Personally I don’t use adblock because I can look the other way, but I need to consider that I should check my sites with an adblock enabled browser to make sure I’m not falling foul of something I can easily avoid.

Yea, thats a conversation I want to have.

I want to thank Craig for this file naming heads up.

My main point is this: people can view your page how they want to – not how you deem it should be. They can suppress images, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, ActiveX, adverts, or change any other aspect of their web experience. Tools such as AdBlock, GreaseMonkey, Proxomitron, etc. make this easy and many people use them whether you like it or not.

You still haven’t said what you’re actively doing about ad blockers, so I’ll write an article showing how to hide your content from someone using one. That may please you, but be warned that it could simply lead to your site having fewer visitors and less advert revenue.

content on the internet is paid for when you pay to gain access to the internet

adblocking saves metered net users money

Both are legitimate opinions. I disagree, and from there will leave it. It was a good article regardless of our opinions on adblockers, so thank you.

On the contrary, you appear to have the opinion that any form of ad blocking is evil – especially on your advert-supported sites. So I’ll ask again (for a third time), what are you doing about it?…

Having a moan and throwing insults doesn’t really count! ;-)

Listen, most of the civilised world is sick and tired of being weighed down by the lowest denominator. Get over it.

My point was, on most terrestrial TV channels, the adverts don’t cost me anything unless I’m persuaded to buy something. On my metered net connection, the act of downloading an advert costs me money whether I buy something or not.

I have never said I am against adverts – I use them on sites myself. However, neither am I against the use of ad blockers or any other technology that transforms pages for the user (screen readers, images off, script disabling, etc). In fact, switching off JavaScript blocks the majority of adverts too.

In my opinion, blocking the blockers is futile and self-defeating.

If you are against the use of ad blockers, have you done something about it on your sites? If not, why not?

The purpose of this article was not to argue about the pros and cons of adverts or blocking. It was to highlight how legitimate content could be affected by ad blockers. That could be a fundamental problem in a web application or online shop, but less so for content sites.

If a legit file is blocked accidentally by a not “ad-like” filter, then you should report it to the filter list maintainer.

That’s possible for some blockers – such as the ones that target specific domains – but they’re unlikely to cause problems anyway.

Those such as Adblock are another matter. They use a list of regular expressions that you can add, edit, or remove yourself. Rather than looking at specific domains, they check the URL for advert-like strings. There isn’t necessarily a central repository or contact.

It’s up to you how you treat the problem. If it’s content, then you may not care if someone with an ad blocker can’t view it properly. A web application or shop is a different matter – but it’s an easy problem to fix if you choose to do so.

No-one is forced to read the pages, they chose to and the price I chose for them to pay me is to have my ads on their page. I understand this is not a fair trade for you, but I do not understand why.

So I guess you’re now blocking people with ad blockers from your websites? Remember to block people with screen readers too … they don’t even download images.