right.

Midpage ads tend to perform badly on Foot.ie.

[dahamsta]

I'd actually forgotten about this until some tosser tried to spam my site today -- this is what Google would like me to do to Foot.ie:

http://verbo.se/google-adsense-optimisation-muppetry/
http://verbo.se/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/footie_optimised_screenshot1.jpg

Needless to say, I told them where to cram it.

[First]

Be honest with you I don't know why it would look better on the right. I put it on the left because that's how people read, left to right.

Midpage ads tend to perform badly on Foot.ie.

For €13 I don't have any issues with adds for the next 6 months:). I also get a lovely club member notice below my avatar which can be anything I want it to be , within reason. Now I am off to the private members club for some champagne.

Good value I think. Hint!

[Colbert Report]

Hook me up with a club membership. I have no problem paying extra to get rid of these ads on the left hand side. They're driving me crazy and will surely put most people off from joining the site should they stumble upon it. Dahamsta, please PM me with details about how I can purchase a club membership and I'll fire the payment off to you early next week once I'm back online, thanks.

[thischarmingman]

Hook me up with a club membership. I have no problem paying extra to get rid of these ads on the left hand side. They're driving me crazy and will surely put most people off from joining the site should they stumble upon it. Dahamsta, please PM me with details about how I can purchase a club membership and I'll fire the payment off to you early next week once I'm back online, thanks.

http://foot.ie/club/

[dfx-]

firefox ad-block = white space = no ads :cool:

[Dunny]

firefox ad-block = white space = no ads :cool:

= Dahamsta going mad.

[dahamsta]

Can't do anything about it, but I will say that if everyone ran AdBlock, Foot.ie wouldn't be here.

[rambler14]

The new layout is crap!

[dahamsta]

I'm not going to respond to criticism like that here, if it's not constructive it's of no use to me.

I'd add that vB4 is coming out in 1-2 months and it'll all change again then anyway. However the skyscraper ad is likely to remain either way, as the site simply isn't paying for itself any more. It either has to run with ads or not at all, I'm not running a charity here.

adam

[John83]

I'm not going to respond to criticism like that here, if it's not constructive it's of no use to me.

I'd add that vB4 is coming out in 1-2 months and it'll all change again then anyway. However the skyscraper ad is likely to remain either way, as the site simply isn't paying for itself any more. It either has to run with ads or not at all, I'm not running a charity here.

adam
As a member, I've not been seeing this skyscraper ad or whitespace since shortly after it went in. I do think the layout is unappealing (though there's always a reaction like that to any change to the familiar).

I wonder: how many members would you need at any given time to make the site pay for itself, and so consider making the ads less conspicuous for non-members? How many have you now?

[dahamsta]

I haven't done the maths John83, Club membership was always intended as a booster so I haven't even considered it. Give the takeup, it's not really an option anyway.

We'll see what vB4 looks like, and how Google performs in the interim. TBH I'd prefer to drop the Google ads altogether and run with private ads like the FAI shop one. They have the double-whammy of being more relevant for users, and more profitable for Foot.ie. I wasn't really geared up for it in the past, but setting up for Carrolls has been an education for me.

adam

[tricky_colour]

It looks better if you navigate to another site - lol.

[Dunny]

Sorry for being stupid in this department, but if I click on an add on foot.ie does the site get money or what?:confused::o

[John83]

Sorry for being stupid in this department, but if I click on an add on foot.ie does the site get money or what?:confused::o
Yes. It's small - a few cent for the google ads*, but it adds up. Google monitor for suspicious activity though, so don't go clicking one a day or something, but if you see something that might interest you...

*Dahamsta has indicated that it may be more substantial for others.

[dahamsta]

Our in-house ad pricing is here (http://foot.ie/forums/showthread.php?t=125607). AdSense revenues are way, way below this, and in fact their figures are way, way under what my ad-serving system are saying. There's something seriously wrong there.

[Dunny]

Much much better on the rh side.

[Colbert Report]

The white space is now on the right hand side of my screen. Much better now.