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I haven't had lot of time to read some articles lately but I noticed that there is a lot of noise caused by ads at the end of an article.
There is:
a skyscraper ad on the right (which stays in place)
a rectangle ad besides the license info and the share buttons (right above the author info)
a banner below the author info
And in addition to that there are 4 rows of "you may also be interested in..." before you get to the discussion board
I like to support codeproject by disabling my adblocker but I feel that there are a few too many of them 
If you don't know what I mean:
Tell me that this[^] doesn't look cluttered...
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It's always a balance and we try really, really hard to not make the ads obnoxious.
When you first view an article you'll see two ads. Just two. Then as you scroll down you'll certainly come across the box ad and finally the bottom leaderboard. The tower ad is in the fixed side column so you can definitely get a situation where you'll see 3 ads.
The "Also read" are to try and show articles and research papers that are relevant and of interest. We want to encourage readers to explore some of the thousands of brilliant articles written by our authors and there's only so much room on a page.
I'm always happy to play around with placement: I could move the social sharing buttons, or move the "also read" to the very bottom (not super useful then) or move the box ad halfway up an article (really tricky since we don't control article layout).
We're a free site and we need ads, but I never want to have the noise outweigh the reading experience.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Small, possible improvement to the also read "box":
Can you make the thumbnails a bit smaller, personally I don't need them but I can see that they might add something for people and for me they do more harm than good (especially if there is an thumbnail that can't be displayed, that seems to bug me more than it should )
Even on my 24" screen (1920x1200 resolution) that box takes up half the screen, and combined with the "about the author" box and the add in between almost the whole screen, so to get to the comments I have to scroll an entire screen, for new users they might not find the comments section at all like this.
Tom
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Try now.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Hey you just removed a row of them 
It's better tho
Still quite a few thumbnails not displaying but I guess that's a caching issue.
just in case it's not:
this[^]
has no thumbnails in the first column.
Tom
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I shrunk the thumbnails 20% as well.
The missing icons are cache inconsistencies (we changed the data we're expecting so the cache is sending us back bad data - they should be good in a couple of minutes).
cheers
Chris Maunder
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So as the Marketing guy what I really need to do is have the bottom banner attached to your cursor. As you move it around, the banner follows. Obviously I'd make it so the banner move to the left or right depending on where you were on the screen so as to ensure it wasn't blocking anything important (ie. other banners).
In all seriousness it's not so much the placement as the context. Ads should be placed where they will
1. Get immediate attention (eg 'above the fold', or 'top of page' placements), or
2. Eventually get attention (next to something down the page that you will most certainly pause to read), or
3. Possibly get attention, but only show if you get there (eg bottom of the page, but only show them if you scroll down enough)
with a caveat on 3 being
3a. possibly get attention by not being drowned out by something else
With an overall guideline being
4. Not interrupt the overall reading experience of the thing the readers have come for: the main content.
Item #4 is what I see broken all the time. In fact it's getting stupid: you go to a site to read and within 5 seconds there's a popup demanding you sign up for their newsletter.
With regards to our banners, having it at the very, very bottom fits with 3, but could possibly be affected by 3a: it would be lost. The trick is not losing it without violating 4.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: So as the Marketing guy what I really need to do is have the bottom banner attached to your cursor. As you move it around, the banner follows. Obviously I'd make it so the banner move to the left or right depending on where you were on the screen so as to ensure it wasn't blocking anything important (ie. other banners).
It's not like the marketing people didn't try, didn't they? 
Chris Maunder wrote: With regards to our banners, having it at the very, very bottom fits with 3, but could possibly be affected by 3a: it would be lost. The trick is not losing it without violating 4.
At least for you it's all about placing as many ads on a page as you can without affecting the intended user experience. This is way better than to just punch a user with as many ads as you can before he leaves and never returns.
I regularly encounter those sites with these newsletter popus as well (usually by following links from the daily news). But those definitely aren't sites that I keep visiting after that. The hassle simply isn't worth the chance of finding valuable or interesting content.
Some news pages used to suggest some other article with a small box on the bottom right. The content then rotated through different articles there. Found this kinda nice, but I don't really see it anymore. I supposed, that didn't really catch on.
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On mobile browsers, profile picture or total reputation points (the right panel) of the profile, is not available. Even if we scroll to the right.
Is it by design? Or something is missing?
My suggestion would be to provide the total reputation count and profile picture, as on desktop.
Thank you.
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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I'm working on this article: http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/ArticleVersion.aspx?waid=173281&aid=1001468[^]
There are some formulas I decided to present them using Tex math so added the Tex code inside a div with class="math" as suggested...It worked well yesterday, but when today I went to continue I realized that the class part wiped clean somehow...
It seems that somewhere the HTML clean-up done its job too good...
Please check it...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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All fixed, but it'll be a couple of hours before I deploy the fix (want to bundle it with another deploy).
Turns out we were applying MathJax to current articles, but not composing (or previous) versions. Simple fix.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Good work! Thank you! 
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I did email verification several times. But still it shows the error:
Is your email address OK? You are signed up for our newsletters but your email address is either unconfirmed, or has not been reconfirmed in a long time. Please click here to have a confirmation email sent so we can confirm your email address and start sending you newsletters again. Alternatively, you can update your subscriptions.
Any systematic work reflects its significance for a long time. So let's discuss the best...
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I've sent you a new confirmation email. Can you please click the link, and if you still see this error, forward me the email to chris at codeproject.com
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Thanks Chris. It works now. Just one more Qn.. If this mail confirmation is one time or periodic?
Any systematic work reflects its significance for a long time. So let's discuss the best...
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One time. You'll get a reminder if you need to reconfirm.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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The Daily News email received from maillist.codeproject.com got hung up in our spam checker as the SPF check failed.
Testing the SPF record for that domain shows an error:
SPF record lookup and validation for: maillist.codeproject.com
SPF records are published in DNS as TXT records.
The TXT records found for your domain are:
Record contains non-ASCII characters and is invalid.
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Thank you for that. I've yelled loudly at those responsible. Should be fixed soon.
[Edit: fixed]
cheers
Chris Maunder
modified 23-Jun-15 9:19am.
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On the various pages in this website, the Page Selection functions are (always) at the bottom.
If I want to follow a topic on, say page 20 for example, I need to scroll to the bottom of the page to click PREVOIUS/NEXT or any of the Page Selection functions.
It would be a huge improvement, to navigate this most useful website, if the Page Selection Control block would also be at the top of the list, of say articles, or answers, or discussions, etc.
Thanks in advance for your consideration of this request.
Best Regards,
kdsdata
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You're talking about the forums?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I am referring essentially to any of the pages that return, for example, a set of articles, a set of answers, submissions in discussion forums, or community postings.
At the bottom of the "sets" there is usually a Page Selection Control:
Refresh «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next»
In some case there are also "First" and "Last" Controls (links)
At the top of the page there usually is only:
First Prev Next, and sometimes "Last".
I am suggesting to improve the pages by having the following not only at the bottom, but also at the top of the sets:
Refresh First «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next» Last
Best Regards,
kdsdata
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Go to the bottom of this forum and look at the right hand side. What do you see?
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Pete. I see exectly what I am asking to be also put at the top of the list of articles, etc. That way if I want (need) to go to page 23 of the listed articles, I do not have to scroll down (sometimes repeatedly) to the bottom of the page to click the number, or the "Prev", or "Next", or "Last", as the case may be.
Simply put at the top of the list, what is available at the bottom.
Best Regards,
kdsdata
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kdsdata wrote: I am suggesting to improve the pages by having the following not only at the bottom, but also at the top of the sets:
Refresh First «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next» Last
I'd prefer not. It adds too much noise.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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