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It's 2016 now, and we've made some changes to the sidebar size. As such, we can now restart the Community Promotion Ads for 2016!

Keep in mind, we have updated some of the guidelines compared to previously - the changes are marked in bold in the Image Requirements section.

What are Community Promotion Ads?

Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.

Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?

This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

  • useful biking resources and websites
  • the site's twitter account
  • cool events or conferences
  • anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

Why do we reset the ads every year?

Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.

The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.

How does it work?

The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

  1. All answers should be in the exact form of:

    [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

    Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.

  2. The question must always be tagged with the magic tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

  • The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
  • Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
  • Must be GIF or PNG
  • No animated GIFs
  • Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
  • If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px (2px if high DPI) border surrounding it.

Score Threshold

There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.

You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

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  • It's nearly impossible to make a PNG < 40 KB if it has any kind of lossy image in it, especially at the new larger dimensions. If that size limit is going to be applied, can we use JPGs?
    – nhinkle
    Jan 15, 2016 at 19:45
  • Checking with the ad server team about this and other filesize stuff.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 15, 2016 at 21:06
  • @GraceNote - we've had good luck with 3 ads using compressor.io. But in general, can the ad team not just run some compressor on the ads which reach sufficient votes? The ad size went up from last year (by 36% in area) but the file size went down to about 26% from last year. One can't reasonably expect people to follow Jeff Atwood advice for image compression on most non-technical SE's even when old simple ads don't come out to the appropriate file size from a normal editor.
    – Batman
    Jan 21, 2016 at 17:32
  • @Batman See edit.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 21, 2016 at 20:52
  • @GraceNote - When do ads actually start getting shown? I've noticed that I'm still getting the old ads.
    – Batman
    Feb 25, 2016 at 16:32

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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A site for bike light reviews, beamshots, technical information, and advice. Created by Stack Exchange Bicycles user nhinkle!

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  • It's a low-quality GIF at the moment because I simply could not get a PNG under the 40 KB limit with any kind of photo in it, even using PNGCrush. Trying to figure out a better solution.
    – nhinkle
    Jan 15, 2016 at 19:52
  • Maybe try zopflipng or pngout? That being said, it looks good enough aside from part of the D in database.
    – Batman
    Jan 17, 2016 at 15:11
  • @Batman I tried both of those, couldn't get it below ~70 kB.
    – nhinkle
    Jan 18, 2016 at 17:56
  • Thanks to @Batman for pointing out Compressor.io... somehow got it down to 20.5 kB!
    – nhinkle
    Jan 21, 2016 at 17:03
  • It looks like the file size limit was increased to 150 kB, so between that and Batman's link, I can fit the higher resolution image. Woo!
    – nhinkle
    Jan 22, 2016 at 19:02
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Bike Index: Bike Registration that Works

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  • 3
    I hope this one gets some more votes... Bike Index is a great resource!
    – nhinkle
    Jan 28, 2016 at 21:54
  • We have a similar scheme in the UK called [BikeRegister](www.bikeregister.com), all the police forces in the UK have access to the database.
    – Ambo100
    May 25, 2016 at 18:44
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Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

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  • A good, well-written reference site, and I like the retro feel of this ad, matching the site :)
    – Hugo
    Feb 17, 2016 at 8:39
  • Could the visuals for this ad be revamped? It looks like craigslist :P
    – J Sargent
    Feb 19, 2016 at 18:40
  • 1
    It's how his site looks. I like it, plus if you're doing anything with bicycles, you're going to end up on his site or park tool anyway.
    – Batman
    Feb 19, 2016 at 21:49
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Park Tool's Repair Help and Education

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  • What's the URL?
    – Cristian Ciupitu
    Feb 11, 2016 at 0:51
  • @CristianCiupitu - Thanks, fixed.
    – Batman
    Feb 11, 2016 at 1:16
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@StackBicycles

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  • This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted, now with 80px more width! It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jan 15, 2016 at 3:18
-3

Discuss the real world. Start Urban Planning SE!

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  • I'll see if I can get something prettier than the A51 ads, don't worry. I've got exams up right now, and I'm just trying to get these ads around the network. :)
    – Zizouz212
    Jan 19, 2016 at 13:22
  • 4
    The requirements states the image has to be uploaded through stack imgur, but this appears to be served directly from area51. Do you know if that'll work? Personally, I'm generally opposed to putting ads for Area51 proposals and beta sites in the community ads, because they already get shown automatically in the ad rotation. If the ad was customized to appeal to the audience of bicycling.se then I'd feel it was more appropriate.
    – nhinkle
    Jan 19, 2016 at 20:51
  • @nhinkle Yeah, generally I like to create custom ads (they're prettier, and drawing them is fun) - but I've got exams right this week so I might do it afterwards. As for Area 51 ads being served, only proposals that are in commitment are served, as far as I know. :/
    – Zizouz212
    Jan 19, 2016 at 21:01

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