Free your "free" website from advertisements

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Sat May 21, 2005 3:05 pm

In my opinion there's too much advertizing on free websites nowadays, so I wanted to get rid of it once and for all. I found a trick to fool Tripod (it will probably work for many other free website hosts as well):

Code: Select all

<body bgcolor="#ccb9b9">
<div style="position:absolute;top:0px;left:0px;background-color:#ccb9b9;width:100%;height:100%;">
<!-- your html code starts here

--> your html code stops here
</div>
</body>

A maximum-sized (100% wide and high) DIV block with background color (here: #ccb9b9) is covering the DIVs and SPANs inserted by Tripod as first lines of your html document. And presto, a clean layout. Visit my homepage for an example.

Toontoonz · Post by **Toontoonz** » Sat May 21, 2005 3:18 pm

I saw an big ad on your website: Jamba crazy frog.

Right above your line:
"I'm busy gradually setting up this site, so there isn't much to see yet."

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Sun May 22, 2005 12:20 pm

it almost works, but i see a few ads come through occasionally. None-the-less, its doing a pretty good job.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Sun May 22, 2005 4:59 pm

Of course, this isn't the perfect solution, but I'm curious if someone has a better idea. If it works, I'm all for it. Free should be really free, not paid with advertisements that clutter your page design.

BTW I also have written a tiny Java applet which displays an image. This way you can still use Tripod as an external image server, although steps have been taken by Tripod to prevent this. The applet source code is located here (remove the text added by Tripod). I haven't commented the source code, but that shouldn't be any problem for a Java applet programmer (only 179 lines of code and all pretty standard stuff).

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sun May 22, 2005 7:55 pm

I'm at a loss to understand this. I'm all for getting something for nothing (I mean, who isn't?), but there's a word for companies that don't get any money for the services they offer. That word is "bankrupt". Why should any company provide you with a service for nothing? Advertising can be annoying, but as long as it is a background activity, I can put up with it!

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Sun May 22, 2005 10:17 pm

jahnocli wrote:Advertising can be annoying, but as long as it is a background activity, I can put up with it!

I couldn't agree more, but why does it have to be so much nowadays (sometimes 10% or more of the available screen height)?

Anyway, on all my browsers (Safari, Netscape, FireFox, Internet Explorer, all for Mac) the advertisements disappear. This seems not always to be the case on other OSes. But then some of my browsers have special features installed to minimize unwanted advertisements.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Mon May 23, 2005 7:52 am

I've come up with another trick. I can't check if this works on Windows or Linux, but have a look at the Tripod ad blocker page and tell me what you saw, please.

The trick is to add

Code: Select all

<!--<body>

as very first line of your html code, just before you upload it to Tripod.

I've tried this trick on YahooGeocities, but that didn't work, because Geocities adds the code after your html code. Ah well, you can't have everything

And that Tripod banner... Hmmm, I can live with that, because it doesn't mess up your page design so much. I'm not against advertizing, but enough is enough

Toontoonz · Post by **Toontoonz** » Mon May 23, 2005 11:13 am

Lots of websites have ads --- on purpose---such as
www.macdailynews.com
www.nytimes.com
http://www.yahoo.com/
It´s not the ads that count on a website - its what you have in your website.

-A regular website of one´s own only costs between U.S. 15 cents and U.S. 25 cents a day.

-To own one´s own URL - www. your name of your website. com - costs only about U.S. 75 cents a month.

(Having my own names on my websites is worth many times that - it is a great deal).

You can get a blog for free

with no ads on it: http://www.blogger.com/start

If you use Tripod (other the other freebie ad sites) I don´t think Google or other search engines even look at them, so you will never be listed in a Google search.
Isn´t the page free to you on Tripod because Tripod pays your fee with their advertising???

And try http://100webspace.com/

Free hosting package:
100MB disk space
3GB bandwidth
3 POP3 e-mails & Webmail
Free 24/7 technical support
PHP, Perl/CGI-BIN
MySQL database
FTP access
Web-based file manager
Small banner

Hiddicop · Post by **Hiddicop** » Mon May 23, 2005 11:40 am

http://www.free-webhosts.com

Here you can find several free and good webhosters without ads.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Mon May 23, 2005 1:47 pm

Thanks for the advice, guys. I think I'll try 100WebSpace, that's much better than struggling with the antics of Tripod or Geocities. I don't mind a small banner (reread my second message: "Free should be really free, not paid with advertisements that clutter your page design"). So as long as the advertisements don't dominate my pages (as in Tripod and Geocities), I can live with them.

And about the matter of being mentioned in Google, etc, if your site is linked in as many blogs as possible, you'll end up high in the rankings. However, because my livelihood doesn't depend on it, I don't need a large audience, a select audience is good enough for me.

Nevertheless it was fun knowing that ads can be disabled/crippled with some trickery.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Mon May 23, 2005 4:04 pm

So, my Tripod url is :
http://iamrasheed.tripod.com
My new 100WebSpace url is:
http://iamrasheed.allhyper.com

I keep updating the 100Webspace site, but not the Tripod site. I thought you may want to know this.