“Press G to see the spot”
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First, thank you to everyone for the feedback. I appreciate it. Please understand that I am constrained by time and skill, so even if I want to do as you may have suggested, I may not be able to do it, at least for now.
Since moving to Discourse, I have had essentially 1 option for putting some kind of advertising in the forums: DFP. I have never liked it because I have found it way too complicated for me and my needs. I have persisted but when I have had conversations with people about how to put an ad on the site, it’s a an effort. For both sides.
I have long wanted to have text ads and I’ve tried doing that in DFP. For me, its way too much trouble to bother.
Earlier this year, the geniuses at Discourse put this feature together. I like it. It is still a bit crude, but the results are exactly what I hoped.
Now, I am still paying through the nose for hosting this website on the Discourse server. I’m working on fixing that but it simply has not been a straightforward thing for me to reduce the costs of our little community.
So long as it gets the bills paid I’m cool. The US passport thing is a paid ad then?
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I am happy that you guys have been commenting on the tips. There was practically no feedback for the much larger and much more complicated graphic ads that not only are at the top of topic lists and discussions but inside them as well.
I would be thrilled if you could suggest your own beyond the few test examples my bleary eyes found online at 3am.
Cheers
The US passport thing is a favor to our friends at AIT. I attended a meeting and asked them how Forumosa could help. They suggested promoting STEP.
I would like to invite other country reps to use the forums, if only to keep their own nationals up to date on what is available to them. I don’t attend enough meetings though 
As ever, suggestions and referrals are welcome. Pls PM me
So technically the little tip drop ins can be sold as mini adverts?
Exactly.
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I don’t have the time to go through all that. That’s not a great answer but it is an honest one.
Modifying Forumosa is not the most important thing for me these days. It is very stable software, traffic and usage are climbing in spite of me, and from what I can tell, @tempogain and the mods have done the best I have ever seen in 20 years keeping things in line. So I have the luxury of doing quick tweaks like this
I actually have picked up ways of doing things that are more responsible believe it or not. Unfortunately, my coding abilities and practices are from 20 years ago - ancient history in Internet time.
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Can we tweak it to get rid of Mark Twain and switch in Bukowski or Lebowski?
Absolutely. I will look for some choice quotes from The Dude, but it would probably be better if you chose them.
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man
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If you are curious about what the text ads are like from an admin perspective, you can go here
https://discourseengine.com/blog/run-ads-discourse-forum/
Jump down to the section entitled: Running house ads (custom ads) on Discourse.
You can see what I mean by crude. With my son’s school year starting this week, and other projects now hearing up, I don’t have the capacity to maintain the quotes manually.
We all know that you’d like that, won’t happen tho!
Hey, you want a mail order bride? I can get you a mail order bride. Hell, I can get you a mail order bride by 8.30 tonight.
This.
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A lot of us are using an ad blocker. I only sometimes-but-not-often see ads unless I turn it off.
Outsourcing. Upwork . com . For what you’re paying to the discourse service, you could have your own VPS or dedicated server with a manager running it.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Cheers. Fair enough.
And concerning the server move, I may end up doing as you suggest.
I want to know who LK is and why he and/or she is going to LA
Wish I could help, but internet stuff is just a past time now. Once CSS appeared, I learned a bit, but I outsource everything else I need, and I don’t have the time to need much now. One of these days I’ll have a real business.
I saw something about KD goes to Brooklyn at the bottom of every post. I googled it and apparently it’s about a basketball player. It’s gone now. I don’t know LK.