I, like a lot of people around the world, use
Geocities as the free host for this website. Geocities are okay, they're very stable, with excellent uptime, and the provision (15MB of space, 3GB/mth bandwidth) is plenty for me thus far. And like I said, it's free, right? So what's the problem? Look to the right... that sodding ad bar down the side of the page. Sure, you can collapse it with the little arrow at the top but as soon as you move to another page within the site, it re-opens.
Now there are lots of purported solutions to this on the Internet but, take it from me, they're all crap. Some do indeed dispense with the ad bar... but then Geocities' clever script falls back to adding the old ad square instead, which is no better. Other so-called solutions are nothing better than half-arsed hacks of your browser window's history, so whilst the ad bar disappears your browser's 'Back' button is hijacked and meddled with. Not so good. Besides, as a responsible Geocities user I am forbidden from doing anything with my site that would prevent the ad bar from showing, not only by my conscience but also by their T's and C's.
I can help you though, and not just to view this site as I intended it, but also to do away with the ad bar on every free Geocities site that you ever visit. Interested? Here's how you do it.
For Internet Explorer, download and install
IE7Pro. For Firefox users, download and install
Adblock Plus. For Opera users, well, from version 9.5 onwards you've got an
integrated ad blocker. Anyway, whichever browser (and blocker) you're using, you need to manually add block filters for
http://us.geocities.com/js_source and
http://www.geocities.com/js_source - by blacklisting these URLs you'll put the kibosh on the Geocities ad bar. Hooray!
Obviously Geocities are only able to offer the likes of me free web space by forcing ad's on visitors to my site, so clearly I in no way advocate or endorse any such ad blockers. This post is purely for educational purposes...
