h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think someone's overdoing the tracking software on this site nowadays...

Whenever I click in a link to load a new page, the page itself appears fairly rapidly but takes an absolute age for the rest of the rubbish to load...

Using Firefox 14 I'm getting the usual rotating 'loading' icon in the tabbar, then it goes back to the h2g2 logo when one bit of tracking rubbish is loaded, then it goes back to the 'loading' icon as the next is loaded... etc. this can go on for five minutes after the ruddy page contents have loaded - and it's getting a bit annoying

Currently, whilst looking at this page - I appear to have also opened up this little lot...
Adition
Doubleclick
Evidon Notice
Google +1
Google Adsense
Google Analytics
MediaMath
Turn
Zanox

All of which are advertising trackers...

I know you need to make money nowadays but isn't this taking the mickey a bit?

You can also add
NetAffiliation
to that list...

Could someone confirm whether this little lot is collecting browser information _exclusively_ about pages within h2g2 or are they all collecting information about any and every tab I happen to have open in Firefox whilst I'm browsing hootoo?

I can't confirm that they're tracking other stuff or not simply because we're not putting most of those in.

We use Google to display the adverts, we tried another service but to be quite frank it wasn't as good as Google. Since we switched the feedback on the adverts has been that they're a lot more relevant to the articles, and a lot more subtle.

The problem is, a lot of those adverts do have tracking software in them. It's pretty much a fact of life on the internet these days. I believe that you can turn most browsers into private mode that stops tracking though.

It's the loading time that's more annoying than anything else - I fully realise these things are everywhere, it just seems that they're particularly inefficient on hootoo...

When I load the bbc news homepage, the content appears within a second and the tabbar instantly comes up with "BBC New - Home"
When I load a hootoo page, the content appears virtually instantly, then for the next 15-20 seconds the tabbar alternates rapidly between "h2g2 - Whisky - Conversations" and "Connecting..." which is visually annoying more than anything else.

Yes, it's incredibly annoying. However, you'll be pleased to know we've just about got a full test system up and running now, and with any luck we should start to see new code being released shortly which will start to not only remove the errors we've got, but also start to speed the site up too!

Thanks Pastey... as usual - the perfect response... I keep having to remind myself this place is being run by volunteers nowadays - we still get a better response from the staff on this site than you see on most 'professionally'-run sites.

That's 'cause we're lurking in the forums too

Only, I missed this for several hours! *hangs head in shame*

I too have noticed that the "page loading" spinning icon thing seems frequent in Firefox. Usually, I'm in Chrome though.

Pastey, do you need this logged, or not?

Yes please

Done.