done :D
Having to buy premium membership in order to protect yourself from (oftentimes) malicious, obstructive, disruptive, or performance tanking advertisements sounds a lot like extortion, if you ask me. Other than sketchy adult websites, where else do I have to pay money to remove ads that would otherwise present performance issues that make the site unusable?Yes, I know other sites have premium memberships that give you an ad free experience, but here's the difference: WoWhead's advertisements are performance reducing to the point of making the site neigh unusable at times, are oftentimes malicious, and execute ludicrous amounts of background scripts. This isn't acceptable.
im in)
The whole malicious advertising thing is shadier than the back corner of a privy in a coal mine.In other news..... The front page does need an update.Maybe windowshade the useful but not everybody wants to see it stuff.Heck you could even put up the schedules from older content that a significant minority of players still like to access.
Thank you, WoWhead!
Here's hoping you read my submission and find some use from the suggestions. Speaking of which, it would be nice if we could see the feedback at some point, probably after the results are in or whatever. I'd like to see the ideas the member come up with, how many coincide with similar suggestions, and whether any of these get acted on in the long run.You can keep it anonymous if you like, but would be nice to see what others are thinking.EDITJust read through the comments already posted, and figured i should edit this with a little spoiler on the final question - you guessed it, it was advertising related. Let me point out though, that advertising itself isn't a bad thing. Any company that wants to throw money at this website in order to keep it running is fine by me.It's the type of advertising that's the real issue. Pop-out advertisements that obscure page content, audio/video advertisements, virus-ridden flash advertisements, and many others - all these are more detrimental to the website and it's member base than any revenue they might bring in. Bring back the classic static advertisments, simple banners and clickables, and get rid of the annoying, resource hogging, malware-based trashverts we have been getting recently.All advertisements generate the interest for the client and revenue for the host, and simple ones do this with none of the drawbacks. It's fine to make cash to support the site, and even a little for your pockets on top - but at the risk driving off a good-sized portion of the fan-base coz these toxic trashverts make navigating the site a nightmare/lag-fest? Better to return to the low-pull stuff. After all, the simple things in life are often the best. Just saying..
Hey guys,Just wanted to drop a line about the Advertising FAQ. Efforts are generally slower than the content/dev team would like, but in that thread, we've documented our efforts such as hiring additional staff, ad screening software, and A/B testing which has led to other networks, and channels within networks. The ad screening software proactively looks for malware across all sites (not just Wowhead) served by various ad channels, things like gold selling ads, and other non-malware, but annoying ads. We have also set up an 'iframe sandbox' that proactively shuts down some of the ads that are prone to redirecting, before they load.We did notice a stability change in recent weeks - after some A/B testing, we opened up a new configuration on 90% of pages and it seems to remove the crashes within 15 min on certain computer setups. Still experiencing crashes after many hours on the site and we have another A/B test running this weekend to try to narrow down the issue further.If you have experienced improvements within the last few weeks (eg if the site doesn't crash in 15 min) please let us know. Over the summer we had a lot of the behind-the-scenes updates like staff hiring and the ad screening software, which while useful, didn't lead to an immediate visible difference - but we hope the change in provider and channels has led to something more visible and promising change.
Everyone! I think wowhead gets the comments about the ads and thats the number one problem. But what else could they do to improve the site to make it smoother or cleaner or faster with less link clicks, more guides, more giveaways, etc...?I forgot to add this to the survey, so I will put it here. (It wont let me retake or update the survey on my PC to add these things).I also find it kind of annoying that they keep advertising the tier gear, we saw it once , why keep showing it? First its all together in one article and then later as it gets closer to raid time, they do one article for each class of tier gear. Its really unnecessary. You could just re-link the article within an article or just mention a comment about it or even just put it with the new raid stuff as the raid comes out. I think the blue post should just be a link to another page that shows the blue posts. As well as the links to recent news, i mean its redundant and we could just scroll down to see the articles.In my opinion, I think that having a Blizzard article of all things blizzard once a month or not at all. I mean I dont mind telling us that a wow character made it into heroes of the storm, but I really dont want to know whats happening in overwatch (or whatever game) on wowhead. I mean wowhead is for wow stuff and some blizzard related news, but for overwatch i could just go to overking to read up about it, why do I need to see it on a wowhead article on what overwatch is doing...? I dont really play other blizzard games, but I'm sure overking doesnt have much about wow on there! Otherwise we could rename wowhead to Blizzhead! lol XD I wish there were more up and coming artists with stuff like the tsumes tsumes, woodmakers, accessories or clothes, cosplayers, or even new twitch or youtubers that do shows or guides or machinema or parodies, etc.Also, maybe a giveaway for a rare mount or pet during the new gold guides? That way new aspiring goblins could keep it or sell it to make a profit.I also wish they could do guides or even showcase addons or other wow websites, like petopia and undermine journal. But I'm sure there would be a Blizzard ToS or Wowhead reason on advertising them, especially if not vetted properly.Many people also enjoy the challenging riddles we did for the holidays, maybe do that as a monthly thing to enter in for the giveaways?I really like how wowhead put events, giveaways, ptr, etc because its easy to pick stuff out, even though i read everything anyway XD.
Personally I'd like to see 'This week in WoW history' be a about all Blizz history.
Expanding upon the Wowhead Model Viewer would be my #1 suggestion. Adding the features that WoWModelViewer currently has to the Wowhead Model Viewer along with the ability to apply NPC pieces of gear to any model (for example: applying High Inquisitor Whitemane's gear to an undead) would be sweet.
Honestly the site is great now! I get all the info I need at the click of a button, but improvements are always great! Keep of the great work Wowhead!
On the home page, Fisherfriend is not reporting the correct NPC. It's a day behind. I also wish the Fisherfriend npc page, would display their vendor wares.
I Love these kind of give aways.