Ad Supported Forum?

[Samuel Rutledge]

Okay, I love this idea, but there's one major problem; it is ad supported. I'm not, in principle, opposed to this (after all, the people who wrote the software that's running all this have to make a living somehow) but right now I'm looking at an ad that's attacking Jeff Merkley, the Democrat who stands a chance at unseating Gordon Smith. I know not all villagers share the same politics, but I also assume many of us do not support this sort of advertising. Is there any way to control this?

[Keith]

Yes we can take the ads off the site at a charge of 19.95 a month. However there are also some good ads I printed off a $20.00 discount for printer ink..If we like the site the way it works well enough we can pay if we want. Gotta love the spin doctors when it comes to poliitical ads ...it is amazing!

[Keith]

Samuel,

I have done a little more research this morning and we can replace the google ads with our own ads....or none here is what NING says... Think of it we could get each of our own advertisers that would pay us to run ads and If the cost was low enough it would make sense...


How do I remove Google ads from my network? Can I run my own ads?

To remove the advertisements that run in the right column of your network or to run your own ads on your network, you'll need to purchase the "Control the Ads" premium service for $19.95 per month. If you are going to use an ad provider such as Yahoo! Publisher or Google AdSense we recommend having the HTML code they provide before you sign up for the premium service. You can learn more by reading our tutorial for Google Adsense. When you're ready to go, here's how you control the ads on your network!

Sign in to your network and go to the Manage tab.
Click "Add Premium Services" and you'll be taken to the premium services page.
Check the "Add" box for the Control the Ads premium service.



A box will appear with the header "Your HTML Advertising Code." If you do not want any ads to appear on your network, simply leave this box blank. If you do want ads to appear and you already have the HTML for your advertisements, you can paste your HTML into this box. If you don't have your new ad code yet, leave this box blank and continue your purchase for now. You can always come back to this box when you are ready to add your code.
When you're ready, click the "Go" button at the bottom of the page.
Fill out the payment information and click "Submit."
Enter your password (an added security feature).
You'll arrive on a confirmation page, which means you've successfully signed up for the Control the Ads premium service.
If you are choosing to run your own ad code, you can now re-position the ad module on your network. To do so, return to your network, go to the Manage tab and click the "Features" link.
The "Ads" box, which appears in the right column of every page of your network by default, is now "unlocked."

The Ads box will pull in whatever code you included in step four above. You can re-position it elsewhere in the right column or move it to the left column. Simply drag and drop it to where you would like to appear. However, only those items placed in the upper part of the right column will appear on every page of your network. You can also include your ad code in any text box on your network.

People who viewed this FAQ also viewed:

How much does Ning cost?
How do I get an alternative advertising program to Google Adsense?
How do I remove the "Create Your Own Social Network" links?
How do I add custom CSS to change the design of my network?
How do I set up domain mapping with GoDaddy?
Subscribe to this article - Notify me when this article changes Was this FAQ helpful? Yes No Submit Rating
Back to Search Results Print Answer /

[Planet Janet Bubbles Universe]

My eyes tend to gloss over adverts. I didn't see this until it was mentioned. Right now it says Jeff Merkley gets award honored by americans for higher taxes. It means nothing to me cause I know it's just an add. While i will go back to ignoring it, it would be nice if it said instead, "CV honored for community service".

[Ben]

$20/month is ridiculous for this, and I fail to believe that the good-hearted people (technical artists/engineers) who made & wrote NING are making money off the donations -- I'd guess it is a business plan to cover the cost of their machines and network. The people who run this are indeed profiting, just like the folks who run MySpace. This is a major reason why I was hoping that the CV Web Team could review this before it is deployed at large to the village.... this is why I mention the intense similarity of the NING code & site, to what we've been working on, with wordpress.

I'm not sure if we can load the ning code onto our own server, but I feel $20/month is WAY too much for a proper server. I pay about $7/month for each of my servers, and for each one I can run many websites & domains, including full email control and ability to FTP files for classic website management, as well as all this fancy social-networking stuff with modern dynamic websites. For $20 we don't get much more at all, mostly just relief from their ads (which would likely not earn us $20/month in return, if we put our own ads there).

~ben

[Planet Janet Bubbles Universe]

Hey, My private weg site, which I get thru efn is $35 a year, that I don't seem to have much time to deal with lately. It's not a tilda (~)efn web site, but my own domian (.net). At this time we have two web sites, the one we get free with the village email account and lists service, the tilda one, which is $12 a month,..... and we have this site, which is run by Keith like a bonus site for free I would guess. It's more like our party house. I like it.
So can we just get the html code and set up the same thing on our own web site? That's how I wrote the first village site.
Also I made some very fancy tile backgrounds, for our old web site, which I guess are gone now. Anyway could they get put into the choices for this web site for backgrounds people might like. It took me months to make them, hope to see them recycled somewhere.