Adam Howitt's Blog

Feb 01
2007

CFDJ Ad Frenzy

At : 5:05 PM | Link | Coldfusion | Comments (12) | Send | 589 Views |

I wasn't going to post this but after some discussion at the frameworks conference it seems I'm not the only one to notice this.

CFDJ has a virus.  Something has taken control of their design and usability department and is automatically pulling in ads to every page.  See that great RSS feed listing great content you want to read?  Click on that link and you will see it.  It manifests itself as the 10:1 ads to content ratio and can be seen below.

CFDJ uses too many ads 

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  1. i won't go to the CFDJ web site.

    not so much due to the ad-to-content ratio (altho that's a factor), but more because of the auto-playing ads that have sound.

    if i'm in front of the computer, chances are i'm playing music (through the computer). chances are the volume's up pretty high.

    a site can get me once with auto-playing audio. once.

    Posted By charlie griefer : Posted At 2/1/07 3:30 PM
  2. Some would question if coldfusion and design can coexist. When's the last time that you saw a coldfusion site picked among the best looking? As the poster above said, I'm not sure how sites can justify auto-playing sound.

    Posted By J : Posted At 2/1/07 4:27 PM
  3. Spot on Adam! These days I won't visit the CFDJ site as it's just to painful to navigate through the Ads.

    Posted By Tom Cornilliac : Posted At 2/1/07 5:51 PM
  4. Yeah, it's gradually gotten worse. I mean, having a pop-over ad AND a video ad going on at the same time? You have to close the pop-over to stop the video. Ugh.

    Posted By Leif Well s : Posted At 2/1/07 6:08 PM
  5. 1. Use FireFox 2. Get AdBlock Plus Extension 3. Get Adblock Filterset.G Updater Extenstion 4. Add the following to the filter list: res.sys-con.com/video/commercials/* banners.sys-con.com/*

    This will remove the video and any non-sys-con ads.

    Posted By Kris Brixon : Posted At 2/1/07 8:39 PM
  6. Rumor is that the annoyingly loud ad's run is over tomorrow and we will never again see something that annoying, mainly due to the massive amount of complaints.

    Kris, I'm gonna get those things right now, thanks for the tip

    Posted By Not so Anonymous : Posted At 2/1/07 9:19 PM
  7. Thanks for the comments all. J - I was interested in your comment that ColdFusion sites are rarely picked as good looking. I would say it depends on who is implementing your design. At Duo, we have a design team who provide the programmers with HTML builds that are app server agnostic. As a programmer we pick up the coding of the model and the controller as the challenge and then implement the views to generate the same HTML as the build. I would agree with you that being a CF guy is typically mutually exclusive with the ability to design pretty sites. For an example of some of the incredible CF sites we have churned out check out some of the links on this page http://www.duoconsulting.com/experience/ My favorite is this site, Chicago Park District which led to th LAist website declaring that the LA park district site was one reason why Chicago should get the Olympics: http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/

    http://www.laist.com/archives/2007/01/13/10_reasons_why_chicago_will_win_the_olympics_over_la.php

    Posted By Adam Howitt : Posted At 2/2/07 11:43 AM
  8. Adam, I'm there with you. Ad-glut for sure. Too bad.

    @J - Come now. What does a server-side language have to do with the designer's HTML/CSS skills? For that matter, what does HTML/CSS skill have to do with the ability to design good and attractive site layout? ;-)

    Posted By Joshua Curtiss : Posted At 2/2/07 4:31 PM
  9. They can coexist, but most CF guys aren't exactly designers and you can tell by the sites they do. That's changing a little bit as more people are picking up the CSS/Accessibility craze and the resources are better than they were. I just meant that historically CFDJ is historically similar to what I would expect a coder's mag or site. Content is truly not key in this case. My comment was specifically towards the coder...the whole right brain/left brain thing.

    Posted By J : Posted At 2/2/07 10:26 PM
  10. Adam, the other part of the virus is that annoying video clip inthe upper left that autoplays whenever the page loads.

    Posted By Hofo : Posted At 2/4/07 7:22 AM
  11. And the third part is something that seeps into your brain and convinces you not to read preceeding comments so you can duplicate what they said... doh!

    Posted By hofo : Posted At 2/4/07 7:24 AM
  12. I find I want to rip out all of my hair and put a brick through my monitor whenever I go to the sys-CON site..That auto playing ad with the stupid stupid stupiddddd soundtrack drives me to madness.

    However, that isn't necessarily the main problem.. My issue is with the total lack of any usability or user centric design of the awful site.. All I wanted to do was find the latest issue of CFDJ to download that we had paid for.. I log in.. Click on 'Get the latest version'..and.. I'm asked for an e-mail address..yes, it's a promo page, not a subscribers page.. I finally found the download link hidden away under CFDJ Archives.. oh how clear is that..

    Piece of crap, marketing website with zero concept of customer support or usability.

    We paid for our CFDJ subscription yet werent given access to our account for 2 months!!! Despite numerous e-mails which were ignored.

    We have also paid for the Ajax journal but have never been sent access details...

    Grrr.....

    I wouldn't bother but CFDJ is actually pretty decent.

    Posted By Slingshot : Posted At 6/14/07 3:37 AM
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