I am considering adding an ad from a third-party network to composr.app for a temporary period of time. This should hopefully bring in a small amount of funding for the site.

My ideas are the following:

• Ad would only show if no one from the community has an ad going at the time (purchased through points).
• You can use your points to opt out of ads for a period of one month (Community > Store).
• Number of ads: Ideally, just one. I will never resort to intrusive ads like pop-ups.
• Transparency: I will disclose the revenue received and for what it is used.

Please vote on this topic and discuss your thoughts. This is not an official measure. If the poll closes, and members seem to be in favour of using a network for a temporary period of time, then I will open a measure voting to make it official.

Thank you!

Note: I looked into a few other networks that I did not add to this poll. But I did not include them because ad blockers block their entire network (therefore, they would be very inefficient).

My question is, is there enough traffic to make ads worthwhile? I know every little bit will help and I'm all for just about anything that will help fund development in the long run.

I honestly don't care which ad source you use as long as the ads are not designed to be distracting. I know you won't have control over that. I use ad blockers just because of ads like that, but I would whitelist this site to help out with funding.


(side note: this security graphic is getting old)

My question is, is there enough traffic to make ads worthwhile?

I don't know. That will be interesting to find out. A large majority of Composr traffic is bots. It would be interesting to know which hits count and which do not count. We average about 100,000 daily hits due to the bots. However, all of this traffic is only coming from a couple of hundred unique devices or fewer.

I know you won't have control over that.

I have some control over them. While I will not have much control over its contents, I will have control over the type of ads displayed, the quantity, and the size.

I appreciate the support. ^^

(side note: this security graphic is getting old)

What security graphic? Are you talking about the 11 beta8 banner?

PDStig said

(side note: this security graphic is getting old)

What security graphic? Are you talking about the 11 beta8 banner?

From “Post #21299”, 20th Nov 2025

Sorry, I meant the CAPTCHA image. Even just trying to preview my post I was forced to enter the letters. I know you're trying to keep out spam, but still, it's getting old. My previous post failed me on 3 different attempts.

A side note: trying to post this I got an error when hitting the "Post reply" button.:
An internal error occurred (GUID 3f7ca43034b75563aa34c01a4d0411fb). This is usually a software bug and should be reported.

I voted for AdSense simply because I'm more familiar with it and it sounds from some quick web searching like it'd be less work for you to set up properly than Ezoic, but I'd have no problem with either.

sholzy said

PDStig said

(side note: this security graphic is getting old)

What security graphic? Are you talking about the 11 beta8 banner?

From “Post #21299”, 20th Nov 2025

Sorry, I meant the CAPTCHA image. Even just trying to preview my post I was forced to enter the letters. I know you're trying to keep out spam, but still, it's getting old. My previous post failed me on 3 different attempts.

A side note: trying to post this I got an error when hitting the "Post reply" button.:
An internal error occurred (GUID 3f7ca43034b75563aa34c01a4d0411fb). This is usually a software bug and should be reported.

From “Post #21300”, 20th Nov 2025

Hmm, that's a bug. Please add to the tracker if you can (add as a software bug, not a homesite bug, because it's likely in the software).

I looked into the composr.app settings. The CAPTCHA was supposed to stop after 2 posts and 7 days. Even though the post count is also broken (I believe that is already on the tracker), it registers as 4 posts for you; therefore, you should not be getting CAPTCHAs.

The error is EVIL_POSTED_FORM_EXPIRED_TOKEN_HACK. You tried to submit a form with an expired CSRF token (this is separate from CAPTCHA and is a random hidden string attached to every form). Do you recall how long it has been between when you loaded the form and when you submitted it?

Sorry for the late reply. It was only a few minutes - less than 5, but if I remember correctly, I had to go through a few CAPTCHAs before I was able to submit.

Noted. I haven't directly fixed the CAPTCHA issue yet. But please let me know if you encounter any more CSRF token issues. I noticed a big problem where some data like the token was being cached in the JavaScript across multiple members.

I think this only affected composr.app and not any sites running v11 releases (unless they were running from Git). But I could be wrong.

PDStig said

sholzy

Noted. I haven't directly fixed the CAPTCHA issue yet. But please let me know if you encounter any more CSRF token issues. I noticed a big problem where some data like the token was being cached in the JavaScript across multiple members.

I think this only affected composr.app and not any sites running v11 releases (unless they were running from Git). But I could be wrong.

From “Post #21333”, 11th Dec 2025

I only mentioned the multiple CAPTCHA attempts not knowing whether or not it may have had something to do with the CSRF token issue.

Trying to post this I got another one:
An internal error occurred (GUID 3f7ca43034b75563aa34c01a4d0411fb)

Entered CAPTCHA to preview, then tried to post and got the error. I was able to come back and add to this post before trying to post it again.

Lovely. That's the same CSRF error. Therefore, my previous fixes did not do any good.

Please add that to the tracker if you can (if not, please let me know). I'm not able to deal with it right away; I have someone funding me to finish beta9, but I must prioritize issues that may affect specifically the client; everything else is getting deferred to a later release. So I'll need everything on the tracker.

Regarding CAPTCHA… is it too hard for you to solve? Have you tried clicking the image to make it bigger? What about the audio version? I made changes to it not too long ago to make it harder for AI to detect. But I may have made it too hard. It would be good to know your thoughts.

I don't think I've noticed any difference in the CAPTCHA between now and 6-8 weeks ago.

Once in awhile one of the characters has enough static around it to make it look like another character. I have enlarged it before, but it just looks like pixelated static. The few times I've tried the audio version it was sometimes difficult to understand.

It was a few months ago when I made the change.

Noted. I'll see what I can do. I can probably reduce the audio noise and increase letter spacing a little. I'll have to make sure AI generally still does not understand it.