Revert NEW Homepage Design To Something Useable

[leonsk29]

On 01/10/2025 at 07:04, adrynalyne said:

Click cancel; it should reload after and be fine until next time.  At least that’s how it works for me. 

When I click cancel, the site loads but then implodes itself after 10 seconds or so. What a mess...

[FloatingFatMan]

On 01/10/2025 at 08:53, Steven P. said:

One of our devs knocked the wrong button and uploaded a test environment to the live site..

Because we are in Europe, we didn't see it till now. 

So basically, it was unintentional and will be corrected shortly!

It was amusing and eye-opening to read some of the assumptions and comments in this thread though, so thanks for that!

Well, at least now you know not to roll out anything that looks like that did!  

[Steven P. Administrators]

Try disabling adblock.

Members only see inline ads anyway.

[eiffel_g]

i don't use adblock. And even with all add-ons disabled ( browser in safe mode ) the problem still exist.

I was able to solve it temporarly  - I've wrote how a bit earlier.  But deleting browser cache and cookies every five minutes is not a solution.

You should check what's happened. Because before changing the site there was no problem. I guess reverting didn't worked perfectly.

At least, now, after I did the cleaning, the first page works, only opening an article generate the issue.

[cork1958]

On 30/09/2025 at 19:11, adrynalyne said:

It loads page, isn’t mobile friendly at all; then blows up. 

This is what I'm seeing on Windows 11 with Edge also.  When I click fix issue, I then get second issue. I have Neowin whitelisted in Ublock Origin.

[tsupersonic]

On 01/10/2025 at 09:49, cork1958 said:

This is what I'm seeing on Windows 11 with Edge also.  When I click fix issue, I then get second issue. I have Neowin whitelisted in Ublock Origin.

Same issue. This definitely is an interesting way to see how people about a redesign - claim it was 'unintentional' - sure Steve sure...

[cork1958]

On 01/10/2025 at 10:03, tsupersonic said:

Same issue. This definitely is an interesting way to see how people about a redesign - claim it was 'unintentional' - sure Steve sure...

Seems to be working correctly in Edge now without me doing anything to settings or cookies/cache.

Edit: I lied. Just had that pop up again but clicked cancel and it's letting me continue, so far. Wouldn't let me continue before.

[Matthew S.]

On 01/10/2025 at 03:53, Steven P. said:

One of our devs knocked the wrong button and uploaded a test environment to the live site..

Because we are in Europe, we didn't see it till now. 

So basically, it was unintentional and will be corrected shortly!

It was amusing and eye-opening to read some of the assumptions and comments in this thread though, so thanks for that!

At least it wasn't on a friday 😛 

[adrynalyne]

On 01/10/2025 at 07:03, tsupersonic said:

Same issue. This definitely is an interesting way to see how people about a redesign - claim it was 'unintentional' - sure Steve sure...

I wonder if the ad blocker detection is what was new and the rest was the wrong roll out. Way to alienate users though. Noting says don’t visit my site anymore than web page crashes. 
 

They would be better off just not letting the warning dismiss than crash the page.

[Steven P. Administrators]

We do have an anti-adblock now, courtesy of our advertiser, but nothing else has changed with the site. The mistaken style update was reverted.

According to my account manager:

Quote

Based on our AdShield's experience, most of the users who claim to have “no adblocker” in place tend to have something going on, whether it be a VPN or DNS-level blocking

I do not block ads on Neowin, so since the site style was reverted to the correct one, it has been working perfectly for me.

As a reminder, the inline ads that members see help us keep the lights on, but we also have a $28 per year tier where we remove all of the ads for that member account.

I still find it shameful that certain members gloat about ad blocking while it's clear they also rely heavily on our services, insofar that they demand absolutely no interruptions/site breakage/hosting issues/etc to it!

[leonsk29]

I can confirm that right now, the site works fine again both on desktop and Android Edge. But I keep seeing the error related to the adblocker, if you cancel the site implodes after 10 seconds.

[adrynalyne]

On 01/10/2025 at 08:48, Steven P. said:

We do have an anti-adblock now, courtesy of our advertiser, but nothing else has changed with the site. The mistaken style update was reverted.

According to my account manager:

I do not block ads on Neowin, so since the site style was reverted to the correct one, it has been working perfectly for me.

As a reminder, the inline ads that members see help us keep the lights on, but we also have a $28 per year tier where we remove all of the ads for that member account.

I still find it shameful that certain members gloat about ad blocking while it's clear they also rely heavily on our services, insofar that they demand absolutely no interruptions/site breakage/hosting issues/etc to it!

I’ll trade you my ad blocking for the removal of AI generated articles. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 01/10/2025 at 18:01, adrynalyne said:

I’ll trade you my ad blocking for the removal of AI generated articles. 

Don't click on them, we need views and eyeballs on the site and some of them go hot.

I find it laughable you'd hold a small percentage of our news coverage to ransom like that. So it's do as I want fully, or no?

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 01/10/2025 at 17:45, adrynalyne said:

Way to alienate users though. Noting says don’t visit my site anymore than web page crashes. 

A mistake was made, because sometimes, even after 25 years of running a website human errors occur.

[FloatingFatMan]

On 01/10/2025 at 16:45, adrynalyne said:

I wonder if the ad blocker detection is what was new and the rest was the wrong roll out. Way to alienate users though. Noting says don’t visit my site anymore than web page crashes. 
 

They would be better off just not letting the warning dismiss than crash the page.

I've actually had the page crash, off and on, for a few weeks now.  FWIW, the front page is working OK for me at the moment after the rollback.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 01/10/2025 at 18:27, FloatingFatMan said:

I've actually had the page crash, off and on, for a few weeks now.  FWIW, the front page is working OK for me at the moment after the rollback.

We use Cloudflare, which has its own set of checks. It might not play nice with VPN. In my experience I have a VPN but I use Split Tunneling and prevent Chrome from using the VPN, I feel like SecureDNS and a VPN extension (if I need it) in Chrome is enough.

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 01/10/2025 at 21:33, Steven P. said:

I find it laughable you'd hold a small percentage of our news coverage to ransom like that. So it's do as I want fully, or no?

I agree with Steve, this month we published just 14 AI-generated science stories, which is just ~0.02% of all the articles we published (not counting the software stories in this number). 

It really seems like you @adrynalyne is quite biased against them if you feel such a small percentage of articles is making your Neowin experience bad.  

[FloatingFatMan]

On 01/10/2025 at 17:30, hellowalkman said:

I agree with Steve, this month we published just 14 AI-generated science stories, which is just ~0.02% of all the articles we published (not counting the software stories in this number). 

It really seems like you @adrynalyne is quite biased against them if you feel such a small percentage of articles is making your Neowin experience bad.  

I *do* use a VPN (NordVPN), but it's adblocker has never flagged up Neowin's ads so I can't even add it to a whitelist and I'm NOT disabling it in my entire browser just for one site... Not a chance!  My in-browser ad-blocking has Neowin whitelisted.

[Steven P. Administrators]

I wonder how he (and others) feel about all the sites that do not disclose they were written with AI assistance? (and there are tons of them out there with garbage articles that make little to no sense because they aren't even edited)

Ours are AI assisted, and checked by an Editor. We do not have a machine that spits out articles and self publishes them.

[adrynalyne]

On 01/10/2025 at 09:30, hellowalkman said:

I agree with Steve, this month we published just 14 AI-generated science stories, which is just ~0.02% of all the articles we published (not counting the software stories in this number). 

It really seems like you @adrynalyne is quite biased against them if you feel such a small percentage of articles is making your Neowin experience bad.  

Only 14?

🤮

[FloatingFatMan]

On 01/10/2025 at 17:34, Steven P. said:

I wonder how he (and others) feel about all the sites that do not disclose they were written with AI assistance? (and there are tons of them out there with garbage articles that make little to no sense because they aren't even edited)

Ours are AI assisted, and checked by an Editor. We do not have a machine that spits out articles and self publishes them.

Honestly, I'd not actually noticed any AI articles... Can't say I like that sort of thing, but I'm not gonna judge you for using them... Reporters aren't cheap.

[adrynalyne]

On 01/10/2025 at 09:34, Steven P. said:

I wonder how he (and others) feel about all the sites that do not disclose they were written with AI assistance? (and there are tons of them out there with garbage articles that make little to no sense because they aren't even edited)

Ours are AI assisted, and checked by an Editor. We do not have a machine that spits out articles and self publishes them.

No, you are using AI to summarize what you don’t understand, leading to more confusion from readers because half the time it makes even less sense and when the writer is questioned, they cannot answer the questions because they don’t know either.

Take the disclosure off, it makes no difference. AI generated articles are easy to spot. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 01/10/2025 at 18:37, adrynalyne said:

No, you are using AI to summarize what you don’t understand, leading to more confusion from readers because half the time it makes even less sense and when the writer is questioned, they cannot answer the questions because they don’t know either.

Take the disclosure off, it makes no difference. AI generated articles are easy to spot. 

One does not to have a PHD or be a scientist to summarize "Largest black hole ever discovered and it's bigger than you may have imagined" the article went hot and got us a lot of views.

I think it's weird that you can't just decide to skip them if they bother you so much. 

I'm a co-owner of the site, and believe it or not I do not read every news article and every forum post, especially the ones that do not interest me.

[cork1958]

On 01/10/2025 at 12:32, FloatingFatMan said:

I *do* use a VPN (NordVPN), but it's adblocker has never flagged up Neowin's ads so I can't even add it to a whitelist and I'm NOT disabling it in my entire browser just for one site... Not a chance!  My in-browser ad-blocking has Neowin whitelisted.

Exact same setup and situation here.

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 01/10/2025 at 22:07, adrynalyne said:

when the writer is questioned, they cannot answer the questions because they don’t know either.

or maybe consider that the writer may be busy