Spinning Discs Instead of Ads

[Ash]

Andrew,

I see spinning "WAIT" discs instead of ads here on the site.
Not that I love ads or anything.  But since they're your bread and butter, I figured I'd mention it to you.

Your ads sometimes don't appear.  Sometimes they do.

[Trevor]

I've also got these, Ash: I was wondering if there were movie clips waiting to load or something like that.

[Psycho Circus]

Me too! I never really pay attention to the ads, only the Smokey The Bear one and that cool Spiderman one, but now it's loading discs, I can't help being distracted...

[Andrew]

I recently made some major changes to the ad serving on the site.  It should really reduce the load on the server.  It looks like everything is still functioning properly. 

What I believe you are seeing is that you have completely "defaulted" through the ad networks, and they stopped attempting to serve you ads.  When you are checking all the threads you use up the number of ads that the ad networks will send to a single visitor.  Right now I do not have any "final default" option  - mostly because I have not found an ad network for the end of chain that is not filled with flashing and annoying ads.

The one that should have a "final default" all the time is the footer - which goes through to Google.

Hopefully the wait discs (they are a background image as a placeholder until the ad arrives) are not too distracting?

[Trevor]

Hopefully the wait discs (they are a background image as a placeholder until the ad arrives) are not too distracting?

No, they're not distracting at all ~ I was also thinking that a video of that weird 80's group Dead Or Alive was going to start: maybe their hit "You Spin Me Right Round"? 

[Psycho Circus]

Dead Or Alive are great! 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cHm-k5rRcww

[ToyMan]

from time to time, it seems like these "spinning discs" or some sort of dynamic content here on the forums is causing my browser, firefox, to freeze. anyone else?

[Andrew]

from time to time, it seems like these "spinning discs" or some sort of dynamic content here on the forums is causing my browser, firefox, to freeze. anyone else?

The discs definitely shouldn't be causing the issue, as they are just background .gifs that the ads cover once loaded.  The way I have the ads work the whole page loads, then the ads load so that they don't slow down the page.  It is possible that a rogue ad could be causing your browser to freeze.  I haven't encountered it yet.  When did you start having the problem?

[ToyMan]

roughly, 2 to 4 weeks ago.