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The advertisements on the Forum.

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The advertisements on the Forum.  Empty The advertisements on the Forum.

Post by ☠ ~ Aɳɳ ~ ☠ Mon 06 Aug 2018, 18:20

Dear Users,

The following is an informational post about the adverts that we use on this Forum here, to help us with financing the operational costs of the G4TW platform.




I.) Linkvertise.


We're going to add this link shortener "Linkvertise", to the majority of the download links here. A brief explanation on how to progress through the ads shall follow. Wait until the counter runs out under "Free access with ads", and click the button.



The advertisements on the Forum.  DGAwWAi

Then click on "discover interesting articles":



The advertisements on the Forum.  HFyKd0o

After which a window will come up looking like the one below; these articles will typically be in the language of your Internet Service Provider (or VPN service, if you use one). Click on the "x" in the top right corner, which can take up to 15 seconds for the window to close, though.



The advertisements on the Forum.  HJtNen2

Update: after clicking that "x", you will now also need to watch an ad-video (unless you want to endure that, we recommend turning off the audio for the duration of the video/muting the browser tab, and/or briefly switching to a different browser tab). Haters gonna hate  Update: videos have been completely disabled.



The advertisements on the Forum.  R5DYIkl

And that is it, basically! Releases for the Indie Corner-project will be excluded from these adverts, so you are able to grab them without having to go through any ads!



Happy B-day! Can't touch banana Heeeeeey, Macarena





II.) "Infolinks"


If adblockers are disabled (only), you will notice that certain words on the Forum are going to be "highlighted". These keywords show up in orange, and to distinguish them from normal links: the info-links are those links with a dotted/punctured underline.


The advertisements on the Forum.  CO5Qbik



If you hover with the mouse over these "Infolinks", a small window will show up. 


The advertisements on the Forum.  P4RGMXJ



If you decide to click on the link you will be re-directed to their site, from which you then are able to use their search (for what it's worth)...





III.) Spending the money...?


You may be wondering what we do with the income from these advertisements, and I would be happy to share! We've started using a "Premium" package for the forum. We pay a set amount of money to Forumotion each month, and it enables a number of nice additional features. To name a few: 


Arrow  The forum now has its own, personal domain. In fact, Games4theworld purchased a couple of domains, and you can reach the Forum by going to:
https://www.games4theworld.club


Arrow  (not related to Forumotion) Direct download links for various services (mostly GoogleDrive, MediaFire & cloud.mail.ru) can be kept up. Please note that in spite of that, we are - still - unable to offer reliable and permanent direct download options for our repacks. That may or may not change in the future.


Arrow  Advanced search is now enabled on the Forum.


Arrow  The Forum now has an SSL certificate.


Arrow  The Administrators now have a few more options in the Adminpanel.


Arrow  The team receives gifts from time to time, for their hard work.


Arrow  Last but not least, we're also saving up for (good) third-party hosting solutions, including a possibility to host a new Minecraft server on our own 'server infrastructure'.







IV.) Background information & Basic troubleshooting



Exclamation     We know it's a dirty solution with regards to help financing our operations. And yes, we are also aware that if somebody "really doesn't want to", they can bypass the Linkvertise easily. However, we would still like to try and ask you for your understanding, and consider supporting us, if you like our downloads & work in general. On the other hand, if you are skeptical about this type of advertising in general and/or your antivirus software happens to "false-flag" our site and/or these download links, please do not ask us to remove these ads. Just grab your (Sims) downloads from a different site then.


Exclamation     Using ads is in our opinion a 'cleaner' and safer solution for everybody, including ourselves. Compared to making a public "rollcall" and begging random users for (cryptocurrency) donations, using these ads gives us more anonymity & fewer paper trails to be followed.


Exclamation    If you are basically willing to support us, but you may be 'deterred' by the number of download links we are running through the advertising company (yes, most of our download links here are "shortened"), there are some partial remedies. You can still grab our old releases from The Piratebay, without any of these Linkvertise/Infolink-ads. Except I suppose from whatever ads The PirateBay themselves are using, and over which we - of course - have no control. Or you can also grab our old releases from the "abandoned" old G4TW-website, including all of the TS3 store items. The items that you can find on The Piratebay and that old website make up about 80% of all G4TW releases, and the rest/newer stuff is run through the Linkvertise, on this Forum here.


Exclamation    You do NOT need to actually click on any of the ad-windows (presented on the Linkvertise-page) in order to eventually reach the download links. For some reason this seems to be a very common misconception. Just follow the above guidelines on reaching the destination download links, and you'll be fine.


Exclamation    Some users have pointed out in a cynical fashion that it doesn't matter that we have moved away from adfly, as - so their claim goes - "people hate the Linkvertise just as much, if not more". The reason we have moved from adfly was motivated by the fact that adfly use "inappropriate/family-unfriendly ads", which is not the case with Linkvertise seemingly. And of course there will always be people who hate any type of ads. But guess what? If (some) people hate ads no matter what, then they're not the kind of user that we would want to have around here either way. These users should really move on, then.


Exclamation    Regarding technical problems on the side of the advertising company: if you cannot access a download link and are greeted with some error message, try again later. We are not going to abandon the general policy because of temporary technical issues.


Exclamation    Despite the adversity that our platform is facing, we still strive towards a family-friendly 'look' of our platform. G4TW is basically a very small niche-interest platform, but our activities still attract a lot of heat and vitriol from various sources; therefore possibilities for advertising on G4TW are more limited than on "mainstream" internet platforms. You should also know that - for example - we are banned and barred from Google's AdSense. In consequence it is theoretically possible that on occasion some inappropriate ads show up on the Linkvertise and/or the Infolinks. Please understand that just because inappropriate ads can slip by sometimes, it doesn't mean we approve of them. Help us by reporting these adverts; have a look at section VI. of the Forum FAQ ("If you want to report a particular advertisement") for more information.


Exclamation    If you get an endless loading circle or it keeps prompting your to disable adblockers when trying to bypass the adverts, try clearing your browser cache & cookies, and restart the browser. You could also check your browser extensions or plugins, and disable them one-by-one. You could also try using a different browser. However, in our experience issues like these do not happen very often in the first place, so until we have more knowledge about these issues, we shall leave it at that and update this guide as warranted in case of new developments.


Exclamation    Furthermore, if you get endless loading circles/screens, check your browser settings if Javascript is allowed. Example from Chrome/Chromium/Iridium browser, under Settings => Advanced.

The advertisements on the Forum.  JNqfFXm


The advertisements on the Forum.  ZXzYvgk



Exclamation    Check your antivirus software and/or VPN provider if they have some functionality regarding ad-blocking, and make the necessary exclusions. In some cases it is also possible that your router/modem has some built-in functionality regarding ad-blocking, in which case you could try tweaking the settings of your router firmware. Consult the documentation of your router and/or ask your ISP for further help if needed. It's also worth emphasizing that in the end, the only people who benefit from these built-in obstacles (browsers, security software, router firmware, VPNs, etc.) are copyright holders and their stooges: it will almost certainly deter or scare off quite a lot of pirate-users, and thereby increasing chances of them spending money on legit copies of whatever they wanted to pirate, originally. If you cannot find any options in your VPN to disable ad-blocking, then try this: temporarily turn off your VPN when passing through the Linkvertise. Once you did, and before you start the actual download, turn the VPN back on. NordVPN, according to user reports, is especially prone to this behavior.


Exclamation    Sometimes you also have to do odd steps which are not necessarily obvious at first glance. For example, Firefox users can try clicking on the green padlock on the left of the URL mask, and in the window that comes up, click on "Turn off blocking for this site". It may not be a necessity in case of accessing Linkvertise, but it's still nice to keep in mind for other uses.

The advertisements on the Forum.  UQ2fMhN


Exclamation    Another odd step would be for you to try and change your default DNS servers, see for example this guide here to learn how.



Exclamation    Remember we are all volunteers, and we invest a lot of time and efforts in making your visit to Games4theworld a pleasurable one.
☠ ~ Aɳɳ ~ ☠
☠ ~ Aɳɳ ~ ☠
G4TW SUPER Adminatrix
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