Ghacks is dying and needs your help
When I started ghacks.net in 2005 I never imagined what a ride it would be. The site became popular quickly and allowed me to quit my day job to become a full time blogger.
This worked well for the first years and Ghacks went from one high to the next.
I have always operated Ghacks on my own. When the site took off, I was able to hire others to add different perspectives to the site. Jack Wallen for instance who ran the Linux section here on this site and contributed more than 900 articles to it.
But 2011 changed that.
Google introduced new algorithms that turned the world upside down. Popular great sites such as Freeware Genius or Raymond.cc fell victim to that as well and many others are suffering up until this very day from what Google introduced back then while some don't even exist anymore.
Ghacks felt the change as well and traffic dropped since then by more than 60%. This was also the time when it became clear that the site could not sustain multiple writers anymore.
It felt undeserved seeing great sites being affected by algorithms that use a definition of quality that feels far off from reality at times, especially since massive networks and sites that cover every imaginable topic thrived even more than before.
I tried a lot to increase the perceived quality of the site. Removed some advertisement, rewrote hundreds of articles, installed a new theme, removed more than 10,000 tags and a dozen other things but none brought the desired result (a reversal of the process).
In addition to that, ad blockers and script blockers became increasingly popular. Since advertisement is what keeps this site alive, a yearly increase between 5 and 10% in ad-block usage is not something that you can endure for long especially if it goes hand in hand with a decline in traffic.
Currently, between 42% and 44% of all users use blockers when they visit the site and if the trend continues, more than 50% might before the end of the year.
If you take these two factors together, it is only a matter of time before ad revenue won't be sufficient to pay for the site's upkeep anymore.
Advertisement is dying in its current form. While I could make a quick buck throwing popups, auto-playing videos or other nasty stuff at you, I'd never do that.
Heck, those are the things that make people use ad-blockers in the first place and as much as I like this site to survive, I like to protect the integrity of this site and you from these diabolical monetization methods even more.
Advertisement won't be sufficient to keep this site up and there is not really much out there that I could implement or try instead to make sure this site is not taken off the Internet in the next year.
I could sell blog posts, and believe me I get enough offers for those, but never ever sold a single blog post here on this site.
The Solution
Don't get me wrong, I won't give up easily. I thought about possible solutions and there is one that I think could work. In fact, it is the only viable solution that I think might work as it makes this site independent of advertisement and traffic.
Patreon is a relatively new service where people support content creators by giving money directly to them.
It starts as low as $1 per month and gets as high as you want it to be. This money is independent of advertisement revenue or search engine traffic.
If 5% of all visitors of this site would give $1 per month, we won't have this conversation ever again and Ghacks will be there until I'm too old to write articles for it.
This link takes you to the Ghacks Patreon page
Update: If you prefer to make a one-time payment feel free to send money using PayPal. The ID is martin@mysega.de
I understand that this is not for everyone and that is fine.
But if you like this site and would like to see it be there for you in the future, then this is probably the best option to ensure that.
I don't know if this will work at all, if enough of you are willing to support me to keep this site alive but I will do my best to ensure that you will never regret it if you decide to do so.
Other options
Patreon is certainly not an option for all visitors of this site. If you don't want to become a member there then there is still something that you could do to help this site out.
- If you are running an ad-blocker or script-blocker, you could whitelist ghacks.net. This site has never run annoying ads: no popups, popunders, audio or video ads that play automatically, full page ads, overlay ads and god knows what else there is that annoys Internet users. Whitelisting helps as many ads pay per cpm. Even if you never click on those ads, it helps pay the bills of this site.
- Spread the word about this site. Tell friends, colleagues and family about it if you think it is a good fit. Share it if you are active on social media sites and don't mind doing that.
Both of these options help out tremendously as well.
Closing Words
I had a great time running this site and met lots of great knowledgeable people, and for that I'm forever thankful. I'm not only talking about the authors who wrote for this site throughout the years but also each and every reader who left a comment on this blog, via email or social media sites.
While I have not responded to each individually, I read them all and will continue to do so.
Thanks. So just to be clear, when donating with the PayPal link on this site, the fee is identical whether I use PayPal balance / bank account, or credit card.
So using a credit card that get’s me a percentage back is a good idea?
To answer my own question: There is a much smaller fee when paying directly from PayPal Balance or Bank Account than from a credit card.
PayPal is actually showing the fee to the donor. For some reason I thought that would be hidden.
When donating with PayPal, how much does PayPal take?
Is it purely a percentage (in which case several small payments should be as good as one large)?
Is there a difference when paying with PayPal, if it is linked to a bank account or a credit card?
PayPal takes 2.9% plus $0.30 in the US. There is also additional fees for international payments. It is better to make one large donation than several smaller ones because of that.
There is no fee when you send using PayPal money or a linked bank account if you send to “friends or family” in your country. See https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-are-the-fees-for-paypal-accounts-faq690
Just sent you 12 euros, Martin. Don’t give up. Most USEFUL site for IT on the net. Thanks.
Thank you very much!
Can you give us an update how the current status is? Thanks :)
Great site, I start here almost every morning. No more adds blocked here. Thank You for your time and site.
Take Care.
Ghacks just whitelisted on Adblock Plus. Visit often, make Martin rich!
Don’t need that, just enough to survive and keep the site up ;)
A whirlwind in a tea glass; that is, there is no REAL reason for worry with Patreon in light of the fact that, albeit one of their NON-generation server’s WAS hacked, they both found and reacted to it quickly. Additionally, their standard practices are extremely strong and they solidly assert that no valuable data was at danger. By and by, despite everything I feel totally safe utilizing them to keep supporting this advantageous site.
A whirlwind in a tea container; that is, there is no REAL reason for worry with Patreon in light of the fact that, albeit one of their NON-creation server’s WAS hacked, they both found and reacted to it quickly. In addition, their standard practices are extremely strong and they solidly guarantee that no valuable data was at danger. By and by, regardless I feel completely safe utilizing them to keep supporting this advantageous site.
Is it really necessary to have two autoplay, endlessly repeating, Sekindo videos on every page?
A static ad is fine, but autoplay videos sum up all that is wrong with advertising, and guarantee the growth of adblocking.
i personally love ad blockers. i block everything. makes for a nice clean page. The internet started free and should remain free. why do u think people pirate tv shows? Mainly to get rid of the gd commercials. that’s why i use ad blockers. i dont want to see commercials on my internet. i want to get right to the content. and honestly if a site depends on ads to operate then it should never be online anyway. we shouldnt be forced to see these stupid things just because someone wants to make money. many scream about needing money to only keep the site up…but that is just a bold lie. there are many free options for blogging sites these days and it should be done in someone’s spare time…not as their main job. look at all the idiots on youtube making videos talking to themselves while they game doing picture in picture…and stupid people watch this crap. why? its the demise of mankind i believe. go play the game yourself. my friends 8 year old can’t play one online game without calling out everything he does even when no one is around…he just does it because he see’s it. he’s an idiot and i make him be quiet when he plays. sites with ads are very similar to the youtube thing. the pages scream at you with animated repeating things that steal your bandwidth and try to make you memorize a repeating pattern so that you make a purchase sooner or later. its simple mind tricks and manipulation. those who make these ads should be shot and those that put these ads on their site should meet a similar fate. lets make the net free again and stop giving into corporate greed…we don’t need all the junk that is out there to bu, we dont need the latest and greatest anything…lets just be people again and stop all the bullshit. thank you and fuck off. LOL…lovies!!!
I have whitelisted ghacks. :) But one thing that concerns me is that, the ads take a long time to load, thus burning up my data plan. Can you do something about this?
I have a special thing going for October, but some of the ads will be gone after this month.
Unfortunately there’s some very frustrating news that backs up my concern over online payments.
Patreon hacked
http://m.slashdot.org/story/300697
That link does point to info that contradicts my assertions and shows Patreon to have been grossly negligent. Thanks… I guess. :-( However, since they have access to no more about me than an email address and a payment processor three steps removed from my money; and, since Martin refuses to tell me his home address to which I can send my checks, I’ll continue to use Patreon to support this site.
A tempest in a tea cup; that is, there is no REAL cause for concern with Patreon because, although one of their NON-production server’s WAS hacked, they both discovered and responded to it immediately. Besides, their standard practices are very robust and they credibly claim that no useful info was at risk. Personally, I still feel absolutely safe using them to continue supporting this worthwhile website.
Hmmm, impressive defense. Unfortunately they WERE hacked, which in itself is a black mark in my book. 14 GB of data HAS BEEN released online. As for their credibility, getting warned 5 days ahead of a hack and still not preventing that hack? Hmmmm
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/patreon-was-warned-of-serious-website-flaw-5-days-before-it-was-hacked/
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to have confidence in online payments, but I just don’t, with good reason. The Snowden revelations took care of that. More accurately, the response to those revelations, which essentially amounts to “oh yeah, we we’re doing immoral and illegal shit … now we’ve legislated to make all that legal without going to the electorate for validation … so, no problem!”, in addition to all sorts of crypto companies and standards body vagueness since.
I was wondering how the Deals section of the site is doing https://deals.ghacks.net/ ? Are you not receiving income from it at all?
It is slowly building up but it takes time.
Whitelisted. :)
Long live Ghacks :)
Whitelisted. First time on this site and I found articles of using scanner on Linux nicely and clearly written. Good work.
Thanks for your site, and all the good work you’re doing/have done :-)
I straightforward put you in my ADb+’white list !
Do you have any cryptocurrency address?
Not really. I haven’t been very active in that area.
I do have a cryptonator.com account which is like a wallet for 10 odd different currencies.
But I don’t use it anymore so if you’re interested you can have it.
There’s nothing much in it (all currencies sum up to € 2,22) but it can be yours.
Just send me your email address and I’ll change the login email address from mine to yours and send you the password. Change that and it’s totally yours.
Roebie currently not, I still have not found time to look into this. Do you have any suggestions in this regard?
Whitelisted.
Thank you Martin for all your hardwork on this site for so many years. Keep it up.
Warren Buffet said “Never test the depth of river with both feet.†and “Do not put all eggs in one basket.â€
still if you have good traffic I mean yes you have good traffic. sell this website to any High PR agency or on flippa and start another project.
I put your site on whitelist.
Adblocker wouldn’d be so popular if all sites used discreet ads like yours.
I hope your website will last as long as you will be able to write it by yourself.
Keep on like that.
For anyone using NoScript, you can selectively whitelist ads on GHacks in two steps.
1) Add the following rule to ABE (Options-Advanced-ABE, in the USER ruleset):
Site .doubleclick.net .googleadservices.com .googlesyndication.com .googletagservices.com
Accept from .doubleclick.net .googleadservices.com .googlesyndication.com .googletagservices.com .ghacks.net
Deny
2) Whitelist doubleclick.net, googleadservices.com, googlesyndication.com, and googletagservices.com
Hi Martin, I really enjoy reading Ghacks, I learn a lot from it. I’ve whitelisted it to start with. I’d like to contribute a little financially as well, however if I contribute $1 via Patreon I’ll get charged a foreign transaction fee as well. That would be much more than $1. The last time I did something similar the transaction fee was 1.7 Euro on a 1 Euro fee. Can you not have a Paypal account for contributions as well?
Thank you JC. You can check the support page, there you find a PayPal button: https://www.ghacks.net/support/
No idea how I missed that…..I’ve sent you some cash, hope it helps!!
JC
Thank you JC ;)
Martin, if monthly web site rental is too high, Cloudflare would provide a free or low-cost solution. They do not charge for bandwidth. I’m using them for one of my web sites, which has dramatically reduced system load and bandwidth usage. It’s so light that a desktop PC in your home could be used as the origin site. For details visit https://www.cloudflare.com/
Compare plans here: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans
This would save you $280/month.
Best Regards,
Keith
Interesting. What about cpu load and ram, any restrictions on those?
None that I am aware of, Martin.
Whitelisted your site.
I would give $$ but my own household is facing economic insecurity at the moment.
BTW, I agree about Google. Google grew from that which I once loved to my loathing it to the core, accompanied by concerted efforts to block it at every turn, which makes it that much harder to whitelist any site, given Google is Everywhere. I can’t be the only one.
Damn Google, and good luck to you.
I saw something of the sort, but I figure while your ads stay reasonably unobtrusive I don’t mind contributing that way too.
You are doing your best to keep things going honestly and ethically and while that stays true I think you deserve all the support you can get. 😃
— bests, Tim
“ANAGRAMATRON, a bot created by developer Colin Rothfels but due to develop its own consciousness any second, is still in the early stages of its development. ” http://www.avclub.com/article/anagramatron-reveals-twitters-hidden-synchronicity-208114
Replace ads with bots that generate new content. If more ads don’t help, more content can’t hurt. Good luck bring home the Bacon!
I just saw an article on donationcoder.com that brought me here.
I have patreonned (if that’s a verb!) and whitelisted.
Hope it helps. Keep on keeping on!
Tim thanks so much! Not sure if you saw the post, but I can create an account for you here on the site which makes the site completely ad-free for you and may improve your spam-filter standing as well.
Just helped $10. Thanks, Martin!
Thank you so much Armond.
I’d suggest Ghacks[@Martin] to move to different trusted ad-provider other than ad-choices/anything from Google.
Google’s cookie policy is worst and controversial. So, most people won’t white-list Ghacks.
Those who have whitelisted can just change the settings of the browser – “block 3rd party cookies” to stay safe.
Thanks for your site, and all the good work you’re doing/have done :-)
I straightforward put you in my ADb+’white list !
Even though I don’t come very often, I always appreciate your site and its content !
Best regards from Geneva, Switzerland :-)
Whitelisted ;)
i use adblock just for fast loading purpose……….
now i whitelisted ur site..
sorry fo my english;)
[ASIDE] : “Don’t be evil”, seems to be a long-forgotten, quaint notion to Google:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-26/don-t-be-afraid-of-the-big-bad-google
Maybe it has nothing to do with it, but after reading your article I disabled AdBlock Plus on this site and on MajorGeeks. Immediately, I started getting this FF message at the top of the page: Firefox prevented this page from automatically redirecting to another page. I am given the opportunity to “allow” it. The first couple of days, it only happened on the two sites, but now it is everywhere.
You are being redirected away from Ghacks?
Yes. This was the first place I saw the message. Next it was MajorGeeks. Now it’s all over. I wish I could find out where it wants to redirect me, but I don’t click the Allow button. So now it is also places that aren’t whitelisted.
BTW, not blaming gHACKS. Not at all.
Ditch the ads and Google, start including bitcoin addresses with each article for donations, readers can donate to the articles they like…and you can use that as feedback for future content
Whitelisted here too – thanks for all your work Martin, and particularly for your attitude and motivations.
Directed here from Donation Coder. Whitelisted and small donation by Paypal, Thank you for good work. Greatings from Saskatchewan Canada
Came across your website when looking for the answer to a question that had been bugging me for a long time, and I finally found the answer here. Donated by paypal and shared this post on my fb page. Very grateful. Thanks!
Thanks so much, glad you found the answers you were looking for.
Done! I just becoming a Patreon. Keep it up, Martin!
Almost 90% of my knowledge about tech news are coming from this site. You did great!!!
Thank you Ademas, I really appreciate it ;)
I read thru many of the glowing Comments here, doubtless, well deserved! I’ve only visited your site a couple times, but expect to more in the future.
Have you considered “crowd funding”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_sourcing#Crowdfunding
http://www.crowdsourcing.org/about
The Very BEST of Luck to you!
Thanks!. I think Patreon is similar to crowd funding in many aspects.
Other adblock plus notifications have slow down websites. You said that you wouldn’t like to slow down website with additional scripts but it is fast as always :) keep up good work.
I use privacy badger while browsing and now I disable privacy badger for your site. You have a great site, plenty of relevant information I found here.
I often use this site and find it very useful.
I always whitelist valuable sites when it comes to ads and pop ups
My hopes are that this valuable site of useful information and help is around for future generations of computer users.
maybe more ads are needed as I don’t have a problem if I come across ads on a site I like.
Good luck Ghacks
I disabled AdBlock on Ghacks hope this help because I love Ghacks.
Thank you.
Nichts ist so beständig , wie die Veränderung …….
Höre nie auf anzufangen und fange nie an aufzuhören…..
Der Mensch wächst mit seinen Aufgaben …………………….
Und das hier ( nach all den guten Kommentaren und Zusprüchen ) ……
fängt doch tatsächlich erst an …… Mach weiter !
Irgendjemand hat mal gesagt , das man nur seine Position ( Stand )
ändern muss und die Sache aus einem anderen Blickwinkel /einer anderen Sichtweise betrachten soll …….
Und , wo sind wir dann ……….. ganz einfach … du erfährst grad ne Neuorientierung und fährst grad nen update
für den harten Kern , der übrig ist und für die , die dich und die Site neu entdecken ………………………………………
soll heißen ………………. verabschiede dich von burn out und fuck off ……………………..
lass die Veränderung passieren ……………….lass es geschehen …………………………………………………………………
Alles wird gut ….. glaube mir ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Möge die Macht mit dir sein …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Beste Grüsse und Wünsche ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Brett Pidt
I don’t know how I missed this in my RSS feed but better late then never — Patreon #92 here. You’re up to $234 now, glad to help out.
Re adblockers I’ve had ghacks.net whitelisted in AdblockPlus for years but it still seems to block ads – well it says “you are using an adblocker” right on this page so something is wrong with the whitelist function. Any ideas why?
Hi Martin,
Just used Paypal to send you some Aussie dollars.
I really like your no bull shit, straight to the point writing style and website.
Maybe a line added to my profile reminding me when I last gave money. My plan was to pay you yearly but I forgot, so a reminder would be good for a forgetful man like me.
Anyway I hope you get enough money to enjoy life and also keep the website running!
Have a good day!
Cheers
Xbat
Thanks so much. You should have received a thank you email by now ;)
Hi,
You could also use a script to detect ad blockers and show users a warning/message/incentive to whitelist or donate.
Valentijn
You could also do the wikipedia style solicitation header on every page for a while, with a link to this post.
I think this would be too distracting and I would not like that on sites I visit. Then again, I may give it a try along the road eventually but for now, I’d like to see how things are going.
Martin, I said it before and I say it again: Create a “subscriber” option for your site; i.e., for a periodic (quarterly/annually) payment/contribution in whatever amount they choose (however, say, a $10.00 minimum) , each subscriber gets to have a star/smiley-face/lightning-bolt/whatever appended to his/her name when they post a comment. All readers will still get exactly the same content but contributors will also get bragging rights. Email reminders when the “subscription” is ending would be welcomed by all, I’m sure. You, also, would then have a baseline of reasonably-expected revenue from this stream.
This would make me feel better about continuing to enjoy your work even though it rarely occurs to me to think about its cost. For example, I’m just seeing this post NINE DAYS after you wrote it! I’m almost embarrassed.
Chin up! Tough times don’t last; tough people do.
Thanks JMJ, the main issue with adding direct options to Ghacks is that it requires lots of customization.
Long-time reader of your site Martin. White-listed. I actually want ad-block only for a few websites because of their annoying or intrusive ads, and support sites like yours, but this has to be done manually and it becomes a chore after a while if one visits many websites (especially with all the settings gone after a format).
Have you considered submitting your site for consideration of “acceptable ads“, to get on the default whitelist for Adblock Plus?
Whitelisted. You are the best! Thank you!
Thank You!
I’ve read this post in my phone and it had an ad at the top suggesting to install an antivirus on my phone
Due to crap like that is why I always install an adblocker in everyone’s computer, because it’s the only way to keep them virus and Trojan free
If you read for free, why not deal with ads? Why blocking ads on a site where a writer freely providing you rich stuff?
My suggestion is to no longer read Ghacks articles on your phone. :P
I see your point. I am only 11 years old and I cannot support you via Patreon. I disabled Adblock Plus instead.
ok, now we want the new stats “ads blocked” after this post
Hi Martin,
I sympathize with you and I’m very glad to see so many readers willing to whitelist your site and support you financially in other ways.
Regarding Google traffic, have you considered splitting Ghacks out into separate sites? The reason I mention this is that Google seems to prefer niche sites focused mainly on one topic category. Those sites seem to get higher search rankings than sites that cut across multiple topics like the current version of Ghacks.
I’ve seen this with my own blog at http://jimlynch.com versus my linux reviews blog at http://desktoplinuxreviews.com. My blog at jimlynch.com has poor Google traffic compared to the Linux blog despite having articles linked to by many sites. Jimlynch.com has articles about all kinds of technology topics, it’s a jack-of-all-trades blog, but DLR focuses solely on reviews of desktop Linux, and it beats jimlynch.com hands down in terms of Google traffic.
So you may want to consider splitting Ghacks out into separate sites that focus on Windows, Android, Linux and other niches. My guess is that you’d probably see much better traffic from Google if you did that. The individual sites might start to grow again in terms of Google traffic.
You’d need separate URLs for each one: Ghacks Windows, Ghacks Linux, Ghacks Android, etc. but it’s certainly doable if you really want each topic category to do better in terms of search traffic.
I guess what I’m saying is that you might want to start thinking of Ghacks as a network of sites instead of one huge, gigantic site that covers everything. I know this would be a pain in the ass for you to deal with as you’d have to break the content out into multiple sites, but with WordPress that might not be too bad with the multi-site feature, etc.
I think the days of the mega-site that covers everything in one place are already behind us for bloggers. Niche sites are really the way to go if you want the most traffic possible for your content.
Give it some thought, I wish you well and I hope you succeed.
Jim, thanks for your comment. If there would be official confirmation for your theory, I’d consider migrating part of the site to separate domains. Sites like How To Geek, Lifehacker, Huffington Post all do well and they cover a wide range of topics.
Hi Martin,
You might want to check out Webmaster World’s section on Google SEO:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/
I think I saw some posts there a while back about it. Yes, some of the larger sites still do well. Big brands do seem to still have an advantage over smaller blogs in that sense, with the last few changes to Google’s search engine. But the niche site thing seems to be real too. Anyway, just thought I’d mention it as a possibility to consider for the future.
Gladly whitelisted. And will send a Paypal contribution.
One comment – I miss the actual pertinent subject lines on your emails. For a long time they’ve been ad lines (highlighting “Featured Free Resource” content rather than one of your articles), which makes me less likely to read you regularly.
I subscribe to only a handful of tech newsletters and while I value and *intend* to read them all, in practice I grab the ones that have something interesting to me in the subject line. Yours and a couple of others seem to use ad-related subject lines rather than content-related. Can you add back something content-related along with the ad?
Cheers,
J
JB thanks so much for your support. The newsletter is currently maintained by a third-party, I try and see what I can do.
Hi, Martin,
FYI: the Ghacks.net newsletter title today is “10 Ways Everyone Should Approach Cybersecurity in 2015” – yet there is nothing related to this in the email. One ad is for VMWare View optimization, the other is about growing your business using online marketing. None of your article summaries seem to deal with this topic either.
I did enjoy your article on the new Google Contacts preview. Very nice and exactly why I follow you.
JB
Damn, never whitelisted a site before. Ghacks is now my first ever whitelisted site.
Thank you ;)
Ghacks whitelisted. That’s the minimum we can do to thank you for your wonderful work Martin.
If needed in future, personally I’ll have no problem to pay a small fee to keep Ghacks alive.
Ciano
Thank you Cianoz.
Now -> https://www.ghacks.net/ No filtering on URL. <-
Ref.: Ad Muncher
I love your blog.
My respects Martin.
Thank you Robert.
I cannot help but wonder if people worried about whitelisting and advertiser tracking are using “smart phones”, or any cellular phone for that matter.
I have so many layers of protection against ads that I can’t manage to get any to appear here… I whitelisted the site in Adblock Edge, then allowed all in NoScript, whitelisted in Disconnect and RequestPolicy…. still no ads. Then it dawned on me: all of the redirected URLs listed in my hosts file are likely catching the advertising sites and stopping them in their tracks! Guess I’ll have to make a donation via PayPal….
Whitelist done. The ads here are really rather tastefully done. I think that I actually enjoy them. Thanks Mr. Brinkman.
Thank you!
I am using PayPal to support you. Also a suggestion. When I click the support you via PayPal link on your page, I only go to a sign up page for PayPal and do not get any information as to how to designate you as the recipient, and so had to search for this page and then search for the information martin@mysega.de. Perhaps making this information appear for anyone who clicks that link might be a good idea. Another idea: perhaps others choose the PayPal route because of a desire to not sign up at another place and get another password. Time will go by and forgetfulness cause us to not remember that support needs to be ongoing rather than one time. So perhaps you put it on your calendar to make an annual report/reminder post on how the topic of this post. Since the links are always there, and we have donated, it is easy to ignore those links thinking we have done our part, whereas an entire post would be a real reminder that support should be ongoing.
Also, thanks for your work on this excellent site. I have benefited from both your input and that of some very knowledgeable commenters who enrich your site by coming here. You are certainly capable of securing other income flows from the tech field besides this blog if worst comes to worst, but I hope it does not because clearly you love doing the blog.
I did not know that, thanks for letting me know about it. I have modified the PayPal link for now and it is now pointing to this article instead until I create a dedicated page with better information.
Whitelisted in uBlock (Cyberfox x64). Whitelisted in adblock script running in router firmware(Tomato-Shibby). I enjoy your website.
Thank you!
Can anyone tell me why Google even fuking allow AdBlock like extensions in Chrome Web Store? Is it Google itself want to support Ad blocker tool creators? In recent news I heard that, Google is paying AdBlock kind tool creators, so that they don’t block ads on Google SERP! So if Google don’t want to support its publishers, why the heck it even running its Adsense program?
Anyone has answer? Martin Brinkmann, what do you say about this?
(I am not looking for the answers like, “users like adblocker so Google allow them Chrome store”, etc.)
Donated and whitelisted, keep going and thanks for everything !!
Thank you Manos.
Whitelisted. Thanks for your great site
Thank you Skarhu.
Whitelisted.
You’re my daily go to site. As with others, I would send donation but weary of online payment. PO Box?
Thanks johne, I appreciate it. I don’t have a PO box but if you want you can send money directly to my address listed on the contacts page.
Over my Dead Body! Whitelist.
I’ll leave it go for a few weeks if you like. Donation has been on the list for awhile, so when I come back on top I’ll be more then glad to donate. Wasn’t sure if I was reading it right and got all upset before I read the article, so that has to count for something. Ad-block has been disable on Ghacks and will be until you write your very last article.
I would really like the idea of having some subscription base plan in place, there were many times I wanted to talk about things I read in the articles and couldn’t because it would’ve felt like I was spamming the comment section, when such talk could’ve been in a forum. Oh and always recommend Ghacks over any website for software tutorials even on my blog again if that counts for anything, nonetheless don’t ever scare me like that again Martin.
You’ll always have Phoney’s support, keep up the excellent work Martin.
Thank you. I plan to add more options to Patreon supporters and donators. A dedicated direct email address to reach me directly for instance. Will add a couple of pages explaining how all of this works in the next couple of days.
Whitelisted the site. I’d donate too if I wasn’t in such terrible financial shape ATM.
I’ve been reading here for years now and really appreciate your hard work.
Thank you for your support Joe!
I usually scan your RSS feed, but will click through to the actual articles more. I’ve enabled local JS and whitelisted ads here.
This place has been a great resource over the years.
Thank you CJEarner.
You should probably sticky this post in WordPress so it stays at the top on the frontpage.
You can do this by editing your post and clicking on the “Visibility” checkbox and selecting “Stick this post to the front page”.
Ray, I plan to place a link to it prominently on the site. Just have to find time to do it. I did not know that you can sticky posts to the frontpage natively in WordPress. Thanks!
Whitelisted
Oh my! A vertical scrolling banner of girls and women from meetic!!! :-D
I will keep your website whitelisted and will consider a donation
Thank you for your great work
Thomas from Italy, reader since… I don’t even remember!
Sorry for that Thomas and thanks for the white listing.
Hey Martin
Do you know if it’s possible to whitelist scripts like criteo, doubleclick, and the google ones on specific domains only? For example, gHacks.com :) I’d totally be willing to do that.
Only using noscript here, no adblockers.
ABP: Disable on ghacks.net
Done
I like ghacks .. my very first visit was 9 years later ( 2014 )
Thank you!
Is there any benefit to you if I whitelist Ghacks in AB+ and permanently allow only Ghacks.net in NoScript?
I don’t think there is a benefit to that Tuna.
Donation sent via PayPal!
Would hate to lose Ghacks!
Should have donated sooner.
Thanks
Thank you Tom!
I never ever thought about it, will whitelist your site right now. Will it be ok for you when i send you a paysafecard-code?
I never used one of those before, how does it work? Thanks for whitelisting my site.
We could add a link to you on our website http://ipposoft.com
Links should help as well but I’m very cautious about them as they can also penalize your site even more. Thank you for your offer.
May be you are an exception .. but listen very carefully if that really help you learn a new thing .. nothing is constant .. nothing is forever .. there are many giants that when started is like you asking for help .. but when they become big they forget about pioneer of their up bringing .. and hire some person who rudely behave with you .. I tell you my story .. I was a loyal user of gaming website, and after a long journey with them they become big, and hire some moderator .. without any mistake the moderator ban for nothing more than a crap fight.. after doing many mails to that company .. they ignore all of my contribution … and guess what happens ? after 5 years of broke up with that website, I got a mail .. from direct owner something like you written above (Please don’t take it personal I started with saying may be you are an exception) then I mailed him back with all my conversion but the reality is absolute and he has to pay what he had done . !! ..
I will try to support you.
Thank you
I understand that things are not forever but I don’t have a problem with finding solutions to adapt to situations.
Overly relying on search engine traffic and advertisement revenue makes you vulnerable to changes and I try to reduce the impact of that through Patreon and donations.
Ideally, it replaces the dependency on both completely.
Whitelisted but still don’t see any ads. Totally disabled ABP but still no ads on ghacks. I wish I could donate some money but apparently money transaction not working from my place.
Alexi thanks for whitelisting my site. Maybe something else is blocking the ads from showing up? You can support Ghacks in other ways as well if ads don’t work, by sharing for instance or writing comments.
I’ve tried to whitelist the site both in the past and just now. I think my protections are too strong :) Disabled ABP for this site, allowed GHacks in NoScript, hell I even allowed google analytics in NoScript and whitelisted the site in Ghostery. How much crap do I have to let through to just support your site? Do I have to whitelist googletagservices in NoScript and this allow that everywhere, just to let you serve me ads I’ll never use? Hmmm, maybe I need to try Patreon as suggested.
PD, just do what you feel comfortable with. I understand that enabling ads is not always desirable.
FWIW I only use Google to get to your site when I remember an article that I think your wrote that I want to find again and don’t think I’ve bookmarked. Otherwise I just get here via RSS. It’s unacceptable that Google can influence people’s lives so dramatically. Judging by the response on this post though, I think you’ll be ok for a while yet at least :)
Unfortunately post-Snowden I’m extremely reluctant to do online payments. I’m a webdev and I’ve been hugely reluctant to do online payments even before Snowden! But I don’t want to be too limiting. I’ll figure out some way to support your site. $12 a year is trivial. It’s barely the cost of a single monthly magazine!
I understand that. I’m a bit overwhelmed right now and don’t have time to think about other means of supporting this site apart from making an online payment via PayPal or other services like it. Bitcoin comes to mind but there are probably other services out there that one could sign up for and use without issues but I never really looked into it before.
If you come up with suggestions let me know, I’m open to all.
Whitelisted!
Thank You!
Became one of your Patreons and whitelisted the site on all my computers. I’ve been reading this blog for 5 years straight.
I will also try to send in payments via Paypal from time to time. Keep up the good work Martin!
Thank you Aron!
I disabled Adblock and Ghostery and on behalf of Franco-German friendship, I just make a donation of 20 euros. There are too few European sites of quality for not supporting Ghacks.
Nerdebeu thanks. Franco-German friendship, haha ;)
“Franco-German friendship, haha ;)”
Man of little faith ;)
Hi Martin
you are un blocked & whitelisted , I hope that helps you & with the rest of the readers getting involved.
you are part of my internet life :) superb articles & who would believe your not English
your held in high esteem ,just look at the replies !
Respectfully yours
Rick .AU
Thanks for the praise Rick ;)
I don’t understand why those algorithms hurt you. I don’t know what the background story is with that. That’s really awful they did that to you and others. Just so you know, I do tech searches through ixquick (I like it better than startpage) all the time. Your articles come up a lot – first page. I don’t think they do filter bubbles or anything- not sure if that is the problem you are having with google or not.
I know most people don’t want to hurt your revenue but we also worry about malicious ads and the tracking – it’s a moral dilemma really. Because you are such a nice guy and very humble and have helped me so much with your content, I’ve pondered about this in the past and did have you whitelisted on Adblock plus but I guess when I did a reinstall I forgot to whitelist you again. But it won’t help if javascript isn’t enabled so both has to be done correct? I would need to whitelist you on NoScript too I assume? I’ve whitelisted you on both BUT I had to whitelist you Ghostery as well and once I did Firefox is letting me know your site wants to redirect me. What’s up with that? That bothers me and I won’t allow it. Does the redirect have to do with the ad fetching? Also, your ad on the side of the page is nothing but a bunch of garbled characters for me – maybe because I won’t allow the redirect? Just thought I’d let you know. I can see a Bitdefender ad towards the top and the Remove Malware one at the bottom. They aren’t annoying at all.
I’m poor right now but in the future I would MUCH rather pay you for your work and not have ads involved. You can’t depend on donations and there may not be enough people that unblock ads to help. So, I’m on board with some kind of gig where you pay and login to view content. Maybe if this other thing doesn’t work out that is an option for you? Is that a bad thing to do in the blogging world? You are worthy to be supported by your readers and I can’t imagine the regulars wouldn’t agree.
I actually subscribed to your newsletter months ago because I’ve read that it helps somehow. I guess the more subscribers you have the more you get for ads? That’s my understanding. So I specifically signed up to help you out with that. But it’s hit or miss with me opening your newsletters (I usually visit your site directly), and I’ve wondered do I need to open your email AND click on the links within them for it to help you? Is it any help to you to just click on a link from your newsletter that goes to a post on your site or is it the ads within the newsletter that only help? It bothers me cause I know I’m getting analyzed through some third party every time I open a link from newsletters. It’s just invasive. That’s why I pretty much unsubscribed to most newsletters. So, I’ve been in a bit of a conundrum with the newsletter situation as well. I know, I’m going a little overboard there with newsletters, but it is what it is. I am the privacy addict!
I read the comment that said something like you don’t answer questions and need a moderator or something like that. Seriously? That was really nitpicky. He must not be a regular reader or has super high expectations for humans. You answer questions all the time and respond in general a lot! Plus, you are always really engaged with your readers like it’s your first year being a blogger and you are so enthused to be doing it. I hope things work out for you.
I understand the privacy implications of advertisement and that one has to weight their options in this regard. Other things help as well, like spreading the word or writing useful comments regularly here on this site.
The newsletter is only monetized by a single ad that is displayed in it. I only get paid if users use the offer (it is not for all again. While free, you need to fill out a form before you get the free content it offers).
Thanks!
aha! maybe it’s your current ad on newer posts? i just went to an older post of yours from January that I had not had a chance to read yet and allowed the redirect and the big ad on the side showed up… GFI or GIF something like that. Just thought I’d let you know! sorry for all the comments!
So, I know my comment was long and you probably missed it but I was wondering about the redirect. Well, I allowed it and then I had to allow more things on NoScript after that. Just to let you know that big ad on the side is still all garbled up. Hopefully, that counts as me seeing the ad and the ad people don’t know it’s garbled. Everything else looks to be showing up. I’ve done everything I can – I don’t have anything blocked anywhere. Thanks for letting me know about the newsletter! Curiously, do you guys over there have three day weekends? It seems like I get three days worth of weekend updates. I always laugh. I’ve read people in other countries work a lot less than the U.S…..or at least get a lot more vacation time. Something like that.
Thank you so much. As long as that ad is displayed, it counts. No just two days but Friday, common, it is almost weekend ;)
I have white-listed your website from my extension. Sorry for blocking.
Thanks you!
Sorry I cant do the regular payment, but $20 yearly is good – maybe you should do this regularly so we remember when our subs are due?
Also whitelisted
Understood Alastair, thank you so much.
Disabled Ad-Block plus.
Thanks Aron, I appreciate that.
This may be my first ever visit to ghacks. It’s thanks to a google search result for “Firefox annoyances”. So you are still getting some traffic via Google!
As a one-time visitor, I can’t predict whether I’ll be back. But I sympathise! I’d sympathise even more if I could see how well you are doing in terms of pledges (be they whitelisting or direct support). Any chance of making a pie chart?
Welcome to Ghacks. The Patreon page lists the current pledge amount and I plan to reveal more about the ad-blocking situation and donations as well. I’m not that comfortable revealing donations publicly though and need to think of something, maybe show percentages instead.
There is nothing wrong with showing people where the money goes, and in this way it will help you make your required quota’s for the month in order to survive. But as for feeling comfortable. I’m not too comfortable with having my donations made public on Patreon as it lists who is supporting by name and for those who have more than one supported site, their avatars and any other account information.
Super!
After I wrote this I thought that what woud really be of interest is the relationship between donations and traffic.
You wrote that if 5% of visitors donated, there’d be no problem.
Can you track the number of donors against the total traffic, and show that as progress toward a goal of 5%?
That approach would give you two ways of maintaing some privacy of the actual monetary amounts:
a) not all donations would be the same amounts, so any estimate would be crude,
b) showing a progress chart can be ‘moneyless’ in that if you are part of the way toward 5%, nobody’s quite sure what monetary value 5% has.
But showing progress toward a goal can have positive effects.
Whatever you decide, good luck! And thanks for the reply.
I agree that showing goals is a good option to be transparent about the whole procedure and that it can have a positive effect as well.
I’ll definitely post some stats and would love to display the progress towards a goal on the site anywhere so that everyone knows exactly where we stand.
The first goal (and its progress) is highlighted on Patreon right now. Note that this does not include direct PayPal contributions right now.
While I have not done any detailed calculations yet, if I add those that goal has been reached for a year provided that the Patreon payments remain at least constant throughout that time.
I will add a second goal to that page soon reflecting how much I’d need to stay on full-time.
It needs to be noted that this site still makes money from ads and that I count this towards that as well obviously.
If those goals are ever met though, I may even consider removing all ads from this site which I’d really like to do to be honest.
It has been a big part of my live =typo
Got my subscription updated. Not much money, but a little. Whitelisted GHacks on one browser; the security-hardened browser stays locked-down.
Yes, internet advertising is broken.
The street artist Banksy said that your personal space belongs to you. Stuff that invades it without your consent is an assault, and you have every right to take it down by whatever means you have. He was talking about the visual environment, of course — hoardings (billboards in the USA), street adverts, and such. But obnoxious audio ads spoiled commercial radio for my a long time ago. I never could stand television ads, and haven’t watched TV in years. And the Internet with ads can be quite ugly.
The obvious capitalist viewpoint is that radio, television, and internet content needs to be paid for somehow, and the implicit contract is that when you listen, watch, or surf, then you pay for it by hearing or seeing advertisements. But the real-world result of that philosophy has been a steadily increasing proliferation of invasive, manipulative, and content-destructive material.
I have sympathy for the bloggers and content providers who can’t afford server space and time to run their sites. On the other hand, I have no sympathy at all for the advertising firms who have shat their own nest.
Became a Patreon subscriber for you, and I will think about consider whitelisting your site. I despise ads or other banners distracting me from reading since I have some focus difficulties, but I hope being a Patreon supporter at least will show how much I value your site.
PGJU thanks for becoming a Patreon. Support comes in many forms and if you cannot unblock ads because of this then that is fine, no need to worry.
If I could, I would make the site ad-free for all Patreon and PayPal supporters.
I white-listed years ago. Would pay for subscription.
THanks,
Jeff
Thank you Jeff.
Done. Greetings from Poland!
Thank you Marek.
I read most of the replies, and – to me, anyway – it is obvious that the ad-blocking is gone far too far.
We need an “ad-allower” for those sites that we want to white-list. There are ad-blockers in so many places
that it is hard to remember where they all are. (browsers, firewalls,etc.etc.)
So there’s my advice – create an AD-ALLOWER add-on to each browser. I need ONE place to white list – not 10 .
Whitelisted !
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of your site since 2007. I think you have the best site on the ‘net. I am a nearly daily visitor. I have set you up to allow ads. It would be helpful if you or one of your savvy readers could post a way to do this without reverting Hostsman to the default setting and back after visiting your site. It will be a nuisance, but I would rather stop using Hostsman than to lose you excellent site.
I intend to donate in the next few months as it is not immediately feasible.
Is there a way your loyal readers could start a shame campaign against Google’s evil empire practices? By this I mean to humilate them into giving a (hopefully) large donation that they can certainly afford to preserve a very deserving site, which their destructive ways are killing.
Michael, thank you so much for the praise and white listing. I think Google is aware of what’s happening to independent smaller sites like mine and don’t think that reminding the company of that would do any good.
Follow-up! I am a long time advert blocker, so I don’t even know how it helps you in detail. I want to help, as my means allow.
Michael, viewing is fine.
Ok Martin. That’s why I asked first. I wouldn’t want to make things worse for you, but I am just sick of Google and their ilk.
Michael thanks for understanding.
Donation sent
Thanks!
White-listed across multiple machines (both home & work).
Thank you Lighter!
Hi Martin,
the very thought of G Hacks disappearing is unthinkable. As a teccy of 20 years + I constantly refer to G Hacks on a daily basis. It staggers me to think that anyone wouldn’t whitelist your site. As far as a donation is concerned, consider it done and I would like to think that your regular daily visitors will do likewise as even though I don’t always agree with some of your product reviews it at least creates discourse which is great brain food and if you are wrong about something you are very gracious and thankful in the way you respond to others.
Keep up the fantastic work Martin, I’ll keep on supporting your site.
Thanks for the kind words tek. I agree that the comments add a lot to this site as they are often added by people who are more knowledgeable than I am about a certain topic.
Hi Martin –
In case you don’t yet know – Lowell Heddings has written a post about this article, along with a link, on the main forums of his wonderful site How-To-Geeks – and made some excellent points about the problems regarding Google algorithm, ads, donations, etc.
https://discuss.howtogeek.com/t/ghacks-is-dying/25688
I have also posted a reply there urging everyone to stop by here and offer their support.
Keep up the great work Martin — we all really, really appreciate it.
Straspey, thanks for letting me know and spreading the word. How To Geek is one of the few tech sites out there worth visiting. Off to send Lowell an email thanking him for posting about it on his site.
Ads are shown here.
White listed, keep up the good work
Done!
Thanks so much!
Hi Martin…
So many independent bloggers are going through the same situation and it’s sad that this is happening. I hope that, other than the solution you have suggested, there will be a way that Google can intervene, like Henk van Setten has mentioned, which will be an exceptable solution not just for you but to others. I have enjoyed Ghacks for quite a while so I will donate as to support your excellent site and hope that others do the same. It’s the least I can do. I have also let my colleges & friends know so as to do the same. Good luck and I’m sure that you will be here for a VERY LONG TIME…
George Melendez
Puerto Rico
George, sure there is always a chance that Google makes some tweaks to reduce the impact of some of its changes but I don’t have high hopes for that.
Hi Martin… I guess you’re right about Google. I have no need to white list for I don’t use any software for blocking ads. I actually support the idea for that’s usually the only way bloggers can create some kind of revenue to cover costs. As long as it’s not the intruding kind I have no problems with ads. I can always write an article as a contribution so I will be submitting one soon for your consideration. Probably in the next few days. Have a wonderful day… I’m actually baking some lasagna with garlic bread and a Caesar salad for friends so talk to you later….. bye for now….
I will be donating in the near future for I am currently unemployed…
George, there are other ways to contribute, for instance by writing meaningful comments here, sharing articles or white listing this site. I understand that donating or becoming a Patreon is not for everyone and that is totally fine as well as there are other options. Thank you.
Martin, being a real fan of Ghacks I just paypalled you 10 euros (I prefer to not being chained to monthly payments).
Please allow me a few considerations, though.
Many of us do of course run our own blogs, each in our own particular sphere of interest. I myself have two blogs related to mental health and history. I soon found out that with my small amount of readers (right now hovering around 600 views per day) advertising would bring in only a paltry few cents, covering not even my basic domain names registration costs. So I decided to keep my blogs ad-free, accepting the fact that blogging will in fact cost me money rather than earn me money.
Now if I were to do the same thing as you did, asking people to subsidize my blogs, the end result would be that while I give money to other bloggers, some of those other bloggers would also give money to me. In the end, the net result would be us just pumping around small money gifts, me giving them to A and eventually receiving them back again from B. In the long run, on a larger scale, I don’t see how this will ever be a working solution.
Or to put this more clearly, from an internet-wide perspective your present solution will work only for as long as just a few bloggers will ask for money. However, it will not work anymore if all bloggers would start to ask for money.
I’m afraid I don’t see a clear alternative for this problem. Maybe we should try to organize some pressure on Google etc. asking them to do a little more to support independent bloggers from their side. I’m sure they easily could, if they wanted to.
In the meantime, I also think it’s a bit one-sided to (like Samer Kurdi does) blame only Google’s policies for the plight of bloggers. Huge commercial web publishers are a very important negative factor, too. Take the example of a company such as Gawker with all its massive content-recycling “blogs” such as Lifehacker or Jalopnik. Or think about the many HuffingtonPost-like sites? I think we can say that by sucking up a disproportionate amount of total revenues, in fact all these work as an effective blog-killing machine. Many of their “editors” are former independent bloggers who now (for a little money) have become Gawker slaves, having lost their full editorial freedom. I think this is a terrible development, and perhaps you do already know this, Martin: your own side stint at BetaNews is a foreboding of the kind of subservient position that we all may be forced into, eventually.
Again, I’m sorry I don’t see a clear solution yet. One thing is obvious to me, however: if we want to safeguard the future of free and independent blogging, then there will always need to remain a group of bloggers who happen to have some other source of income than their blogging itself.
Freedom through hobbyism? It’s sad, but I’m afraid that’s how it is. For the moment.
Henk, thank you for your comment. I have no idea how many of my readers have their own blog but I’d estimate that this cannot be higher than perhaps 10%.
I agree that this won’t work if anyone would ask for money to keep a site up but I don’t have another solution right now.
The only options I have are:
1. Find another job and close down this site because I don’t have time for it anymore nor enough spare money to keep it up and running.
2. Try alternative financing solutions that don’t depend on advertising revenue. There are not many that I can think of that won’t torpedo the reputation of this blog.
I like 2 better because I love this site and don’t want to be just another author at just another website somewhere pushing out “news” articles about a new Android device, the next Apple gossip or whatever.
I think that involving readers, fans or whatever you want to call them directly could be the way to go for some sites. You obviously need to produce valuable content and have some following for that.
I’m not blaming Google alone but the company’s changes have contributed heavily to the current situation not only on this site but many others as well.
I cannot really blame networks for pushing out recycled content or meaningless content like crazy, I’d probably do the same thing if I’d have a network and noticed that there is virtually no limit in this regard and that doing so increases revenue nicely.
Martin,
(First off Love the site) Secondly, you are absolutely handling it the right way. By giving site visitors/guests a way to donate actual $$ gives them a sense of ownership, sort of being a member in a club. There are plenty of ways to go about it in the future to ensure proper funding. By offering certain levels of membership ‘status’ (i.e. bronze, gold, senior, etc.) you could offer certain levels of ‘premium material’ or ‘data’ , ‘downloads’, etc. all based off of the amount of $$$ given. (Of course always offer the basic site regardless of donation. (Just a thought)
Daniel, thanks for your comment. While I plan to give more to supporters, I don’t plan to divide them into different levels as it would not be fair.
I have whitelisted GHACKS
i have started my Internet Experience at 2005 , alongside this site
and i still review it on a semi-daily basis
Thanks Martin ,,,
Hi! I also whitelisted this wonderful website!
Please keep up the awesome work, you’ve been doing :)
Best Regards to all
Thank you!
Hi Martin,
I’ve white listed your site mate and in the next week or 2 will make a donation ;)
Thanks for all the great articles and hard work you put in for us, Hopefully I’ll still be reading your blog when i’m old, grey and wrinky ;)
Thank you so much ;)
I very much enjoy your content and reviews and have have whitelisted your site!
Hi Martin
After reading this I will go
back to what I used to do with
Distrowatch.com and other
“trusted sites”.
Putting Firefox Portable from
PortableApps.com on a USB-stick
and only use it on trusted sites
mean that I do not nead adblocker
or other such addons.
Love your work, thank you.
Thank you!
Can’t imagine the web without this site, whitelisted.
Hi Martin,
I’m sorry to hear that your fine site is having financial trouble. I prefer sticking with the ad blocking and paying a subscription – and your site is probably the only one I feel that way. I’m just wondering if there is any way I can pay without signing up to paypal or patreon? Last time I think there was a direct link you set up to do that. Can you do that again?
I’m wondering why you don’t set up a donation button with several options and an explanation why people should donate, along with a subscription option. And why did Google hit you so hard? Your site is far from spammy.
Anyway, I wish you all the best and thank you for so many years of trustworthy, informative, and helpful writing!
Yoav
Hi there Yoav. You mean straight to my bank account or another service? Thanks for your wishes.
I don’t remember exactly what you did then, but there has to be a way I can donate with a credit card without signing up to some service.
I always try to whitelist ghacks.net, among other blogs I follow, but I find my whitelist keeps being reset or not carried over devices. I tried turning off Adblock Plus for a while to see if I could live without it, only to be bombarded by annoying adds from different sites. I wish there was more minimal adblocker then ABP that only blocks annoying ads, but leaves sites like this which do not use annoying advertisments alone. Perhaps you could find something like this?
Shea, thanks so much. I’m not sure if it is possible to create such a blocker. Maybe if you’d combine a popup blocker with a Flash Blocker, that could work to catch most of the annoying ads.
I was really referring to an alternative filter list for adblock that allowed most sites but blocked really annoying or malicious advertisments. I don’t know if this is possible either, though.
Martin, a day without Ghacks is a day without sunshine. I discovered Ghacks a number of months ago and read you daily. I have also been reading through your extensive archives and learned a lot. Thank you. Your blog is the absolute best.
I’ve whitelisted you and will follow up on how else to help out.
Next time don’t wait so long to let us know how we can help you, and in so doing return the favor for all the help you’ve given us.
V/r
Valrobex
Thank you Valrobex.
Whitelisted my Ad-Blocker
Thank you Brennan!
This is one of the few sites I read daily. Done. http://i.imgur.com/l22LrtB.png
o7
Thank you Brian.
Whitelisted. Anyhow, Martin you should check this out and see if you can get your ad company on the Ad-Block plugin default whitelist. Here’s the link, https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
Mike I will check it out but I don’t think this will work. Thanks for whitelisting my site.
Martin, although I am relatively new to your excellent site (a few months), I have you in my bookmark toolbar and check out new articles daily, without fail. I can’t begin to name all the helpful tips and fixes you have enlightened me with. Your style of writing is concise, thorough, and free of the holier-than-thou, arrogant, or snobbish approach that turns me away from many other tech sites.
You, my man, are a class act and a bright light in the endless array of blogging. For these reasons I have whitelisted EVERY type of blocker I use on the internet when visiting ghacks; yours is the only site I have done this on and if it helps in any small measure, my day is made.
Also, I’m posting a link to your site more prominently on any member sites I am part of, and places that have bulletin boards, chatboxes, etc. Donations are on the way. Stay strong and thanks again for your immeasurable professionalism.
MJS I cannot thank you enough for doing all this for my site.
White listed your site Martin, wish I could do more, but I am not able to do ($$$) at this time. Also, thank you for all the the work you have done. Your site is on my everyday must read list, and your insight is very much appreciated.
Scott, whitelisting is a great contribution. Thanks!
Since so many sites are abusing a non-existent adblocker, I’m currently feeling sorry for not looking once if the ads here are not intrusive. I’m not planning to disable my two main add-ons called Noscript and Disconnect in my main browser, but I will now open up your site only in an extra browser which doesn’t have any privacy extensions at all. I’m very happy for your high quality articles, although I wish there would be a little more per day, but of course the quality counts a lot more! I’m especially happy for your Firefox articles (I love to see what they have changed, and how I can disable some unwanted stuff instantly via about:config. Many sites don’t bother to say that) and other articles like “The future of technology and entertainment is frightening”. That one was very nice. I wish you good luck! :)
Thank you for going the extra mile for my site.
I have whitelisted and will share on social media.
Cheers
Thank you Linda for that!
Martin, sad to hear it, but I am sure the site will survive and even flourish. Just signed up as a patron. Long live Ghacks!
Thanks so much Abhijeet.
Majorgeeks.com made us aware of your plight. whitelisted
Angel Majorgeeks did? How did they do that?
Viva la ghacks!
Whitelisted.
And thank you, for this awesome blog!
Thank you Alone for the whitelisting and praise ;)
I personally use ad-blocker for security reasons (because of ads that enable drive by download or ads that are malicious). Your site has been white listed on my Firefox :D As a tech site you are at disadvantage because your readers know and will block ads. Don’t use scripts that will detect ad blockers because it will decrease instantaneous loading for Ghacks :)
I’ve been reading this blog site for years and it is one of the few that have remained on my daily “must read” list. It is a useful and informative blog and I value the discussions and contributions of other’s thought and ideas. I’ll be visiting the Patreon page when I finish this post. Thanks for what you do. I’m envious. And I hope to continue reading this blog until I’m too old or senile to build my next computer.
Additionally, I think you should post a blog about the long-term affect that the indiscriminate use of ad blocking will have on the sites we currently take for granted. No one likes to be slapped in the face with multitudes of animated banner ads. I can understand blocking some ads on some sites. But, I think many users take what they see online for granted. Someone has to pay for sites like Ghacks. I would much prefer the advertisers pay for it than paying for it myself. This is an important issue, not just for Ghacks and similar sites, but for much of the internet. AdBlocker is both a blessing and a curse.
Thank you very much beachbouy!
Hello Martin,
I’m guilty of accidentally knocking your site off the whitelist. My apologies.
Ghacks has become one of the best tech sites on the Internet, mainly through the strength of your reporting. Even if Ghacks goes under, you will always be able to find employment across the blogosphere. But that is overly negative. Hopefully Ghacks will continue on its present course.
One of the issues that we all face is that AdBlocking software’s whitelist settings don’t persist through uninstallations. Hopefully everyone remembers to whitelist your site after reinstallations.
Keep up the great work! And thanks for all the great troubleshooting and software tips!
It happens Kannon. Thanks for taking the time to whitelist my site again ;)
Martin,
I look forward each day to your articles. I have just now whitelisted ghacks.net. Keep up the great work!
Thanks you Richard!
No one time donate link as before? I tried opening that link in that post but all it does is open back on it self. Sorry I can not do a monthly payment option but if you had a donate option as before, I would as before donate again. Sadly my bank is the reason to blame, if I donate a dollar a month, they would service charge me another dollar. Same with eBay purchases… Great I won or bought some $0.99 item, but after they tack on the $1 service fee, I end up paying $1.99 for the item. A donate option with Paypal or bitcoin as before would be helpful for those of us who can not do $1 a month options.
As for Adblock or uBlock, you yourself even suggested them but never requested a, “do not block me indication”. As of current I am using uBlock and though it is active, it reports nothing blocked. So even if I never added your site to a white list, it isn’t blocking you. Me on the other hand, I can say 95% of my comments get blocked, dumped and even deleted so I shrug and move on, because I’m not about to change the way I speak or type to be able to get posted.
“As of current I am using uBlock and though it is active, it reports nothing blocked. So even if I never added your site to a white list, it isn’t blocking you. ”
This is counter to my experience using Chrome Stable on Win7x64 Home. For me there is an obvious difference in viewing this site after whitelisting it in uBlock.
Still uBlock reports nothing blocked, but on adding this site to the white list, the only thing that did show up after a cache dump, and refresh is a top of the page arrow, which was not there before. But because I like using that function across many pages I visit, I added an extension to give me instant top/bottom of page function on all pages I am on.
But aside from uBlock, I use Ghostery to help eliminate tracking type ads, and though uBlock reports none, Ghostery reports 7. The odd ad I don’t mind its the tracking ones to be wary of which is why I use Ghostery along side uBlock. But I will whitelist this site in Ghostery.
Lego I’m still figuring out how to display a PayPal button without making it a donate button automatically as this won’t work for this site. I understand your reason for not wanting to pay a Dollar a month and that is just fine. I have posted by own PayPal email in the article just below the Patreon link which you can use to transfer money if you want directly.
I’m sorry about blocked comments, if that happens it is usually an automated thing that I cannot really do anything about. You can however notify me when that happens so that I can move the comment out of moderation or the spam folder.
I know most of what I write / comments are dumped is an automatic feature, but I type the way I speak and the rare time posts are actually allowed through though I do not know what or how it became so. Other times they either are dumped (so nothing shows on refresh), or sent for moderation in which the end results is 40/60 could be posted, but chances are it is dumped.
As for donating, thank-you for the Paypal information, I will be doing that shortly and will be doing so each year (if you are still open) as if it were a yearly subscription rate. I tried to do so last year, but your old Paypal information is no longer valid so the money sat in limbo for months before they told me to cancel the transaction.
My bank is one of the biggest in Canada and it has the largest USA network than any other bank in Canada. They didn’t get to be the biggest by giving stuff away, which is why everything I do is service charged minimum $1 and can be upwards as high as $5000 per transaction depending on the context. Even transferring money into my Paypal is charged, which I do once a month, mid-month to help keep individual transactions from being charged.
Hi Martin,
it’s a great site you are running, in fact my favorite of all tech related blogs out there. It stands out for it’s singular seriousness, and you always seem to pick the stuff that really matters, no bullshit around here. I am going to whitelist this site to begin with, and then have a closer look at the links you provide and see what else i can do. We must keep your site up and running for all eternity :)
Thank you Mick for your kind words.
AdBlock Plus now disabled on this site.
This site permitted by NoScript (you always were).
Uninstalled AdFender – because it’s not possible to whitelist any site by following either of the two sets of instructions I’ve found. Good riddance to it if it can’t be more user-friendly.
Good luck, Martin, even tho you are over my head most of the time ;-D
Martin, thanks for your great job!
I whitelisted ghack.net domain in my Chrome.
Is it possible to implement button “Support me” which visits all advertiser’s links in background?
I assume it will create traffic to pay for the site.
Thanks again,
Sergey
Sergey thanks. This cannot be done as it would be against the terms of service. For many, it is enough that you view the ads displayed on the page.
Martin,
I would always like to know how I can support GHACKS.net,
and there are different levels/actions of support.
I believe you are planning already some area/feature on the site,
where I can see current support options to choose one;
My repeated thanks for you efforts,
Sergey
Sergey thank you. Yes, I plan to create a full support page that lists different options and make it visible on the site.
I made a conscious decision NOT to use an ad blocker. I see ads as the cost of a free access internet. I’ve been online since the days of the old dialup BBS’s, CompuServe, and AOL. I remember having to pay providers an extra fee to access different parts of the network. Cable and satellite providers are still doing it and I hate it. I used to read the Wall Street Journal… until they went to a subscription model. So I suffer through the occasional pop-up or audio ad if it means they make $.01 and can keep publishing. I accept that Google, Double-click, and other ad servers know literally EVERYTHING about me. But it does chap my hide that some providers are spending Millions in lobbying to kill true Net Neutrality. Google isn’t all that evil when compared to ComCast.
I love your site Martin and visit almost every single day. I do wish, however, you had a little more to content about Safari and Mac browsers *nudge nudge*
I understand where you are coming from. I too wish Ghacks would provide Mac contents but I don’t own one and would be the uber-noob when I start.
Whitelisting the site and looking what more I can do. Cheers.
Thank you!
I shall be whitelisting ghacks and will be making a contribution via paypal next week.
Great site, I check it every day.
Bitte gehen Sie nicht weg
Herman thank you ;)
wow this post is going to beat the record of number of comments it has received I wonder what are the statistics now I mean how many visitors still killing your income Martin?
BTW.flattr is all about help us to help yourself which means if creators fancy support they need to spread the word so people know what’s available how to use it or which options are trustworthed.write an article.
It went up a bit imu, currently at 39.93%. I talked to Samer (Freeware Genius) and he mentioned that Flattr never worked for his site in the two years he tried it. I will still look into it once I get better and find some time doing so.
” I talked to Samer (Freeware Genius) and he mentioned that Flattr never worked for his site in the two years he tried it” click on his flattr button and you’ll see why.
one of the three tech sites i frequently visit .Long live Ghacks
Thank you Stanley.
I read your website almost regularly. I will whitelist your website in all the browsers, all the computers and all the dual boot os’s that I use.
Thank you so much Eliezer.
whitelisted
In previous posts, for those who read Ghacks regularly, we were told that most of your income–if not all of it–came from “flipping” sites. You look for sites to purchase; tweak the sites to make them more appealing; then sell the sites for a handsome profit. As far as I could tell, Ghacks was a hobby-horse that did more for yourself (don’t you write for another site–paid articles?) than for the readership.
I started flipping sites in 2011 and stopped doing so again after a while. I never said that most of my income comes from flipping sites.
Ghacks is my main site and the one that I earn my living from. I do write a weekly article for Betanews currently but cannot survive on that alone, not by a long shot.
Have been viewing Ghacks on android with absolutely no blocks. Never did understand people whowants everything free than gets upset when it shuts down.
Thanks Dante!
Hi Martin,
Since I discovered you and your site my confidence in using and understanding when, where, and how technology is changing has grown.
The info you post is an easy read and incredibly helpful. I don’t read everyday and I don’t read every post but if I ever find myself wondering “hmmm… Should I shouldn’t I” or “what in the world is that?”.. You are my goto guy for resources and I would be devastated and utterly lost if ghacks went anywhere!
I trust your insights and your site and I share your site frequently with friends and family.
Whitelist is done and I’m working on the other part via PayPal.
Thanks Martin!
Thanks so much for the praise Kata!
Ads will now be shown here for me
Thank you Douglas.
I’m in on Patreon. I keep up with the site through Feedly. I enjoy your work and I always find a nugget that helps me out with something. Patreon is a great way for folks to keep their favorite sites supported I believe. If everyone just tossed in a buck to their top 20 you wouldn’t have to worry about great content going away.
Thanks so much Rod. I think that Patreon is a great way of supporting sites you like, provided that they have a page there.
Long live Martin; long live Ghacks. All the best, Martin
Thank you Saranathan.
Have white-listed in Firefox and will try Paypal for contribution
Good luck
Thanks so much Trev.
Thanks Martin for showing me how to whitelist your magnificient site.
Whitelisted and done.
Bob
Great that it worked out Bob and thanks for whitelisting my site.
I use AdMuncher Free. Added the URL https://www.patreon.com/ghacks to not filter anything. Not sure if I have to do anything extra at AdMuncher.
Have Whitelisted your site – I always look forward to your interesting articles and I hope everyone who receives your newletter does the same.
Thanks a lot!
Martin, please do paid articles, but mark them as such and select the programs / whatever which are legit or ‘cool’. Take a look at AndroidPolice. They do these as well and no one finds them annoying (as they only post about stuff they like not everything which they get offered).
Kurt I’m not that comfortable doing that but will check out offers more carefully from now on.
whitelisted, thanks for the great work!
Thanks Dan.
Martin, how do I Whitelist in Adblock Plus 2.6.7 ?
Bob
Bob, here you go: https://adblockplus.org/en/getting_started#disabling
Whitelisted.
Love this site.
TY Martin
First Batman now Super Man, what can go wrong. Thank you.
Absolutely!
Whitelisted on entire network. Will get to Patreon later today.
You have a lot of friends, martin, don’t ever doubt it.
Thanks for the kind words Declan.
Now we have over 200 comments, I hope that is motivation enough for you, we are all behind you!
About Piwik, you can just search for ‘piwik problems’ and you will find a lot troubles/reports, of course piwik is an open source alternative to googles analytics but I guess there are better and faster solutions out there. Personally I would prefer Open Web Analytics​, some more features and a little bit faster (remember speed is everything) Here is a good comparison: http://imimpact.com/web-stats-alternatives-to-google-analytics/
About the authors:
Well, seems I was a bit unclear here, was talking about new authors/guest authors that want to write some articles for free, that would be a good idea imho. For me the quality of the article is more important as the mass of the articles.
As some people including me already said, I guess it’s not the ads thing, it’s more important how well the ads are placed. It doesn’t harm anything if they on there own small area or something. So in fact we don’t need an adblocker for such things – remember that the internet and some blogs wouldn’t exists without ads.
Understood. I’m not really using Piwik for anything, not even checking stats anymore as it is just too frustrating to see the decline.
I already got an email from Matt who would like to contribute articles, we will see how that goes.
I’m using http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm to block all the gruf. Do you know how your site can be by-passed I’ll gladly whitelist you.
Whitelisted
Thanks John
All those dead and dying sites you noted were once part of my morning stroll. Now there is only gHACKS left, and my surfing enjoyment is short-lived. I’m wondering, how does that benefit anyone? I’ve come to despise Google and avoid it as much as is humanly possible. We’ve made it king, and now it dictates, and sticks its nose and fingers into everything. Grrrrrr.
The end of the free internet looms. Some time ago you wrote about the possibility of charging something to visit your site. Of course you are trying to figure out how to save this site and charging a fee is certainly a viable option, one I, myself, might even have suggested. From my side of the internet however, a pay-per-month system can quickly become a problem. I live on a fixed income. Internet access costs me $65/mo. If I start having to pay $1/mo. to sites I visit, I’d soon be limited to bill paying sites. Already I see online applications that charge fees. That will grow, and soon there will be very little software stored on our computers.That was/is the whole point of pushing us to the cloud. Some of us will be cut off, the internet a playground for those who can afford it. Yeah, I know. Doom and gloom. . . . Damn Google. :)
Having said that, I just whitelisted gHACKS. I am looking for the Paypal link, and I will be whitelisting a couple of other sites as well (including HowToGeek). I don’t mind ads. What I can’t tolerate are the ones that flash and jump around. There is a flaw in my brain that makes it impossible to read, with any comprehension, while a flashing fairy points a bouncing wand at me.
It might be helpful if you keep that Paypal link visible and give us a little reminder to use it once in a while. I wish you the very best, Martin.
Kalmly, understood and agree. If all sites would come up with a monthly subscription, it would be impossible to become a member of them all. I get that.
I do understand as well that advertisement cannot be the only solution, at least not for sites like mine. Maybe something like networks would be the solution then, don’t know.
For now, it seems like a great option especially since no one is doing it.
Done
Thank you Charlie!
Hi Martin, whitelisted your site, I should have done so a long time ago, your content is amazing, I’ve found so many great programs/addons/tricks thanks to you.
Could an associate referral link to Amazon be used to help you get more funding ? I often buy things from Amazon (.ca) and I sure wouldn’t mind going through a link from here to do it.
Good luck with the funding, hope this site is here for many years to come!
Martin, sure that would help as well. I thought about adding one but did not really know if it would be used frequently or not.
White listed and shared on face book.
Please keep up the great work, Martin! I’m so thankful for your blog!
Thank you!
whitelisted. i hate advertisment of all kinds with a passion, but it would be a shame to see you close shop, so…
Thanks for that!
Whitelisted — all done.
Thanks for a stunning ‘Site Martin, so appreciated.
Warm rgds,
Dorian
Thanks a lot Dorian!
white listed. will try and donate when I can as well :) thank you
Thank you Darsh.
I would love to support the site by disabling Adblock, but I still won’t see ads due to NoScript. And there is no way I’m going to whitelist sites like doubleclick.net and googleadservices.com. Aren’t there any ad services that don’t require scripts to run?
I don’t think there are, Peter.
I’ve referred to Ghacks many times over the years and have whitelisted.
Recalling Freedomlist owner mentioning some years ago that he and Martin go way back, shared there (http://www.freedomlist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=229784#229784).
(Of note: Although the forum was started later, Freedomlist was opened March 1, 20000, making this this 15th anniversary since “Niekas” opened the site.)
Was he known as Jymbio back then? I ran the Deny.de forum with him.
Yes, Jymbio is another name he used.
Ah yes, it was a fun time ;)
Hi Martin,
Sorry to hear about these problems.
I just whitelisted your site. I’ll look into other alternatives, also.
I discovered GHacks in 2013, via a link from another site. I have learned so much from your newsletters and look forward to receiving them.
In 2014, I contacted you about your article “What you can do against Internet Explorer’s latest 0-day vulnerability (April 2014)” , and unlike other tech sites, you actually responded to me and in a matter of hours !
Occasionally, I do look at the gHacks Facebook site, but prefer the organization of your newsletter.
Good luck.
John thanks. I try to respond to all emails and comments but it is overwhelming considering that Ghacks is a one-man show. I would need an additional 12 hours to do that.
Whitelisted here from holland too, hope it will help you this way
Whitelisted as small thanks for all the superior work you do. No reply necessary.
I’ve used adblockers since they were first available in my browser (Opera) and I had used urlfilter.ini before then. Despite your previous pleas to whitelist your site, I have never done so. I am opposed to seeing ads in principle, even when it hurts content providers’ bottom line. But since I have perused your blog for many, many years, I have, for the first time, whitelisted a site, your site.
yep, whitelisted…your info and comments are too good to miss. thanks
Martin, thank you for all the years of knowledge you’ve given me. I’ll send a PayPal donation today.
As for whitelisting, I did it a minute ago, and the first ad I saw on your site was a big, obnoxious ad for SparkTrust PC Cleaner Plus, a known piece of sh*t scam. I can send a screenshot of it, if you want, but here’s what the ad says:
“Remove Malware – Free” — “Quick Malware Removal in 2 minutes. Free Download (Highly Recommended)”
That’s a perfect example of why I use ad-blockers. I know you can’t hand-pick which ads appear, and I know you’re a man of honor and integrity, so you’d never want this type of ad on your site, but it will happen without your knowledge. That’s what I want to avoid, and that’s why I won’t whitelist any sites.
Patreon is a great idea, and I hope you get a LOT of donations through them. I’d rather not have my credit card information stored on the servers of an unknown (to me) entity, so a donation via PayPal is what I’ll do.
I was curious how long I’ve been a reader of your site, so I searched my Gmail for “ghacks.” I’ve been using the bookmarklet called “toread” forever, so when I come across an interesting site, I send the page to my Gmail. The first Ghacks email I have is from August 9, 2007 (“Use your Printer and Scanner as a Copier”). I had no idea I’d been reading your work for more than 7 years… Wow.
Thanks, again, for the 7+ years of awesomeness. I hope this rough spot your in now passes quickly, and never reappears. :o)
Scott thanks so much for your donation. 2007 is indeed a long time. Cannot really get my head around the fact that it is 9 years ago this October that I started the site.
I hope that flu you have isn’t causing you too much grief! Get well soon. :o)
Switching between work and bed all the time ;)
I removed AdBlock from the site;recently did the same thing at MajorGeeks & a couple other sites. Did not know it was a problem.
Ironically, people who visit here are just the sort of folks who know about things like AdBlock, or extensions in general.
Mike yep, Ghacks reader know their way around on the Internet.
Martin,
Sorry to hear about your difficulties. As many others have said I have learned much from this site. I applaud your openness. Regardless of how things eventually work out look after yourself and don’t allow stress to affect your health.
I too mostly use RSS (feeddler on iPad ) and only occasionally click through to the actual site ( don’t think Safari blocks ads ?) perhaps it would help to visit the site rather than use RSS ?
I will try to make donation via PayPal as soon as I can.
Rocky it will definitely help if you visit the site more often. Thanks!
Ghacks is verly likely one of the best blog I have on my feeds.
Always high quality and interesting articles. It’s a commodity become extremely rare nowadays on the web.
Martin, thank you very much for the work you’re doing every day.
And thank you for the non-intrusive model you’ve opted for your blog.
Keep it going !
Very much appreciated.
=== Whistelisted ===
Thanks so much Robin for whitelisting and the praise.
whitelisted!
Thank you Jimmy.
also whitelisted your awesome blog, thanks for keepin’ us up to date.
Thank you Piokus.
Hi Martin.
Your site is one of the first places I visit in the morning when I first sit down at my computer. I am very grateful for all the hard work you put in to making ghacks one of the premiere tech sites on the internet; and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve posted links to your articles in the discussion forums over at How-To-Geek.
I have white-listed your site on all my adblockers.
Thanks Straspey.
I have been saying it for years, the free model for the internet is not sustainable.
Donations and subscriptions, paywalls is the future.
Whistelisted.
Thanks Batman ;)
I have white listed the website already. I only use adblockers because of annoying pop up ads. That’s what I hate the most!
Thanks for your support Mary.
Hmmm… Looks like AdBlock is on the way to become a power on the Internet, who will decide which ads are OK and which ads are not, and consequently which businesses should survive and which should die!
Only using ABP.with the Pop-up and Element Hiding Helper Addons.
Whitelisted!
Thanks albresc!
I love this site and have whitelisted it!
I am also considering making a one-time donation.
It would be interesting to know how much your proposed actions are contributing to the site
Stone, Patreon displays the money on the main page directly. As far as direct donations are concerned, I will have to sum it all up and will post about it. I think it is best to be completely transparent about this.
Whitelisted and will think about a one time donation.
Good luck and thanks for your site!
Thanks Hans!
Whitelisted.
I’ll agree with others above, you article always seems unbiased unlike other sites, which is really plus. Not to mention you always use sensible close to nature language rather than adding up pile of jargons and symbolic meanings etc.
Keep up the good work. My country doesn’t have Paypal and I’m also doing free of cost internship these day. If I get sustainable future source of income, I’ll donate for sure.
Regards
Ahmad, thanks for whitelisting my site.
I wouldn’t do it since no matter how random one can get, there is always order or pattern of some kind. I usually click on ads which I like. Which are not too flashy.
Just signed up for Patreon donation. I mostly read this site via an RSS reader (one of the few remaining ones to post a full feed) and I’m happy to have the chance to pay back.
Thanks for the site and the sensitive way of letting us help keep it running.
Thanks so much Dominik. I have posted a special thank you there as well and will use the feed there to keep everyone up to date.
I am new to this site, yet i can see quality on it and interesting posts. While i cannot contribute in an economic way, i did unblock your site, so ads will show for me. Congrats for your site, i hope it runs for long time!
Thanks IzHaN for whitelisting my site. Hope you will be a regular visitor here as long as this site exists.
Done.
Thanks Larry.
Ok, got you Whitelisted on my Ublock, as long as i don’t see any “nasty ad” :)
Thanks. If you see a nasty ad let me know and it gets banned.
100+ comments for this article alone and you think your site is dying?
Well if comments were the deciding factor, it would not, that is for sure.
I’m a regular reader of Ghacks. I got to know many things from this site and I love it. Even the adblocker (uBlock) I’m currently using both on Firefox and Chrome I came to know about it from Ghacks.
Just whitelisted this site (should have done it earlier). Carry on.
Thanks so much Mushaf!
I admire your energy level. I couldn’t do it–all that you’re into with this site, not these days anyway.
I don’t use ad blockers. I’ve looked at them in the past, played with a few. There was a time when ads were a lot more annoying and intrusive than they are now (hard to believe?). They don’t bother me so much as they did. I do use script blocking, but that’s entirely for security reasons. Of course, with the–especially recent–issues involving ads and malware, ad blockers are a security measure as well, or at least try to be. The purveyors of ads have no one to blame but themselves for how users treat them with abhorrence.
As I recall, ad blockers will truly block ads–from being downloaded, I mean. This is both a good way for users to reduce traffic and a means to reduce–somewhat–the threat of malware. For now, though, let’s say that there are both “good” ads and “bad” ads. Most people don’t mind seeing “good” ads, especially if it supports a site they value. And no one wants to be victimized by “bad” ads. So, your job, Mr. Phelps, is to see to it that “bad” ads are entirely wiped out of existence… well, it sounds good, but I think the term “Mission: Impossible” accurately describes that scenario. Anyway, what I don’t remember is if any so-called blockers had an option not to block, but to simply hide ads. Traffic might not be reduced, but those who provide ads have no reliable way to determine if ads being delivered are actually being displayed. There were sites where I would simply use CSS to hide the divs that contain ads, and neither Google nor anyone else would be the wiser. No muss, no fuss. The site itself would get its ad support just as if the ads were being displayed. (Yes, that sounds completely fair to me; it’s my desktop. It’s not like I had any plans to click through, so no reason to be bombarded by such annoyances.)
I believe ads have a place. I just believe that place is nowhere near content. Newspapers used to do a pretty good job with the way they placed ads. For one, you never ever saw an ad on the front page of any section. For another, you’d have entire sections that were nothing but ads. And the classifieds… people bought papers just so they could get the classifieds. If I were setting up a site nowadays, I’d create a “section” of just ads–sponsored, open ads, whatever; but they’d be quite separate from the content pages.
Enabling subscriptions and patronage will always be a good plan for sites that have worthy content. Google’s algorithms are designed to do one thing: bring in more revenue… to Google. I can’t really fault them for their desire to increase revenue; I can fault them for their methodology which places so little worth on, for lack of a better term, “partnership” with sites that don’t benefit Google enough to suit Google, financially-speaking. After all. almost all of their “content” comes from other sites. It’s supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, but Google seems to get more and more greedy with every passing year. So, I say bypass Google as much as possible when they bring nothing much to the table. And as far as ads go, to Google, everyone else is just a billboard. That’s their business model. As for me, they’re welcome to it.
I’ve always white-listed Ghacks. I, too, have taken advantage of the RSS feed, for some years now. Thunderbird, Brief, Feed Sidebar, and–especially–Google Reader (way to go, Google–yeah, right) have all had significant roles with my feed gathering. I’ve only come to the site lately to post a comment or two.
And on that note I’ll bring this comment to a close. As far as the site dying goes, I think it’ll recover. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.
Believe me, I had days where I felt disappointed and demotivated, but I don’t want to give up. I love this site and its readers. I try my best..
Whitelisted, don’t give up!
Thanks!
Ask Adblock to whitelist your site:
https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
“How can I get my website whitelisted?”
Thanks
I will take a look, thanks Matt!
Ghacks helped me a lot since 2008 (at that time I only check less than 4 websites per day, now over 200 via RSS reader). I used to be a tech writer in school days, and Ghacks provided me tremendous sources to my articles. Now I had developed EagleGet, and currently doing IT-related job.
Sincerely thanks to Martin, you helped me achieve the success, and I whitelisted Ghacks long time ago.
Thanks Yadon, 2008, man that is a long time ago ;)
Well, I’m not saying it’s a self-made problem but there are some points ghacks should better never do:
– Yourself reported about Adblock Plus and uBlock … I never know any site that does this (for several reasons) except some non-profit sites. This was a horrible mistake. It was good for us, sure but very bad for you. Never introduce something that could harm you or your blog/site.
– The ads, imho it’s okay to place some … but only as long it does not “destroy” your whole site, I mean placing it on the right or left seems okay and isn’t that annoying but in the middle or over some functions is a no-go.
– Please do not make the same mistakes as e.g. stadt-bremerhaven.de, this is now a profit site only that only reports about google, apple, ms and that’s it … (sponsors) and full of ad-trackers. Was long ago a good site and is now a fan-boy page.
– If possible use ssl/tls (I’m not talking about the whole content – would be good) that helps to get a better google rank. Since 2014 google cares much about loading speed and if the site uses a ssl certificate or not. So speed and security is everything these days….
– Remove piwik and use an alternative analytic service, some sites I know reported that piwik is not good for a better rank.
– Place/Pin a small massage on the right/left about Adblock/ublock/ghostery (addons) and the future for everyone visible to read (maybe link to this thread here) to inform new readers about the current state. I’m always a fan of an open dialog and information.
– Do not report about any software update, there are already several download sites which are a lot of faster than you. So instead of bumping a new VLC version each time, you better write about something that people can’t read on every other page – something “special” and not only under the line only changelogs …. Maybe a software update sidebar like computerbase.de does this would be better help to keep current popular software on our eyes.
– Not only optimize your page for google, well it’s the biggest but there are also several others to get new readers.
In about ghacks there is a note about five authors, maybe you can get them back, because I only see the most time martin writing here – or get new buddys with different interests to get more random information about other sections like mac, ios and such too.
Thanks for your extensive comment. Can you point me to the Piwik issues? I did a quick check and could not find any related to website rankings. About the authors, those were paid by me. I cannot really pay others right now for writing for this site. I did get an email from Matt however who wants to contribute Linux articles to the site.
… and whitelisted!
Keep up the good work, Martin :)
Thank you Julia.
I don’t know how this will play out, but I have whitelisted your site. It is not the ads that I am afraid of so much, as the security issue that come with ads. You know better than anyone because you have covered malwareadvertisment news on your site and how pervasive it is. I appreciate your content, just keep us safe as best you can.
Neal thanks. I try my best but need your help in this as well. As soon as you spot something fishy or problematic let me know about it and I get that thing blocked and banned.
I have followed Ghacks on an almost daily basis for years and will continue to do so. Unfortunately, I live in Venezuela, a country with severe currency restrictions. Therefore, the least I can do is whitelist you.
Mel thanks for the whitelisting!
Just contributed to keep Ghacks alive :-)
Thanks Ilev.
What exactly is the problem with sponsored or paid content?
Its your site, its your right to put on it whatever you want and if you want to do so by getting paid, there is very little reason you should get affected by users who don’t like that.
Its no like you are going to put anything or the first thing that comes to you with a request, its still your call and if you do some research, review the item/product and find that its okay, i think its silly to reject a payment offer if there is one.
All the best. Maybe you can join another team/blog, makes it more visible, powerful platform with relatively higher volume content coming out. Might have to share revenue but nothing is perfect.
Sponsored or paid contents are ads. Besides that, and the quality deterioration that goes along with it, it is search engines like Google who don’t seem to like these contents at all.
I have been a regular to your site for years and even won a licence in one of your giveaways. I have whitelisted your site and while I cannot promise to donate, I will when I can.
Thank you
Ray thanks a lot!
Have unblocked this site from ABP
Thanks Vishal!
I’ll be sure to whitelist the site and continue to share articles. I’ve shared quite a few, next to Lifehacker and MakeUseOf, this is one of the sites I visit most often actually. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for sharing my articles.
Please add a “Donate” feature to your website.
I will add a visible Patreon and Donate option once I figure out how to do so.
Honestly, without this site, there would have been programs and just tech stuff in general i wouldn’t have known. Thanks to all the authors of this site to continued journey of finding new things as they come along our way.
whitelisted.
Thanks for the whitelist Rookie.
I freaked out as bit after reading the subject title on home page. I was thinking awe crap now i have to look for anotehr site for tech news.
I came from dottech.org, but it became a “How-to-” site with little news. I found this site because he had a link to ghacks on his . Don’t get me wrong Ashraf is a good guy, but again i needed a tech site that also had news.
I’ll whitelist ghacks, i have grown to love this site and it has been my homepage since day one of visiting it.
Actually, I feel the same way about Dottech. It is too many how to articles that are certainly useful to some users but if you read them in a RSS feed, it is overwhelming.
I wahitelisted ghacks but still dont see any ads.
here is what i have perhaps people help me on how to properly whitelist Ghacks, im sort of new to FF so i’m still learning add-ons
AdBlock Edge
Better privacy
Canvas Blocker
Disconnect
Https Everywhere
I don’t care about cookies
NoScript
RefControl
WOT
Maybe you can make an article on how to whitelist Ghacks, using various FF add-ons , maybe others can contribute and you can update the page?
I figured out why i still can’t see Google ads, apparently Google ads and most Google things are blocked at the router. Unfortunately i don’t have access to the router nor permission to use it.
What i can do, is whitelist Ghacks, when using my phone, I have unlimited data and always use it over wi-fi.
Torro thanks for analyzing the ad-display issue. That’s a great solution, thanks!
You have so many script and ad-blocking add-ons, it is difficult to tell which is the culprit here ;)
Exposure is definitely lacking for this great site. I’ve been following tech sites (Lifehacker, etc) for the last couple of years and I never once heard about your site. I only stumbled upon it through a random link on a website dedicated to finding sites similar to sites you like. Once I found your site, I spent the rest of the night scouring the through the archives page by page and I kept shaking my head wondering how I could have missed such an awesome site like Ghacks. This really has nothing to do with helping Ghacks (it’s really my own story), but I think that are there many people like me who would love a site like Ghacks but just don’t know that it exists. Thus, I’ll definitely be sharing your site on my social media pages.
Robert, I’m a writer first and foremost. I’d love more exposure but this is a one-man show currently not comparable to network sites like Lifehacker which probably benefit from an in-house Gawker SEO and marketing team.
Thanks for your support.
I have whitelisted ghacks in adblockplus but noscript is blocking ‘googletagservice’ & ‘googlesyndication’. Should I allow them also?
Sam, if you allow them, Google Ads are displayed. It is up to you.
Whitelisted and Paypal sent. :)
Thanks a lot Mike!
Whitelisted, sorry bro for blocking ads in this marvelous site
Thanks for the whitelist, no need to feel sorry.
Whitelisted Martin. I enjoy this site and didnt realize that just displaying the ad was helping as well. If that will help, Im all for it. Dont want to lose this site.
thanks Nathan!
I got my neighbor addicted to your site yesterday, and will do what I can to help, appreciate and enjoy all of your articles.
That’s wonderful, thanks for getting your neighbor hooked ;)
You’re officially my first whitelist ever. Good luck and thankyou for what you do.
B
First! Thanks ;)
I hate the ads, like really….really hate the ads. 90% of them are a bit intrusive to the actual flow the page. Yours are not bad.
Since I like your articles more than hating the ads, You’re whitelisted. I’ll see what I can do about the patreon but that may not happen this month.
Thank you for whitelisting my site despite hating ads.
Whitelisted, donated, good luck, man.
Alex thanks so much.
Martin, I visit your site often and find it useful, therefore I have become a “Patron”. There is only one other organization I support with a monthly donation, it is The Accessible Computing Foundation. There are only two other sites I “whitelist”, they are duckduckgo.com and howtogeek.com. Consider yourself in good company. Keep up the good work and best of luck to you.
Thank you Vrai. I have responded to your message on Patreon as well.
I’m so blacklisting Ghacks, now and forever. :)
That’s funny ;)
I don’t know how big is the bill for hosting and traffic, but did you consider a possible solution to use also a descentralized delivery of your content? You presented SyncNet last year and I’m sure there are also other solutions out there. Maybe someone here knows a real life case of such usage.
I don’t think that those systems are there yet when it comes to that. I thought about turning it into a static site if I cannot write for it anymore.
I use adblock edge on Pale moon and I don’t see the adblock edge icon on my toolbar (it doesn’t show on the toolbar layout either). How do I whitelist the site?
So, I switched from Adblock edge to Adblock latitude and white-listed Ghacks (also did the same with Ghostery). I still see no ads though…Also set NoScript to allow Ghacks. Still no ads…
Thanks for your efforts Jorge.
Maybe try Ublock instead?
Supporting! Also disabling ad blocker sorry.
Thanks Kenny.
Paypal sent, site whitelisted.
Let’s keep it on !
J.
Thanks Prince!
I think what would help the most is if one of your readers were a SEO expert that can help volunteer their services and help you understand why the Google changes in 2011 affected your site so much.
Unfortunately, I’m not a SEO guy, but maybe that’s another option that the ghacks community can do to help.
I have given up on that some time ago. I did hire two experts in the past to look at the site and make suggestions. Suggestions by the last seem to have stopped the negative trend but the site’s traffic is not growing either.
I’ve whitelisted Ghacks a long time ago. I shared the article via Twitter, Facebook & Google Plus.
Danke Sören!
Whitelisted and I never whitelist sites :)
Will look into Patreon. Thanks for all the work you do, Martin! And hope you get some large publicity about the funding campaign.
Ray thanks so much for whitelisting my site, I really appreciate it.
I remember you made a request for whitelisting a while ago and I did that in my main browser (Cyberfox64) then in AdBlock+ and Ghostery. And just recently when I installed Privacy Badger. (Yeah, on an i7-3770K box and 50 Mbps cable, all three work just fine together.)
But, there’s always a but…
Last year I began using QuiteRSS (about 175 feeds) and it’s configured to display only titles and a few lines; for the articles I want to read, they open in the embedded QtWebKit browser in which I run Easy List and Privacy. I just whitelisted you. Sorry I brainlocked on that.
Good luck! Keep up the great work.
BTW, please don’t abandon RSS.
Haakon no need to feel sorry. Thanks for whitelisting my site now.
all clear here, Martin, alles Gute!
Thanks jfjb!
Whitelisted! I hope it helps you, I can’t donate right now, but in a near future.
Keep up your good work!
Thanks so much SC!
Hi Martin,
Sorry to hear that.
Whitelisted.
Paypal donation in a few minutes.
Thanks.
Cedric
Cedric thanks a lot!
Whitelisted as well.
Shadess thanks!
Whitelisted now and I also would like the opportunity to make an occasional donation…I only use giftcards online to purchase and often have 7 to 14 euros left on each one that is not transferable to a new card….I would rather just pay them to ghacks than lose them altogether….This site has been a so full of top quality articles and tips, I’d hate to see it go.
Thanks Paul for whitelisting this site.
Just became a Patron. Please consider doing so too, people. This world needs more Martin Brinkanns, make sure we don’t loose the few we have! :)
Jimmy thanks so much!
Keep up the great job. unblocked and sent a paypal donation.
Kevin I will. Thanks a lot!
Whitelist enabled.
Thank you for whitelisting this site.
Whitelisted only this site………………..!
Thanks!
Have long whitelisted Ghacks. Will try to help in other ways too. Good luck Martin.
Thank you so much RG!
Wow, what an overwhelming number of responses sofar ….. impressive. I’ve not read them all.
I whitelisted your site now as well, Martin. I have to think about the Patreon site.
Keep up the good work !!
kind regards,
Peter
Peter thanks, I try my best.
Whitelisted and donation via Paypal. Best of luck keeping this essential site up and running, Martin.
Thanks Mike, I’ll fight to the bitter end (or better days).
Aaaaaaaandddd…. Done.
Logan I appreciate it.
Martin, you deserve our support and I hope this will work out for you. Signed up :)
Thanks so much Tom!
Whitelisted the site and sent you a fiver. Been coming here a few years and enjoy the articles (Have your RSS feed in my protopage). Thanks for doing what you do.
I’d urge everyone to whitelist here with adblock *and* ghostery; the “ads” are very tasteful and no porn.
Thanks Dwarf. If I’d ever see or receive notifications about porn, non-tasteful or otherwise disturbing or annoying ads, I’d ban those immediately and if things don’t improve, would switch ad networks.
How about a premium rss feed… I’d pay for that, then I wouldn’t have even visit the site. :)
I never heard of such a feature or service before. I don’t think that dividing RSS feed readers is the way to go though but I think that I need to “hint” to RSS-only readers that this site needs their support.
Became a patreon, 3 dollars a month is not much for this excellent site! :)
Claes I cannot thank you enough for your support. Thanks!
patreon vs flattr? article please:)
It is on my list. I just checked Freewaregenius and noticed that Samer has a Flattr button there. I’ll contact him and ask him about its performance.
I am really sorry to see your site suffer, Martin. I have never seen anyone come close to putting out the quantity of quality blog posts that you do.
I know how much work is required on a blog (commenting, spamming, updating, etc.), and decided it wasn’t for me, after having tried tool after tool. I tried numerous call-to-actions to sell numerous services that we provided. I tried writing on topics that would bring in an audience for my services. Have you reviewed your list of topics recently?
I can tell you that your SEO tactics are pretty solid – permalinks, keywords in posts, sharing, etc. And speaking of sharing, I know I’ve shared so many of your great posts over the years!
I’ve never tried Patreon – I know Nixie Pixel started it a little while ago. I wonder if it’s helped her? I haven’t really heard from her lately. Have you talked to other tech bloggers? I know — competitors – still may be worth a shot. I know Chris Hoffman writes for several blogs.
Anyway, I wish you the best and consider you a good friend! You have a lot of my respect! You’ll do fine, Martin!
Thanks so much Karl, I have responded to you on Google+ as well. I talked to other bloggers when sites were hit left and right by Google, we even have a support group on Google+ about it but as far as I know, things have not changed for the better for any of those sites.
White listed!
Thank you Charles.
I was a one time donator on your last “campaign”, and I hope you succeed, your site is really awesome!
I will take a look at the “Patron” thing.
Well, I already allowed some services on my NoScript like “googles yndication” and have whitelisted Ghacks long time ago, but I don´t see any AD.
Good luck in your endeavors!
Thanks a lot Maou for your support.
you showed us how to block ads now show us the available ways to support guys like you creators etc.write an article :)
Imu let me thing about it ;)
I’m not sure, but I think I know you since the times of deny.de.
Best wishes and cheers EOP
Can very well be, I ran the site together with a great bunch of people. Still have the domain :)
We need sites like yours to continue, Martin!!
Let’s all chip in and help out.
Mouser thanks for being so generous.
i thought you would only get ad revenue when somebody actually clicked on the ads(not just showing them)
Leon that is true for some ad types but not all. Some are so-called cpm banners which pay you by views.
This is my favourite tech site. A must read.
So… now looking for the whitelist option.
Will also put out a few Tweets to see if more people will follow or subscribe.
Thanks RossN!
I’ve whitelisted the site – I use Ghostery. Ads here are nowhere as bad as some sites, but my personal preference would be the smaller google text ads rather than the big ones, not sure how that works in terms of revenue generation.
Naveed thanks for the whitelist.
White Listed
The least i can do
Done!
Thanks Michael!
Whitelisted. Will make a donation if I can. God bless you and your work.
Thanks a lot Ged!
White listed ,The least i can do
Done!
Site is whitelisted. My budget is tight, however things are going to change in a few months. At that time, I can & will support you money wise as well.
I appreciate the whitelisting Alex!
Options 1 and 2 done. Wish you all the best, your blog is excellent, I read it daily with enthusiasm.
Thanks a lot Sylvio, I appreciate it.
I only follow four tech sites right now, and this is one of them. Your articles are great and informative and, unlike other certain tech sites, I’ve never detected an air of pretense or bias from you. That’s why I’ve had you whitelisted for years. I hope things take a turn for the best.
What are the other three sites? Thanks Froyton.
You’re welcome! The other three sites are ExtremeTech, OSNews and TorrentFreak. I used to follow Freewaregenius when it still had regular updates- I still check it every now and then, but it’s a shame what happened.
I still have hopes that Freewaregenius comes back, really. Samer is such a nice guy and I think what is happening to our sites is undeserved, especially if you check what is ranking now for freeware reviews on Google. See his story here: http://www.freewaregenius.com/why-does-google-hate-this-site/
Altough I still read ghacks from the rss flow in TB I whitelisted it and I’ll try not to forget opening all articles I interested on in my browser, too. Keep up the good work!
A suggestion: as you know better than me answers to the comments makes a bit more visitors going back and throughout the years (started to follow GHacks in 2007) I have found that there’s tons of unanswered questions addressed to you (the post creator) in the comments of even 2-3 days old posts. You’re probably well aware of this and I understand it’s impossible to monitor and answer those all by yourself. However, a call for community based moderators who can offer their free help time to time to help you out doesn’t seem to be a totally worthless idea. It works for e.g. Mozilla support. Think about that.
That would be great and many times others are already answering questions that come up. I’m looking at a new comment plugin for the site currently which simplifies things. I could make some users moderators then who could moderate comments as well.
I think the key thing is to have a feature to send alerts for appointed mods in case of new comments, preferably only for articles marked by a mod that fit their knowledge and interest. Not sure this kind of filtering is possible with any existing plugin though.
Tom no it is not. The default WordPress commenting and moderation system is awful. I checked out various commenting systems out there but won’t use most because they are remotely hosted (Disqus for example).
Hi there,imagine people reading ghacks can donate few cents for every article they found interesting :) the solution for you is already there and waiting Martin.
Check this out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
BTW.will paypal you in seconds man.
Imu I know about Flattr and find it an interesting approach but I don’t think it is widespread enough to make much of a difference. Could be wrong though as I looked into it the last time a year ago.
this makes me very sad as i value this site very highly. i have allways enjoyed your contents and numerous programs i use i where presented on this page. i feel it is very unfair how content creators as yourself are treated where “big” sites just win by quantity and not by quality. what makes me even more sad is the fact that if could help you i would, but i am in a very tight spot myself. i know this helps you in no way at all, but if i could help you i would. i promise to help if i have some finances left over, but for the past months that wasnt the case :(.
i wish you much luck and that maybe people that can help you value your work as much as me.
ps: i have an adblocker on as my internet is not very fast and it generally speeds things up (aside from general security purposes.)
i will now unblock your sites ads as i feel this is a minimum i can do and i definitly owe you this. it maybe not much, but that i can do.
Thanks for your support!
Donation made via PayPal. Thanks for the good work Martin.
Thanks a lot Shane. I will respond via email as well tomorrow to each who contributed via PayPal.
Whitelisted in Ad Muncher. Thank you for your hard work. This site is awesome.
I will try to donate you now and then via PayPal.
Thanks so much Kruno!
I’ve whitelisted too. I wish I could support you financially, but that’s not an option for me right now. Good luck!
Eric ever bit helps and white listing is definitely helping, thanks!
You are now Whitelisted.
Cheers!
Thanks a lot!
Done, good luck.
Thanks Scott!
I know this and have your site white-listed long time ago.
Also even if you put some nasty adds this will not make me stop visiting this site as i got very good knowledge from you, and i am sure other users will agree too. I bet most of your visitors are returning users and know what are here for.
Dave thanks for your long-standing support. I’d never add these kind of ads to the site though.
whitelisted ghacks.net – keep up the good work, martin!
Thanks munich!
White listed! I have an ad-blocker due to all of the annoying ads like the ones you described. Sites like Lifehacker have autoplaying ads and embed ads to look like articles on their main page. That crap drives me crazy. I don’t mind a few ads here and there, but it gets to be a little ridiculous.
Thanks for thinking of your users and using unobtrusive ads.
Thanks a lot Ben.
In Whitelisted!!!
Thanks Alex!
Adblock whitelisted.
I understand, I lost a lot of website traffic to my sites as well, thanks google :)
Thanks a lot Jason, sad to hear about your site losing traffic as well.
Whitelisted
Thanks!
I have only five whitelisted sites so far, and ghacks is one of them. Top of the line content and fair ad policy. I find myself on a funny situation right now, but I intend to help through Patreon ASAP. This site simply worth it
Thanks a lot!
I tried whitelisting the site in Pale Moon/AdBlock Plus, but it didn’t work. “Disable on ghacks.net” resulted in the page not completely loading (page loading circle just spins forever) and no ads show up.
Thanks so much Oxa for taking the time to whitelist the site.
Adblock Plus? Adblock Latitude (ABP fork) with Pale Moon v25.2.1 is working fine for me. Try clearing your cache and see if that helps.
Looks like the problem was Blur (formerly Do Not Track Me). After I disabled that, everything works fine. Blur has been irritating me for a long time, so good riddance to it.
Whitelist now successful!
Clearing the cache did not help :(
When the site is not whitelisted, it loads fine.
Whitelist of course !
Awesome job every days !
Keep going !
Thanks, I try my best ;)
No adblocker or somethings of this sort for your (excellent) Web site
anymore. Hope this help. :-)
Thanks so much Claude.
Whitelisted also :)
Thanks Uhtred!
Added to adblock whitelist. First website that I’ve ever whitelisted! CRAP…. now I need to redo my hosts file. ;)
Ghacks is the first, yippie! Thanks for doing that.
Whitelsited and put some money for use.
Keep it up ;)
Thanks so much Lukas!
Whitelisted the site on AdBlock, but some ads are flash based and are “blocked” by my “click to play” plugin setting on my browser. Do I also have to whitelist you there?
You don’t have to do anything. Thanks for whitelisting the site!
Do you have a Bitcoin address where I can send you a donation? Thanks.
Will I don’t have one but could look into that as well.
Email me your bitcoin address once you’re up and running; I’d much rather donate that way than through paypal.
I’ve already whitelisted Ghacks but I also use HostsMan with a few subscribtions. My question is: Is there any way I can whitelist a site in HostsMan?
UPDATE:
ok, found the answer to my own question (below)!.
I’ll just remember to DISABLE “BluHell” firewall temporarily,
each time and only when I visit Ghacks.
——
I want to WHITELIST Ghacks
immediately of course –
but my “Bluhell” Firewall (FF addon),
has no “Options” screen at all…
Martin, anyone! –
how can I whitelist Ghacks
in the “Bluhell” firewall?
Here’s is the URL
for “Bluhell” firewall:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/
– Pale Moon 25.2.1 and FF 35
– Ubuntu Linux 12.04 (32-bit)
– Samsung Tablet Galaxy Tab3 / Android 4.2.2
Interstellar. I think that is the only option as BluHell offers no whitelisting as far as I know.
Whitelisted. As a previous commenter noted, I often forget to disable my ad blocker.
Hang in there, Martin. Long live Ghacks!
Richard
Thanks Richard, I’m trying my best.
I’ve chosen Patreon to bring my modest contribution to a site which is part of my everyday sessions since many years.
I simply cannot imagine GHacks disapearing. Martin’s site, his articles, the clarity of his explanations is an oasis in the complex and sometimes complicated world of computing.
I’ve chosen Patreon also because making exceptions here is rather problematic considering blocking (which integrates advertizement, malvertizement, malware within all its declinations) is present throughout several defenses : the exception would have to be repeated on three levels. And I like the idea, the concept of Patreon, allowing me to combine my visceral hate of advertizement as it exists nowadays (tough debate, my wish is much less ads and much better quality) together with a normal retribution for the living of a site I like.
Look Martin at the number of comments : your site because of what it is, because of who you are, calls a natural commitment. Great!
Thanks so much Tom. I have put my last nine years into the site ;)
whitelisted here as well
it’s the least i can do
Thanks You!
Great post. Whitelisting you and looking into patreon.
Thanks Jammieg I appreciate that.
Hi Martin,
I will white list your site, across my computers.
I would suggest that you open a PayPal account so I and others can contribute via that account.
Best regards,
Or
Or, thanks for whitelisting my site. I have added my PayPal address to the article below the Patreon link as an option.
Hi Martin,
I’ve just sent you a small donation.
I hope that helps, if not, it can cover a pint on me.
Cheers,
Or
Thanks so much for your support.
I had ghacks whitelisted when I was still using AdBlock. Does anyone know if you can whitelist in AdFender? I can’t figure it out.
Add this as custom filter in AdFender :
@@||ghacks.net^$document
This is exception rule from ABP,so maybe it is going to work in AdFender.
Ficho thanks for helping out.
Thanks, seems to be working. Some ad appeared.
Whitelisted.
Like Andrew Said, i can donate whenever i can instead of monthly , can u provide option for that?.
Lucky, sure I can do that. I look into options. I think you can do something like that on Patreon as well. It works by pledging the amount and cancelling after the first charge.
I understand that this is not optimal though. I do have PayPal currently only. Do you think a PayPal donate button on this page might make sense?
Provide paypal button. i can donate thru it.
I have added my PayPal email to the article for now underneath the Patreon link. I cannot really use donate as PayPal seems to allow that only for non-profits.
Became one of your Patreons and whitelisted the site. Keep up the excellent work!
Lloyd thanks for becoming a Patreon and whitelisting the site!
I’m one of those few who reads your site from rss feed and there I don’t see any ads or anything to block/whitelist. I quite rarely actually visit here… But for those cases, I’m more than happy to whitelist you (I’m only using ghostery so it’s not much blocking ads, just making me more invisible for tracking scripts).
Yeah I never monetized the RSS feed as I find RSS feed monetization highly annoying. Thanks for whitelisting the site.
I disabled Adblock a while back for your site, but apparently Ghostery was also blocking your advertisements so I whitelisted your site on that too.
I would like to support some more, is there any way I can make a one-time donation instead of monthly?
Andrew thanks so much. Patreon does not support one-time payments unfortunately (which feels strange I have to admit). I could sent you my PayPal email if you have PayPal?
For PayPal or other services to send you a donation what currency would you like? I sent you something in US Dollars, but after I clicked I remembered you’re not in the US… I don’t know if it matters to you or not
Hey, I’d take that paypal address if I may. I really like this site, and I would gladly help out a bit. However ads are not an option, too creepy with tracking and stuff, and signing up for a recurring payment also doesn’t sound too good to me (I prefer complete control over my expenses). But a donation via paypal should be no problem.
And a bit off-topic, I really wish there was some kind of micropayment system for websites where you can have a button a click if you like and give some small amount, it really sucks how the entire web is reliant on advertisement. But I guess if it existed that too would be turned into some tracking nightmare…
I understand your standpoint completely. I have added my PayPal email address to the article below the Patreon link.
Please send me a paypal link also. I’m the same, I whitelisted your site a long time ago and would like to help you get back on your feet but not subscribe.
Thanks for that Jim. I have added the email to the article underneath the Patreon link.
That be great, shoot me an email and I will donate right away. (I am guessing you can get my email from the comments, if not let me know)
Just a thought, maybe add the patron link and a paypal donate link near the subscribe/connect area on your right column?
Andrew that is an interesting idea. I have added a Support Us link to the top of the site that links to this post. I fire off an email right away.
Whitelisted. The ads dont look that bad. Do you have skrill? I would send you some money.
Thanks for whitelisting the site. I don’t have a Skrill account, it looks similar to PayPal, is that correct?
Yea. I dont have PayPal beacuse i dont trust them and on my skrill account there are 10 € left ;)
Whitelisted in Maxthon. I usually follow news with rss.
Thanks a lot!
Done.
Firefox & Chrome.
AdBlock (Edge) & µBlock.
Thanks a lot Peter!
Whitelisted. I don’t have problems with normal ads,but I don’t like tracking.
P.S.
It is not working.I guess I should also check which sites I’m blocking with
Avast Website Blocking.
Martin,what ads are you using ?
I blocked doubleclick,googlesyndication and yieldmanager with Avast Website blocking,so
disabling ABP doesn’t have effects.
I have 3 blockers, one classic adblocker, one third party request blocker, and a tracker blocker that I could remove with the TPR blocker but which I kept. As Ficho it’s the tracking aspect of ads which annoys me the more.
I disabled all my 3 addons, but no luck still nothing. I’ll look in more details in the next days what’s up. I’m not fond either of paying via internet and that’s a bit an issue in this case – I would have probably helped directly a bit otherwise.
Mostly Google Adsense, Criteo below articles ( it is a test right now), and the sidebar ad is another test that is powered by Google’s ad server right now and displaying different ads.
and whitelisted.
I appreciate that, thanks!
I am now setting up a new system and is almost done. I will sure to whitelist Ghacks. I read your articles daily.
Joseph thanks!
I whitelist the blogs that i read and other sites that are of value for me already for a while.
dszady wrote:
“You’re one of the good guys Martin.”
QFT!
Thanks for that Sven, I do the same.
If websites were less aggressive with placing ads of all shapes and sizes, Adblockers wouldn’t be so popular.
Whitelisting your site, thanks Martin!
I agree Daniel. Many sites overdo it and that’s the consequence. Thanks for whitelisting Ghacks.
Sorry to hear but not surprised. Will check about removing ad blocking although I use a restrictive hosts file.
Questions about the contribution? Will you let us know what the level of support turns out to be as it seems late in the game? Assume the ongoing patron contributions will be cancelled in the worst case scenario.
Thanks Martin for a great and informative site. One of the best.
Ed as far as I know, the contributions are visible directly on the page. At least that is the case on other Patreon pages that I checked out prior to setting up an account on the site.
Thank you for such a great site.
Token of appreciation has been given.
Thanks you so much for your support.
Site has been whitelisted here. Hope it’ll help, keep going!
mmh
Thank you!
Whitelisted. You’re one of the good guys Martin.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot for whitelisting the site!
Whitelisted. ;)
I have just whitelisted this site and will continue to. I want to see ghacks exist for years to come. I would suggest maybe adding a banner asking new visitors to whitelist as well and stating that the ads are non-obtrusive. I know that there are many sites I would happily whitelist but without that reminder, I don’t even think about it.
Have done the same – and I agree on a reminder being good.
Also, thanks Martin for not going on the “all adblock is evil and people using it are horrible” rant that I’ve occasionally seen tech site writers do (even when that same techsite has articles on blocking ads). I understand that site owners need to finance their site, and if running it is their full-time or part-time job, they also need to make money to live like everyone else does. But vilifying all ad blocking disregards the annoyance some sites’ ads are.
When I do try to surf the internet without adblocker, I will encounter highly obnoxious things like autoplaying sound/video/popups that I’m simply not willing to put up with, so getting rid of it entirely is not an option for me. I’m however perfectly willing to disable my adblocker on sites that I read regularly and that display ads which aren’t obnoxious.
And I’m a lot more likely to disable my ad blocking based on a polite explanation why a site needs to show ads than based on someone implicitly or explicitly calling me a thief.
Eva I’m an Internet user myself (who would have guessed :P) and know that many sites go overboard with ads and especially the types of ads they throw at you.
With that said, this site was never one of those and I try my best to only allow ads on it that are not distracting or otherwise annoying.
Thanks. I plan to display information to ad-blocking users in the near future (in the banner location). Thanks for whitelisting the site.
Pay-paled a donation. People don’t realize the wonderful, wide ranging site you maintain. Number one feature is simplicity. It has an old school, easy to understand interface. I’m an experienced, older geek and the new information doesn’t sink in nearly as quickly as it once did, all things being equal, and it’s not going to get better.
Truth is that over the years, gHacks has saved us all tons of money. A searchable, all platforms, all Browsers, new and old, with archived, easy to read instructions…a real asset to the web. I don’t facebook or tweet. (imagine that). I’ll forward this to old friends that do and remind them to put gHACK in their favorites. Thanks again for all your hardwork and dedication to making our ever more complex world easier to compute in.
I guess to be blunt, what good would it do to whitelist if a person is never going to click an ad anyway?
Done.
Added you to my Ad-block Whitelist.
Thanks so much!
I hereby using white-listing on Your fantastic web-site. Good option, by the way…
I don’t like ads, but still want to thank You Martin, for Your hard work.
Yours sincerely — P
Thank you Pitbull!