No-ad internet

October 21, 2009 11:20 AM

Is there such a thing as a no-ad internet domain? I love the days of personalized websites with no ads but I'm having a hard time digging them up these days. Any suggestions???
posted by scewinleg to society & culture (10 answers total)

The Internet isn't ham radio. Excepting the obvious things like .gov, I don't think there is such a thing as a "no-ad internet domain". There are, however, lots of sites that don't use ads. And if you use something like AdBlock Plus, you'll hardly ever see any ads at all on any site.
posted by the dief at 11:23 AM on October 21, 2009

I'm confused - are you looking for somewhere to host your personal website that doesn't place ads on it? Or are you looking for other people's sites to read?
posted by chrisamiller at 11:29 AM on October 21, 2009 [4 favorites]

You can buy your own domain for about $35 per year or less. Point that domain to a web server you control and you can put whatever you want to online without ads.
posted by odinsdream at 12:07 PM on October 21, 2009

Cheaper, even. The going rate is usually $6-9/yr for a domain registration. (There certainly are vendors targeting small businesses who will sell you a domain name for $35/yr but the added value, if any, is not $29 worth.)
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:15 PM on October 21, 2009

I have one, which I won't link to here because it's under my real name which I try to keep separate from my MeFi handle. But it's mostly for vanity, and there's unlikely to be anything of interest to you on the site anyway. I don't have a weblog or anything like that.

I think part of it is that given the choice between advertising-supported free-to-them sites, and paid, advertising-free sites, the vast majority of people who have just a casual interest in putting up content will go with the ad-supported site. Another part is that even if you start with a paid, ad-free site, if you're writing something interesting enough to be read by more than a handful of people, then you're also getting enough hits to be able to generate non-negligible ad revenue—and if you can, then why not?
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:16 PM on October 21, 2009

My domain is ad-free...unless you consider my site one big (well, small, actually) ad for me, of course.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:36 PM on October 21, 2009

wait, confusion.

Do you want your own free website without ads? (Most free hosts put ads on your page)

Or do you want to visit sites without seeing ads?
-Adblock, NoScript, and blocking images (right click on them, in firefox).
posted by titanium_geek at 2:29 PM on October 21, 2009

Some definitions might be in order:

Domain: This is simply the address of a web site, i.e., metafilter.com. It's the name you type in your browser's address bar, ending in .com, .org, .net, etc.

Site: The collection of pages you navigate in your browser. This is where ads are displayed.

Host: A company that provides the service of keeping sites on the internet. Some hosts provide free sites for people, usually with ads, and other hosts charge for sites without ads and other benefits like faster speeds and more reliable uptime.

With those definitions cleared up, there are two ways people are interpreting your question:

1. You are looking for a host that can provide you with a personal site of your own. You want one that won't require ads on the site, and presumably it also needs to be free.
2. You are looking to remove ads from sites that belong to other people, by way of some filtering process.

Is one of these rephrasings accurate?
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:18 PM on October 21, 2009

Yeah, no idea what you're asking here. My website has no ads on it. It's not going to be very interesting to you unless you're looking for some niche python libraries though..

If by "domain" you mean geocities, AOL homepages, and the like: no, I don't think there's anything like that anymore. There's a lot more people on the Internet than in 1995. A site with interesting content will get a lot of traffic, which needs to be paid for, hence the ads. Install AdBlock+ if they bother you.
posted by cj_ at 3:47 PM on October 21, 2009

I parse your question to mean you're looking to read people's personalized websites without advertisements.

Your answer is to use Firefox, install AdBlock Plus, then browse blogs at Blogger.com or WordPress.com – which are the modern-day equivalent.
posted by WCityMike at 11:23 AM on October 22, 2009