TTC website issues thread

[Octopuss]

I wouldn't mind a small banner on top of the site and another at the bottom. Heck I don't care about the side ad at all because most of it is outside of the browser window somehow (lol), but a huge banner where the results are is just too bad. Surely the placement doesn't affect how much you get paid, right? Just shove it at the bottom if not (I hope) or something...

What's this talk about scrips btw? These are (as things are right now) some non-standard ads?

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by Octopuss I wouldn't mind a small banner on top of the site and another at the bottom. Heck I don't care about the side ad at all because most of it is outside of the browser window somehow (lol), but a huge banner where the results are is just too bad. Surely the placement doesn't affect how much you get paid, right? Just shove it at the bottom if not (I hope) or something... What's this talk about scrips btw? These are (as things are right now) some non-standard ads?

It sure does. I can't provide the actual number due to Google's term but the bottom ad generates less than 1/5 of the top one for example.. Not sure what script we are talking about here

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by Baertram The adds that do not popup and just stay where they are are quite big, yes, but they do not disturb me that much. But I agree with that popup adds, they really annoy and suck! Like I press on the main website icon and a popup opens which blocks all website interaction, and only provides a very small X button, about the same color like the background? This really sucks. Make the adds show as fixed images, remove those popups please or at least let the close button at the popups show bigger and better (who ever designed that). At least they do not show that often within the same website search and navigation...

Popup/full screen ad is set to almost min rate which is about 1% chance of appearing. That TTC to do 1-3 banners per page instead of 3-5. Some people might prefer one way or another unfortunately i dont have the ability to change it on the fly.

[NeuroticPixels]

oooooooooooooooooof!

That's not good.

And people who say the ads are related to whatever you've search for before, I have several blockers on my browser and regularly delete any cookies I might have.
I once got a ad on the TTC website for male balding. Which is just funny if you know me at all. I don't need to worry about male balding, thank you.

Anyway, my point is... the TTC website admin may want to try to filter their ads a little better, if possible?

[Octopuss]

I think he basically confirmed things will stay the way they were in the post above yours

[tim99]

Originally Posted by NeuroticPixels oooooooooooooooooof! That's not good. And people who say the ads are related to whatever you've search for before, I have several blockers on my browser and regularly delete any cookies I might have. I once got a ad on the TTC website for male balding. Which is just funny if you know me at all. I don't need to worry about male balding, thank you. Anyway, my point is... the TTC website admin may want to try to filter their ads a little better, if possible?

loooooooooooooooooool
hey, at least it is game-related
lmao

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by DreamsUnderStars Sure, but why not try patreon too? See which one is better. At least with patreon you don't have to deal with some potentially shady ad partner or offensive ad.

After couple weeks of attempt I have to say Patreon's API is just too awful to work with.

Firstly their documentation sux. Documentation only provide one sample payload with the most important piece missing and doesnt tell you what the payload might differ for different events.

Based on their documentation their trigger doesnt fire if user paused the pledge. Which means users can just create a pledge and then pause it before the payment is made. Patreon will still happily report that the user has pledged to the campaign.

Also they specifically mentioned that any fraud event will not trigger any trigger. I.E. you can just put in a fake card and the server will never know.

The way their API is designed right now is super developer unfriendly and requires too much manual labor. Unless people are ok with no perks I dont see myself working with that awful API/webhook until they made it better.

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by NeuroticPixels oooooooooooooooooof! That's not good. And people who say the ads are related to whatever you've search for before, I have several blockers on my browser and regularly delete any cookies I might have. I once got a ad on the TTC website for male balding. Which is just funny if you know me at all. I don't need to worry about male balding, thank you. Anyway, my point is... the TTC website admin may want to try to filter their ads a little better, if possible?

I can't find anything in the setting that allows me to filter on individual ads but i can try harder. Not sure how the relevance algorithm works. But maybe lots of ESO players are interested in male balding and Google just assumes you might be interested as well lol?

[NeuroticPixels]

Originally Posted by cyxui maybe lots of ESO players are interested in male balding and Google just assumes you might be interested as well lol?

HAHAHAHA! I love that. That's hilarious.

[sirinsidiator]

Originally Posted by cyxui After couple weeks of attempt I have to say Patreon's API is just too awful to work with. Firstly their documentation sux. Documentation only provide one sample payload with the most important piece missing and doesnt tell you what the payload might differ for different events. Based on their documentation their trigger doesnt fire if user paused the pledge. Which means users can just create a pledge and then pause it before the payment is made. Patreon will still happily report that the user has pledged to the campaign. Also they specifically mentioned that any fraud event will not trigger any trigger. I.E. you can just put in a fake card and the server will never know. The way their API is designed right now is super developer unfriendly and requires too much manual labor. Unless people are ok with no perks I dont see myself working with that awful API/webhook until they made it better.

I've seen worse... The last time I looked into their API it was relatively straight forward (I use this package as well as their wordpress plugin), but I have to admit I don't use events or webhooks directly and only retrieved data about patrons on demand.
I also don't think it's possible to create a pledge without paying. Last time I checked you will be charged immediately when you pledge to someone, even if it's the last day of a month (in which case the patron will get charged twice and may ask you for a refund). On the off chance that someone pledges to get a reward and then asks their bank for a refund (= chargeback fraud, which afaik gets their bank account banned from patreon if they do it too often) you could still run a cronjob to sync the status via the api to lock them out after a while.

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by sirinsidiator I've seen worse... The last time I looked into their API it was relatively straight forward (I use this package as well as their wordpress plugin), but I have to admit I don't use events or webhooks directly and only retrieved data about patrons on demand. I also don't think it's possible to create a pledge without paying. Last time I checked you will be charged immediately when you pledge to someone, even if it's the last day of a month (in which case the patron will get charged twice and may ask you for a refund). On the off chance that someone pledges to get a reward and then asks their bank for a refund (= chargeback fraud, which afaik gets their bank account banned from patreon if they do it too often) you could still run a cronjob to sync the status via the api to lock them out after a while.

My problem is that they only provided the API for the happy path and 0 protection for exploits.

Couple red flags I see are

https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us...46-Patreon-API
"As of June 22nd, 2020, we no longer provide Patreon developer support for our API due to resource constraints. Endpoints will continue to function as normal, and you can also find peer-to-peer resources in our Tech and Dev channel on Discord."

"Unfortunately, at this time, we do not offer a separate testing/sandbox API."

"Fires when a user stops pledging or the pledge is cancelled altogether. Does not fire for pledge pausing, as the pledge still exists."

and then

"APIv2 is still in beta, and while the scopes and endpoints are stable, the specific properties returned on the resources may change."

yea great so property might even change within the same API version. Why bother versioning it after all. Best part is that v1 is deprecating and V2 is not even stable.

I initially thought Paypal's API was bad enough but Patreon is just another level lol

[hilarityensues]

Originally Posted by cyxui My problem is that they only provided the API for the happy path and 0 protection for exploits. Couple red flags I see are https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us...46-Patreon-API "As of June 22nd, 2020, we no longer provide Patreon developer support for our API due to resource constraints. Endpoints will continue to function as normal, and you can also find peer-to-peer resources in our Tech and Dev channel on Discord." "Unfortunately, at this time, we do not offer a separate testing/sandbox API." "Fires when a user stops pledging or the pledge is cancelled altogether. Does not fire for pledge pausing, as the pledge still exists." and then "APIv2 is still in beta, and while the scopes and endpoints are stable, the specific properties returned on the resources may change." yea great so property might even change within the same API version. Why bother versioning it after all. Best part is that v1 is deprecating and V2 is not even stable. I initially thought Paypal's API was bad enough but Patreon is just another level lol

Man, I know this thread is supposed to be for website issues (I have none), but I just read through this thread and it doesn't seem you've gotten much good feedback so I thought I'd share a few thoughts that might be constructive, hopefully it's useful, and if not just ignore the crazy person.

First off, I feel like a tool that I haven't donated, TTC is the de-facto market tool..it's like the NYSE. So just kicked a hundred your way right now. Anybody else who reads this thread should too.

Secondly...

I think you're pretty much spot on with your challenges. There's probably some optimization you can do on the infrastructure, but it likely won't be enough given your volume.

Personally, I disabled my adblocker and have no issues with the ads and haven't identified any malicious scripts being deployed, looks like your ad network is pretty legit...looks like google. You could also join an affiliate marketing network, these have a higher return and your audience will probably be receptive to tech/gaming related affiliations which pay out the most.

I would say the "donate" button could use some work...it moves around on the screen with the ads and looks like an ad. I'd make it more intrusive, small banner at the top of the page, place a button next to every listing...also indicate that it's donating to TTC instead of just "donate", looks kinda sketchy otherwise.

Also, you need a couple of good "benefactor's" to help with the donations, I know most successful donation projects have a few benefactors who provide the majority of funds. Maybe some outreach to Guild Masters of large guilds or Devs of popular add-ons could help out. Guild masters can crowd source funds pretty quickly.

Patreon's API is garbage, just do a quick search on how to view Patreon content for free and you'll uncover at least a dozen exploits. Paypal isn't so bad, but yeah, plenty of issues. I haven't tried myself but some of my friends have had good luck with Buy me a coffee for their open source projects.

I think your best bet will be monetizing the data. The people you're catering to have money and will definitely spend it...I bought a mountain goat for $25 this week, so yeah...

Real-time API (you could even do a day delay on the website by default and paid users could get real time), premium alerts, market trends, paid Discord bot integration, etc...you could leverage the guild community greatly in this, I'm sure. Also, several add-ons rely on your data as well..mine included...I don't think it's possible, but charge other add on developers access to your data could be something.

It would be cool to provide some analytics, some of my guildies today are wondering why sales have been soft the last couple of days. They are speculating it's because there's a drop in the usual mats and PvE items in favor of the PvP items due to the event. I would bet you have the data that could confirm or reject that hypothesis...how cool would it be to present that to users a week before? "ESO has a PvP event coming up, here's the top selling items during the event last year".

I think a challenge you'll have though is the desktop client, people volunteer their data with no real benefit to the individual...so you may have to make it so desktop client users don't have to pay for certain premium content, or something. Also, maybe make the client grab more info, not just the individual user's sales but all they see for sale and all their guild sales. That'll amp up the amount of data but also not require you to have as many users active with the desktop client to maintain reliable data.

Anyway, hope something in there is helpful. Thanks for the add-on, it's killer.

[Octopuss]

To people who are super privacy concerned TTC now offers first party ad only option which only consists a preloaded picture and a referral link.

Where is this? There are no cookie settings on the website anywhere.

[wookiefriseur]

Originally Posted by Octopuss Where is this? There are no cookie settings on the website anywhere.

Happens automatically when your browser blocks tracking.

[Baertram]

cyxui:
I clicked on TTC download as the auto updater refused to work somehow, even though it was allowed and not blocked anywhere.
As I tried to download the TTC addon from the website a popup showed directly after I had clicked on the download link at the top of the website.
I did not pay attention 100% and thought I was downloading the TTC addon, but all of sudden it started to download a silly browser expansion...


There only exists a really small "Ad" info at the top left corner, and if you do not look twice and slowly you think you are going to download the just clicked TTC client.

This is really a no go and sucks big time. You can show as many website and affiliate links you want there but why is it providing an installer download as I click on the TTC download? This looks like it was intended or AI just made it look like it was. At least this was annoying.

I'm not against adverstisements but being tricked into some other software installation is just bad!

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by Baertram cyxui: I clicked on TTC download as the auto updater refused to work somehow, even though it was allowed and not blocked anywhere. As I tried to download the TTC addon from the website a popup showed directly after I had clicked on the download link at the top of the website. I did not pay attention 100% and thought I was downloading the TTC addon, but all of sudden it started to download a silly browser expansion... There only exists a really small "Ad" info at the top left corner, and if you do not look twice and slowly you think you are going to download the just clicked TTC client. This is really a no go and sucks big time. You can show as many website and affiliate links you want there but why is it providing an installer download as I click on the TTC download? This looks like it was intended or AI just made it look like it was. At least this was annoying. I'm not against adverstisements but being tricked into some other software installation is just bad!

Fair enough. Ads has been disabled on that page so it shouldnt cause anymore cases like this.

[tim99]

Originally Posted by NeuroticPixels oooooooooooooooooof! That's not good. And people who say the ads are related to whatever you've search for before, I have several blockers on my browser and regularly delete any cookies I might have. I once got a ad on the TTC website for male balding. Which is just funny if you know me at all. I don't need to worry about male balding, thank you. Anyway, my point is... the TTC website admin may want to try to filter their ads a little better, if possible?

i have a better one (dont worry, i dont care too much, but think it's kinda funny)




edit... well, tbh it is a bit annoying..., because when i click on them they are all blocked in my country -.-

[Baertram]

Originally Posted by cyxui Fair enough. Ads has been disabled on that page so it shouldnt cause anymore cases like this.

Sorry, does not look like ads were disabled there.

https://eu.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade
Language German.
Clicked on "Erweiterung" (AddOn) at the top, then on "Herunterladen" (Download)

Screenshot from today:


The add still shows and still makes me think I need to click on that zip file of the add...

[cyxui]

Originally Posted by Baertram Sorry, does not look like ads were disabled there. https://eu.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade Language German. Clicked on "Erweiterung" (AddOn) at the top, then on "Herunterladen" (Download) Screenshot from today: The add still shows and still makes me think I need to click on that zip file of the add...

I disabled all ads on the download page. so it might still show up in other pages. Unfortunately, i dont have control on each individual ads. If you feel like the particular ad is misleading/baiting feel free to click on the report button and Google should have a review process to remove those ads.

[Sharlikran]

I was looking for some Winter Festival Writs to see some of the differences to make sure I have a material cost for them. When looking on your site there are a lot of them from "Made in USSR" with no location.

If you allow translations and such do you check that the translators are using a newer EXE and update their Lua code? It seems odd they would miss the location. I personally think is would be better to download all the translations and incorporate them into one download for consistency if you database is flooded with seemingly suspicious data.

I would be willing to make the Lua changes if needed. However, I can not manage the EXE portion.