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Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 7:53 am
by serowe
Getting there - just that BIG 33k cloudy/sun image to fix now
BTW - what are the ads doing on the bottom of the page??
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 9:20 am
by daj
serowe wrote:BTW - what are the ads doing on the bottom of the page??
I use AdBlock on my browser, so I never get to see these annoying things!

Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 9:29 am
by Gina
I do too.
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 9:30 am
by serowe
I don't - but it is surprising how many people put them on and then block ads from every site they visit (forgetting about their own!)
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 9:31 am
by daj
I do wonder what benefit people think they get from these ads. Let's face it, to make any money from displaying these you need thousands of hits to your site each day
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 9:50 am
by serowe
One of my sites used to average around 10-15000 unique visitors a day during the Australian motor racing season and was of the top 3 ranked motor racing sites at the time (world wide!)- over a 3 month period I earnt a grand total of $0.12 - yep - 12 cents!
The downside - despite me putting heavy restrictions on the type of ad that could be show, for a schools event (read all competitors were under the age of 17) the ads from Google were delivering dating and many other inappropriate ads...
The people who run sites with these ads on forget one thing - they have to be clicked on to earn money!
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 11:17 am
by pacificblue03
Well im using Adsense and i have had 6 clicks and have made $7.45 for the 6 clicks so thats not too bad but i need more traffic thats all
So about those forecast images 33k i saw does it really bother you that much? i really like them
Antonio.
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 11:38 am
by serowe
Not a case of 'bothering me' - my point is that they are the FIRST thing you see on the WEATHER page and, in order to see the WEATHER, you have to scroll down.
They are large, ugly (personal opinion) and don't really tell you anything constructive. Plus (seeing as we are 'dissecting' the web page' nadly placed (you have a single image left justified - it should at least be centred).
Whether it is 33k or 33M the point here is that IF you are forcing the user to download these images every time you load or refresh the page it is 33k for EACH image, not just one. As you pointed out earlier when you were throttled - most ISP's throttle (in Oz at least) to 64k - so work out what is going to slow down the loading of the page.
Personally - move the icons/images to a page of their own. They detract from the thrust behind the main page - ie to deliver informaiton not nice pictures.
As you play with it more and more you will get a feel what looks good vs what loads fast.
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 1:23 pm
by beteljuice
Ah throttling - just like when the web crawled along even slower than it does now
How quickly we forget (or some aren't old enough to know) that 600px animated loops are not a good idea (not on 'the home page' anyway).
Having said that, a page without graphics is boring and pretty much unacceptable now.
So ..........
Learn how to do 'good' code, and "crunch" graphics, learn how to have background gradients that are eg. 1px wide.
eg. here is your original 28k picture crunched to 6k (and a bit)
forecast2.png
Every 'saving' adds up and makes your pages load more quickly.
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 1:34 pm
by steve
pacificblue03 wrote:Well im using Adsense and i have had 6 clicks and have made $7.45 for the 6 clicks so thats not too bad but i need more traffic thats all
Hmmm... I wonder if this counts as breaking the Cumulus 'no commercial use' licence

Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 2:05 pm
by pacificblue03
steve if it does please let me know it will be gone in 2 minutes!
Also wow how did my graphic get down to 6kb??? thats wow
Antonio.
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 3:34 pm
by beteljuice
Also wow how did my graphic get down to 6kb??? thats wow
Plenty of on-line stuff, and freebies for your PC.
Do web search on image optimizer, note US spelling [urgh] (or see what your current graphics prog. can do)
Personally I use something that's been around a long time (paid for !)
xat.com Image Optimizer
But lots of people seem to get good results with Googles freebie
Picassa
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 8:50 pm
by serowe
steve wrote:pacificblue03 wrote:Well im using Adsense and i have had 6 clicks and have made $7.45 for the 6 clicks so thats not too bad but i need more traffic thats all
Hmmm... I wonder if this counts as breaking the Cumulus 'no commercial use' licence

It would be stretching it to try and include this as 'commercial' use. Even using Cumulus on a commercial site would be stretching the term a lot.
Besides - if it came down to saying having advertising on your page (for anything and placed there by any means) is breaking the Cumulus 'no commercial' terms, then you would HAVE to extend that to ANY site that is hosted on a .com, .co.uk, .com.au etc etc as these are ALL, by definition, commercial domains.
Personally I wouldn't even be attempting to open this Pandora's Box - not even jokingly...the backlash could help kill a damn good product.
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 8:55 pm
by steve
Re: Ballina nsw weather V2.0
Posted: Fri 03 Dec 2010 11:12 pm
by pacificblue03
ok im very sorry i will remove the adds NOW i didnt now sorry.......
Antonio.