Hey everyone! If you’re a member of the site, you know one of the perks is usually that you don’t see ads. While that’s partially the case today, our video player was swapped with a new one yesterday and in the process it is no longer recognizing member logins. (If you’re not a member, you can become one and get rid of the ads, usually).
Right off the bat, apologies for the confusion and the disruption. I sent out an email to members yesterday to address this and I believe many of you saw it, but not everyone reads those emails. You shouldn’t be seeing any banner ads, just the video player (until we get this fixed).
I don’t have a specific timeline for when it’ll be fixed, though I’ve told our partners to turn off the sticky player if it’s not fixed by EOD and wait to turn it back on until it’s fully functioning.
Why was this change made?
Our overall advertising package was swapped earlier this year to a European company that’s just breaking into the market, and they offered us a great deal, a little more specific attention, and a promise of better performance. So far, that’s all been true.
The same company made basically the same offer for our video services and, by bringing it into one service, it’ll allow us in the future to hopefully better coordinate ads on the page so that people who aren’t members don’t get hit with overlap, slow load times, et cetera.
For whatever reason, when the video player went from our staging site to our production site a few things didn’t work. I want to thank everyone who pointed out the small rendering issues, which were immediately fixed.
Our partner is based in Europe, so they’ve been up all morning their time working to fix this issue. Once it’s resolved that should be it.
Again, sorry for the disruption.
Top photo: DepositPhotos.com
have to go and find a replacement Giubo!
Mental image of Jeremy Clarkson banging on engine with hammer.
I’m actually watching the Africa special where he’s literally hitting the engine of the BMW with a hammer.
Thank you for the follow-up, not just here but in my email to you.
Honestly, it’s just amazing you managed to get hold of someone in the office in Europe during their summer holidays.
I used to avoid Europe in August due to limited hours and staffing due to holiday activities. It seems like August is no longer entire countries or towns shutting down. I don’t know if siestas are still a thing in some parts. I generally avoid vacation travel to Europe during summer because I’ve been in Italy during heat waves and I’d rather go in spring or fall even if it might rain a bit. I don’t have kids and their school schedules to work around anymore. They’re launched and have their own families to schedule around.
Europe is a big place, we don’t all take August off.
In my experience it is a wave that starts with Sweden taking June off and then moving south until Italy is taking August off. At least that was my experience 20 years ago when I was dealing with our European customers.
Wow, Thr Autopian is running in a Koenigsegg Gemera? I would never have guessed.
While you are tidying up, the wun-container class for notifications has z-index of 99999999, but the video still plays in front of it. Seems like 99999999 would be plenty, yet the video is still in front of it. The video pretty much borks the UX on the iPhone.
Does anyone there use the site on an iPhone regularly? It seems like it often has issues
I’m on here almost exclusively on an old 2016 iPhone SE.
It’s not a great experience. Even when half the screen isn’t a video.
“Our overall advertising package was swapped earlier this year to a European company that’s just breaking into the market.”
You’ve outsourced to BMW?
All Days & Onions, actually
Well carry on then. Hip hip!
They’re not ads, they’re gifts!
We’ll deal with a few glitches until you can get things migrated back to GeoCities.
Where’s the Under Construction gif?
Glitches are just part of the experience.
I’m a member, but for some reason the “member” logo doesn’t appear under my name. I’ve got the T-shirts, the grille badge, but according to my unadorned Space Invader-looking avatar I’m just another of the unwashed masses.
Drop me an email? I might be able to fix it.
You’re a hero, dude.
In case anyone is curious, it turns out that the “member” flag not turning up on me is, well, on me. Matt’s trying to sort me out, but I think I probably need more therapy than can be delivered via email.
As a developer, most of these WordPress sites depend on a precarious hodge-podge of plugins and APIs, and sometimes stuff acts weird or doesn’t play nicely.
I feel very seen by this comment.
I had a business few years ago. The best thing in selling it was not have to deal with WP again.
Somedays I miss it, but never miss its website for sure.
I have an in-house-built CMS for exactly that reason. It runs on Node and Vue, with a PostgreSQL database infrastructure.
WordPress is obnoxious, but prolific.
The European company is probably selling a guarantee ad show to advertisers to make extra coun
You trust those shifty Yurr-peans? I dunno, man.
Glad it was recognized and fixed early.
can you fix it so it doesn’t take 45 seconds to load?
Hey Andrew! Having a call with our tech partner about this tomorrow, though I will say the more people who become members hopefully the more money we have to improve speeds (by buying better food for the hamsters that run our servers).
thanks Matt, hamster fuel is no joke!
So we need to buy a subscription?
Too good.
Are you using a managed cloud solution like WPEngine, or something more bespoke, like a scaled AWS EC2 architecture or even physical Linux servers someplace?
Thx. Because, gosh, the persistent media player overlaying an inconvenient amount of reading area is reminding me how annoying that used to be on Jalopnik.
I come here to read good journalism. I go to YouTube to watch videos. Get off my lawn…
(Seriously – thanks for a great site. Good luck banishing the glitch!)
It’s always a chicken-and-egg thing. I want the site to be really great and better than the competition in terms of ads (we have fewer, but it’s still not zero) and yet, because everyone else runs so many ads, we get punished if we don’t have very high visibility ads. There’s definitely a member number where we can just get rid of ads for everyone, but we’re not there yet.
Sounds like a lose lose for industry. Random question, what is the percentage of members vs non members?
My logic might be completely wrong but I would expect the fewer ads available on the site the more each one would be worth.
Also the Galpin Auto merch site is having payment processing issues.
Tried to order the Stainoflage shirt in my size and it wouldn’t accept my card, meanwhile my bank has no record of my card getting declined, so seemingly is the issue on your end.
As of when?
Yesterday, reached out to Galpin via phone call, said they would call back, never heard back.
can you post your card number, cvv code, and zip code for easier troubleshooting? 🙂
(please don’t do this)
wow, don’t you need their social as well as mothers maiden name?
I’m just trying to get some gas and pizza, not a mortgage
What was your first car? That’s the most appropriate question.
That was already covered in an Autopian Asks previously, also his dog’s name came up in those beagle adoption story comments so I think we’re good as long as we can guess his high school mascot. wolverine? tiger?
Sooner or later Jason is going to figure out how to run an LLM model on his C-64 once he figures out his degradation problem on the Network Attached Salami and members will become obsolete, it’ll just hack it’s way into Swingline’s systems and siphon off 1/10th of a cent on every stapler sold.
Also the expiration date. That way I can do some “independent testing”
You forgot expiration date! 😉
Whoops! Matt, can you/they fix the sequencing of comments, so we see someone else has already said the same thing? You know, oldest replies first?
Take heart though, my local newspaper’s web site has more problems than this one. I’m getting tired of being scolded and guilt-tripped about having an ad blocker on sites that I am already a paid subscriber and show as logged in.
You forgot expiration date, what kind of pirate are you?
Oh oh oh!! I got so excited cause I saw a guy at the gym with a shirt that was that same swoopy checkerboard and was locked in to talk to an Autopian, until I saw it had a collar and must have been something else.
Maybe it was a Dickey?
While we’re talking about minor website quibbles, I noticed that the polls in what car would you buy don’t show up if you enable strict tracker prevention in your browser. Most of the calls that fail go to Google so that may not be fixable as it’s a Google poll.
Hmm… I think that’s a WP-based poll?
I knew it! This website is a scam set up by David to get people into Jeeps and now it’s all falling apart!
TELL NO ONE!
Hollywood Dave of BMW i3 fame wants to put people in Jeeps? What wormhole have I fallen through? 😉
What’s falling apart? The Jeeps? That’s a feature, not a bug.
Stellantis, BABY!
I have to say I’m not sure what that Euro company is doing but I had not seen hearing aid and dental implants ads for a long, long time
WHAT?
It’s all I’ve been seeing lately, and it makes me think the ad platform must be really lost if it defaults to those.
I see those types of ads all the time and I’m a 30 something that doesn’t need either. No idea how I ended up in that target market lol.
(Frowning because someone didn’t get the hearing joke.)
They should advertise me brain pills. I could surely use them by the pound.
I wonder if it’s just that the less-advanced ad services default to… stuff for the elderly.
My News app only serves me ads showing AI-generated blonde women who are holding a hearing aid.
Maybe it’s because your “tooth hurty?”
Cue DT’s joke:
“When is the best time to go to the dentist?
“2:30… since your tooth hurty!”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Yes but now that you are older they are more appropriate than ever
Tell your partner to get off the Lucas platform 🙁
They only have one guy who stills knows how to make changes in KOBAL!
Are they hiring I am pretty good at ancient computer languages since that is what they taught when I went to school. College only the lower grades didn’t have computers let alone teach them
All they need is some new “replacement smoke”
Today I don’t get to see David test-driving the Slate in the bottom right corner of the screen?
Oh well, I just clicked on the little X before and he went away anyway.
So the annoying autoplay video will still be in the bottom corner of the screen, it just won’t have ads? Can’t say I’m a big fan of that.
Not as a member, that’ll go away when it’s fixed.
Thanks, what do you mean by “video player” in the statement I quoted then?
You shouldn’t be seeing any banner ads, just the video player (until we get this fixed).
Got it, thanks.
And for me it’s at the top but no longer blocked the Autopian link so vast improvement
This feels more like an EVAP leak than a misfire.
Also, seemingly many auto jokes come pre loaded with the switching to a European supplier point. Did you try putting it in H?
Did you check the blinker fluid level?
The video player also renders incredibly badly on mobile android – it renders the site basically unreadable on smaller devices. The div behavior is wrong and it doesn’t stay popped in to the infiniscroll header.
Yeah it is all kinds of bjorked and makes seeing the website almost impossible on Android
Yep, seeing that as well. Have let them know.
Yeah what he said
As I like to tell the wife
“Apology…..noted”
How long until the divorce comes through? 😉
She’s a good sport, and dishes out at least as much as she takes! Laughter is the best marriage counseling.
Thank you for working on this. Having an autoplay video pop-over the article makes the site infuriating to use on mobile (I can only see ten lines of text, and the unpausable video in the periphery keeps stealing eye focus).
Avoiding ads and the autoplay video widget was the primary reason I became a subscriber.
This new video player does look very slick though; I just want it not to be in my face. :/
I don’t mind seeing ads if it means you all can get paid more. But no thanks to auto-play videos. So distracting.