I mean it's just £5... I came here as newb about 18 months ago, saw the ads were annoying but thought it was a friendly informative forum and it was worth paying the fiver to stop them and support the place. We're all Ducati owners aren't we? I think we are good for it.
I can't understand why anyone won't stump up the £5, the site is so useful and entertaining. Lets face it, nobody on here running one or often several Ducatis can't afford £5 a year. But mainly, I can't understand why anyone thinks they have the right to access for free in the first place. Do you get free use of the Gym? Do you play Golf for Free? Is the Beer free at the pub? You get 365 days worth of 24/7 access to a great resource on your hobby for the cost of what just a single edition of a monthly magazine on the subject would have cost you 10yrs ago, and you'd read that in an hour or two. You have a choice really, but I won't spell it out.
good points but again I don’t think the Op was saying he expected it to be free, and none of the comments have. It’s about it having a balance of ads and being usable. I don’t care, I subscribe but tbh I get a lot less out of the site than others seem to as I don’t come here for politics.
I understand that new visitors to the site won't stump up £5 immediately, and need to have the opportunity to browse for free to judge if they want to subscribe, but putting up with the adverts whilst you do that is surely just taken for granted these days. I'm even tempted to say that making it slightly difficult to browse for free encourages the payment of the £5, and I've no problem with that. The situation isn't unique to this site, it's the same on all forums I use for my other hobbies. Drawing another comparison with the monthly magazine, these days you pay @£8 for a magazine that's 1/2 full of adverts, now that is taking the Piss.
I agree with the deluge of adverts when not a subscriber. On the 'no-subs' day of subscription expiration recently the site was, as @bradders says, unusable. Adverts spilling over everything! If I had found the site after an internet search for tech stuff, the advert avalanche would probably have put me off going any further - even tho' the £5 subs is a very cheap yearly cost I use the American TriumphRat forum as a registered user (without subscription because I'm too tight to pay up - it's a load more than £5). However the advertising isn't at all intrusive; on my PC/laptop the ads are all off to one side and on the phone they are not troublesome. Yes, I realise that there's a much larger number of potential subscribers and/or responders to ads in the USA, so perhaps this is how they keep the ads in check. Here's an example page: https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/...3&nested_view=1&sortby=oldest#post-2004482233
For example; https://www.proboards.com/ Cant be that hard and for $50/mth you can seemingly transfer all the old stuff from here over to a new host (maybe leave speakers corner to the anus of the internet) . Just needs a few techy types to chip in which i'm sure we're not short of. Im happy to help where i can even if its just a different subscription.
I just logged out to browse on my phone to see how the adds are. I found it ok. I can collapse the adds and I was able to read this thread to the end and all the other adds were there at the bottom of the page similar to reading news articles I got a full page add which I declined between looking at new posts.
ive saved more than 5 quid with the advice here. and ive made mates. i dont pay for other forums like pistonheads but its become crap if this is a about new users then give them a 4 week ad free trial period once they sign up now lets talk about getting me back on track and tricking up my 749 and getting my 999r on the road for the first time since i bought it in april!
Revenue from all the advertisers I suspect. Unfortunately the tactic of weaponizing advertising is rolling out across the internet. You Tube is the same now, damn near unusable on the phone. Subscription to this site used to mean you had access to the for sale area, which was fair enough.
Prime now has advertising you can pay an extra £2.99 a month on top of £8.99 a month to stop adverts! Thats over a £100 a year £5 a year here seems a bargain I pay more in coffee
Hi. Yes I agree! Can any one help an old non techy where or how to subscribe? Any guidance would be much appreciated. Thank you.
It must be possible to do it ad free - the 'break away renegade' forum is ad free to anyone visiting. I guess the ads are part of an income stream for the site owner (rob)? That said, what's a fiver? Loose change these days. Mind you, there are some good points made above, all the ads to non-subscribers are, very possibly, off putting, to new potential members.
I I lurked there and made a few posts but I found it dull as ditchwater. Can’t say I found the ads intrusiv, though, if my memory serves me right.
And that’s the point. The server costs need to be paid somehow. Either advertisers pay towards it or if you don’t want to see the adverts then members pay the princely sum of five earth pounds a year towards it. and I don’t think think that £5 a year is taking the piss at all for all the good technical stuff and banter that you find here. Many other sites charge way more.
