This site is incredibly broken and ad infested

Agreed! 100% needs to be fixed. I get it. It costs money to run the site. This isn't the way to do it.

The good news is, your images have not been deleted. The bad news is there is a bug filtering them out. I'll take a look at this shortly, and it will be addressed.

Having said that, if there are issues the only way I know is if people report them, assuming I didn't already see them myself (in which case they would be fixed). So I appreciate the report, and please let me know if there are other issues that you are encountering that is creating this level of frustration.

The missing images has been fixed.

As for ads, I'll keep making adjustments.

The Ads are pretty bad. I get an ad on the top, an ad on the bottom, an ad on the right side, and lastly more ads in the center between text. Im pretty much stopped coming here. Ok a few ads yeah ok but assualted every direction including mainlining them in the text um no.

Komatsu said:

The Ads are pretty bad. I get an ad on the top, an ad on the bottom, an ad on the right side, and lastly more ads in the center between text. Im pretty much stopped coming here. Ok a few ads yeah ok but assualted every direction including mainlining them in the text um no.

Top, bottom, right side are standard, but would you be willing to share a screenshot of more intrusive ads?

khawk said:
Top, bottom, right side are standard,

The standard practice being extremely obnoxious is why adblockers exist in the first place. Browsing the internet with ads enabled is like the scene in idiocracy where the guy watches TV ("ouch, my balls!"). It is an affront to the human soul. Also, ads not just advertising something to the users, but also tracking them and collecting data about their behaviour and setup, makes it even worse. Without ublock origin and NoScript, I feel nauseous when visiting a website.

I also think most people don't complain because their spirit has already been broken over the years, or they use adblocks, so they don't see the ads to begin with. When I see my mother use the internet on her PC or on her phone, I almost get convulsions from the mental agony; it is so painful to even witness it second-hand. I can't comment on the way you configured ads because I use an adblocker.

My personal advice is to limit the ads to something that is definitely low-key, but assume that most people probably block ads, being developers, and tech-savvy enough to do so. Instead, be transparent about costs and revenue, and accept donations to cover those. I think if you try to run a hobbyist community like a business, it will die. I also see that this site is not really conducive to inspiration. If you made this site to encourage teaching others non-superficial / deep knowledge, or to compete in showing off inspiring works, it could have an uplifting and vitalising spirit to it. The whole internet is dying from mediocrity and oversaturation, and from fostering consumption and popularity of people instead of creation. Make this site a platform where people want to strive for greater heights. Instead of a site where people ask ridiculous noob questions instead of doing a google search (compiler errors…), and spam their business profile to an audience that doesn't come here to buy something. Game dev, especially indie game dev, is done by people without much money, but with passion and time to spare. People who run entirely on inspiration, working hard in their spare time. Maybe I'm getting a skewed perception here, but I recommend that you reassess earnestly whether this is an excellent place for that kind of audience. I know a community lives and dies with its members, but the place where people congregate sets the framework and tone for how they interact. Can you make this a site where passionate people want to share their common passion and inspire each other? Or will it die as just another place to advertise yourself to gain followers for a hobby project that will, realistically speaking, never ship or sell anyway?

I know forums are dead or dying, but that's simply because they fail to provide a niche. IMO that niche is to provide quality and serious discourse, and as a prestigious place to gain inspiration from. Because tech help is already done much better on stack overflow. And spamming your stuff for advertising is done better on social media. What site and community would someone who is interested in creating something he is passionate about be interested in? What would that site look like, how would they interact with it?

But you're free to run your site whichever way you want, and you don't have to see things the way I see them. I rarely visited this site so far and only had few interactions here. I came here when David Scherfgen announced the official death of his forum. I see this one going the same route.

P.S.: and as a general observation, I think that the culture of everyone just using the internet to present themselves on a stage just drowns out the actually valuable and interesting things. If there is no cost associated with appearing on a public stage (either a monetary or effort-wise contribution), the stage will devolve into a circus. Public goods and public infrastructure are not a right to be demanded, they are a privilege to be earned, and to partake in them means there is a duty to either contribute to its costs, or its maintenance, or its operation (in the sense of a forum, that would be creating or promoting insightful content). This is the only sustainable and positive incentive structure. Make it so that people are incentivised to post thoughtful and inspiring things, to be actual contributors, and not just consumers or people who use it selfishly. A place that has high quality content is also a site that people want to see, and also that people want to spread the word about, and a place to be at, and a place to participate at.

P.P.S.: The people who come here to hire someone are probably a tiny minority of the userbase, and probably the only ones generally expecting to spend money. If these people are your main revenue source, then either make this place focus on being the best place for matchmaking / hiring, or make this place popular with talented people who are in it for the hobby, so that this place becomes more prestigious, indirectly making it a better place for talents to connect. People who want to get hired would then want to, and have to contribute here to stand out among the people who come here to enjoy game development. Which helps both the hiring and the overall community.

@rmbrt Thank you. Quite a lot to think through, and I'm just getting back from a trip, but I wanted to reply that I hear you and appreciate this feedback (have thought more on @aressera 's comments as well). I have a few ideas to consider for immediate improvements, including solutions for ads. Let me come back here or in a new thread when I get my thoughts together.