Has anyone else seen those annoying "pop up" ads?

I was just on one of the forums (do not remember which one) and suddenly one of those very annoying "pop up" ads showed up. You know, the ones that follow you up and down the screen and insert themselves on top of what you are actually trying to look at. Pleeeeze someone tell me it was a freak thing and this will not happen on a regular basis ------------

lol actually I was driven nearly nuts by that flashing one!

You can go to your preferences and turn off the ads if you don't like them. (go to My Info, then Preferences, then you'll see a link in the navigation box on the side of the page that says ads)

awesome thanks!

I did that. Am I supposed to have it checked or unchecked. Right now I have forum sponsors (which I do not mind) checked and the ads without a check. The ads part was not checked when the pop up appeared.

Unchecked if you DON'T want to see them. Checked if you do.

OK, it was unchecked when I saw it appear. Now what?

Are you still seeing ads even though that little box is blank?

I have not seen that happen on any of the forums I've been on. Maybe it was just a "freak" thing! If it happens again, I would contact Admin and ask them what's going on.

I wonder if it's happening to anyone else?

Given that you have the box unchecked and the fact that it was a popup ad I'm not sure at all that the ad you saw came from here--I could be wrong (since I have the ads turned off) but I don't think Dave has any of the popup kind of ads. There might be some flashing things, but I don't think he has any that pop themselves up like that. So I suspect it might have been coming from elsewhere .

tetleytuna, do you remember where in the forums you were when it happened?

I just saw it the one time a few minutes ago. If it keeps happening I will take your advice and contact admin. Thanks for your help!

I do not remember which forum I was in. Have developed the habit of just bouncing around depending on what the "latest posts" had on it.

This message was edited Apr 25, 2008 10:53 PM

I know when I am not logged in and do a google search for a plant and see DG and click on it to check out the plant I get those flashing ads but not when I log in.

I always log in so that I can access whatever I want to on the site so I do not think that is what it was. I will start paying attention now though.

I'd also pay attention to what other sites you visit--I know I often have a couple browser windows open at a time, and if you do the same thing and one of the other sites is one of the many, many sites that have popup ads, it could be coming from one of those sites and not from here. If it was a regular ad at the top of the page then I'd think there was just something mixed up and hopefully Dave could fix it, but since it's a popup I'm not sure it's originating from DG.

It was from DG. I do occasionally have several windows open, but they are all from DG once I am on this site. Too confusing for me otherwise..... LOL

I used to have the ads on and occasionally click on one that was interesting, that is a large source of revenue for a site. Then Dave's was getting slower and slower and I realized that I was sitting on various ad servers and only rarely even seeing the name of one of Dave's machines, so I turned off the ads and suddenly everything was speedy again.

I seem to remember that at some point when ads were new that ve assured us that we would never be subjected to annoying flashing ads. I guess that Dave is loosing control of his site. That is too bad!

Out of curiosity I changed my preferences to show ads and sponsors. I then went to several forums and opened several threads. So far all I see is
"Ads by Google Free Plants Garden Journal Nursery Plants Garden Idea "

and that is in small print right under the tabs at the top of the page. So where are all these annoying ads and such?

I did the same thing Zany, still haven't seen an annoying pop-up. I haven't seen anything flashing either, changing yes, but not flashing.

So far I have not seen any ads at all! I'm leaving it checked for now to see what happend throughout the day today.

A few of the forums I visit have "sponsors", like the pets forum. They are tasteful though and I have got a few nice coupons for cat and dog food ^_^

I semm to have only the one annoying "follow me" pop-up. It seems to happen shortly after logging in and then I do not see it again. I am going to write down the name next time so that I can let admin know which company it is.

The only time I have had that happen is when my computer had a virus, try running your scans and see if that helps.

I agree, I really don't think DG has popup ads at all, and so far nobody else has noticed ads here at all if the correct option is checked in preferences, so I really think yours is coming from somewhere else. Could be a virus, or it could be some site that you visited a while ago planted something on your hard drive so that pops up whenever you get online. I'd run a spyware checker too if the virus checker doesn't come up with anything. There are a few free ones out there that you can download--I think mine was from AdAware.

Threegardeners, We still have a Pets forum? I can't find it! All I see is:

Garden Related Forums:
Beginner Gardeners:

Beginner Flowers
Beginner Gardening Questions
Beginner Houseplants
Beginner Landscaping
Beginner Vegetables


Pets: ( no forum to check!)


General Gardening:

Accessible Gardening (*)
Annuals (*)
Bonsai (*)
Bug and Insect Identification
BugFiles Pictures
Bulbs (*)
Classic Threads (*)
Community Gardens (*)
Container Gardening (*)

Here's the pet forum http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/pets/all/

If that's all you're seeing there's something wrong with the page you're looking at, when I go to the list of forums there's a whole huge entire page full of them (pets is under leisurely pursuits). I get there by clicking "communities" tab, then "discussion forums". Or if that's how you found that list, try doing a shift-refresh to make it load the latest page.

Thanks! I just copied the top few here. When I saw nothing listed where it says Pets: I didn't think to look under leisurely pursuits.

There's still something funny with the page you're looking at, when I go there there's only one place that says pets and it's under leisurely pursuits and there's the link to the forum. The page I get has the beginner forums just like you have, then where you're seeing something about pets, I have From House to Home and a list of the home improvement related forums, then it goes into the general gardening.

Zany's looking at the page under where we manage our preferences. It says the same for me there. You know, where we can put a check mark beside which forums to watch?

Oh...I never go to that page, that's why I was confused, I always go to the main forum list on the community tab. Pets is still on that page under leisurely pursuits, I'm not sure why there's a separate section too with no forums.

LOL... It is there to confuse the Zanymuse ☺

Oh, the ads were flashing away on pets!! I posted on pets about it and found out how to get rid of it.

I really really did NOT like those.

Susan
=^..^=

Yep, the sponsor ads are showing since I opted to wee ads but I was shocked to see my first pop-up ad appear over the posts and hiding the writing for a few seconds.

It just happened again! It is a small ball that pops up in the screen and says "safecount.net your opinion matters please take this short survey" It hovers and follows me around for a little while and then disappears. It was on the pets forum this time. I have done a virus check and do not have any other sites open. I am definatly going to let admin know about this in case it could be something infecting DG.

Have you run one of the spyware checker programs? Things like that are usually spyware/adware not viruses. Some anti-virus programs check for spyware but some don't. Of course it could still be something associated with the ads here, hopefully Dave will be around on Monday and have some answers. But in the meantime if your virus software doesn't tell you that it looks for spyware, I'd download a spyware checker and you may find that fixes the problem.

I've been all over DG this weekend, including the Pet Forum, and I'm not seeing any pop-ups, only the forum sponsor ads.

I usually use Firefox exclusively, so I switched to IE, (which I'm using now), and surfed around the site a bit to see if I could entice the pop up to visit me. I've not seen it yet.

I've never checked or unchecked anything for ads and have never seen any other than forum sponsors until a minute ago. I clicked on the pet forum and there was a bouncing ball ad asking me to take a survey. When I right clicked, it went away but it matched the sponsor at the bottom. Safety net or something? When I clicked out of that thread/forum and went back, the sponsor had changed.

I had it pop up on me once but it has not repeated itself for me to do a screen capture on it. I was definately on the pets forum when it happened and I have run adaware and spybot search and destroy as well as a complete virus scan, all in safe mode to be sure my machine is not the culprit. All systems show clean here.

I am confirming what Zanymuse said, and my system is clean as well. As soon as I saw this thread I turned the ads off and it has not returned. The one I saw was a circle floating up over the posts, and I believe it was the pets forum but I could be mistaken.

I've tried and tried to replicate the conditions and get the ad to appear, to no avail - we'd like to track it down and get a screenshot so we can get it removed. When was the last time anyone saw the floating ad?