Forum:Can we turn off ads in wikia?

I want to know if there is an option to turn off ads in a wiki created through wikia..


 * No, ads are the primary (if not only) income of Wikia to fund themselves and their server farm costs. There is not really any way to evade ads for every user (any ways which might exist would be illegal under the Wikia Terms of Service), but ads will get automatically deactivated when you are logged into your Wikia account.  ( C rynsos Talk 19:09, February 24, 2010 (UTC)

Ads...
I don't see any ads when I'm logged in, however if you're referring to the spotlights, there is no way to deactivate those.

However, have you tried Firefox with adblock? That would be the only option, you can't see any ads or spotlights. Not the best for Wikia but many people are using it. Right now I'm using Flock which has no ad blocking features. --Molokaicreeper 04:00, February 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * I see banners and square ads while logged in. And the "show all ads" box is not ticked in my prefs.
 * But this mainly on main pages maybe. — TulipVorlax 03:37, February 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * This is normal. Currently, all users, logged in or not, prefs or not, will still see upto 2 ads on the mainpage, a top banner, and a box at, usually in the upper right (depending on what is shown, the top banner may be right aligned instead of currently centered). Most wikis only have the banner, some might have just the box (rare, but possible). This is all controlled server side, by our advertising team, that can turn switches and flip dials and make stuff happen as they need to. It is generally safe statement to make (spotlights aside obv) that these are the only ads that logged in users should be seeing, but Wikia reserves the right to change this if needed at anytime. --Uberfuzzy 00:46, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

How about paid subscriptions?
I believe the big wikis like WOWWiki and wookiepedia are paid domains since they have no ads on their site? I have been searching the help section here for info on how to remove ads totally, i.e. perhaps through paid hosting or something but I can't seem to find any. Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction? thanks Gin-san (Talk) 07:24, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * WoWWiki and Wookieepedia have ads like everyone else - I'm not totally sure why they're seemingly not showing for you. :( Wikia doesn't offer subscriptions for wikis, possibly because it would be rather unfair to larger wikis who incur more costs. The 888th Avatar   (talk)  07:44, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * oops, I was logged in. But how did they get their non-wikia domain names then? They even have a separate login process that doesn't recognise me though I am logged into the wikia central Gin-san (Talk) 09:58, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * Wookieepedia has a Wikia domain name, but yes, WoWWiki (among others such as FFXIclopedia and Memory Alpha) does not. This is because they were historically separate from Wikia, and later moved to be hosted by Wikia. Their domain names never changed and in some cases, users have opposed domain name changes to include ".wikia". They now use the same user database as the rest of Wikia (Uncyclopedia is the only one that does not), but yes have a separate login. The 888th Avatar   (talk)  10:34, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * whoa, let me try to understand this: these wikis with non-wikia domain names are still being hosted by Wikia, but the domain names of wowwiki.com is FREE? In other words, they are not paying a separate fee for the domain name, and they are actually free wikia sites in disguise? If for example, I want a gintama.com domain name for my wikia, what do I have to do? Gin-san (Talk) 10:41, March 22, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, looks like I wasn't clear enough. Wikia discourages having separate domain names, because it hurts their advertising management, among other things. They did try to get some of these wikis to change over, but the wikis refused. The bottom line, I guess, is that Wikia won't accept requests for separate domain names. The 888th Avatar  (talk)  10:48, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * I see. So let's say, for the sake of discussion, even if I would like to have a gintama.com domain name but with wikia technical support, there is no way that this can be done? Even taking into account paid subscriptions to wikia, or even to have wikia hosting fees included? Gin-san (Talk) 10:59, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * There's no way, unfortunately. Wikia wants its ad money, and paid subscription doesn't work too well if your wiki becomes more successful (how would payments be negotiated then? :S). The 888th Avatar   (talk)  11:02, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * That's not good news for me, LOL. Thanks for the clarification! Gin-san (Talk) 11:11, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * Any time - custom domains are overrated anyway. ;) The 888th Avatar   (talk)  11:14, March 22, 2010 (UTC)

Special accomodations, or questions about them, should be directed to Special:Contact, and not the forums...in order to receive the most accurate answer. Not all the information given here is 100% accurate. -- 12:05, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * I should issue a disclaimer that the information given does contain opinion. That does not change the fact wikis started at Wikia have never been given custom domains, or that custom domains are not really necessary. The 888th Avatar   (talk)  12:22, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, then let us readers know which bits are 'inaccurate', as you say. I do not believe that such general info warrants such secrecy as to have to go through Special:contact? It is for the general good of the community, is it not? Nonetheless, if I really do want to go into details of getting special domain names, subscriptions and what-nots, I will of course go through the proper channels like the Special:Contact. It is however, helpful to me to at least find out some general info, viewpoints, history etc from the forums, and I do appreciate anyone who bothers to give some comments, even if they are just opinions. So I can look forward to 'more accurate' answers now, is it? :-) thanks Gin-san (Talk) 14:31, March 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * I say Special:Contact because it is designed primarily for staff help. The forums are designed for user-to-user help...while staff do occasionally visit, it's best for a query like this to be taken directly to staff. Custom domains or paid hosting, if they were to happen, are a case-by-case basis and not an overall community thing. -- 16:21, March 22, 2010 (UTC)

Non-Wikia domain names for wikis hosted by Wikia
Wikia is a business. If your wiki drives lots of users to view Wikia ads that make them more revenue, they will make accommodations about things like domain names. This is not to say Wikia does not have principles, but they are a business and not a non-profit business.

As someone who was involved with WoWWiki's domain name issues, I can only speak for WoWWiki, but here is a summary account of what happened:
 * WoWWiki started as a stand-alone MediaWiki-based wiki run by a very nice guy name Vlad. He paid for hosting and did some startup administration and generally made sure the wiki kept running. It had some small sidebar ads (Google ones, I think), but they didn't come close to paying for running the wiki. He didn't have lots of time to work on the wiki himself, but because of the timing and growing popularity of World of Warcraft, it grew and grew fast based on work by many volunteers.
 * Soon WoWWiki was so popular and using so much bandwidth, Vlad had to pay more and more money and he couldn't afford the servers that were fast enough to keep WoWWiki responsive. He supposedly talked to a few different hosting sites about taking over WoWWiki.
 * I'm not sure about the specifics, but Vlad eventually made a deal with Wikia to take over WoWWiki and in exchange they could put more ads on WoWWiki than it already had. At this point WoWWiki was very big for a wiki, but still smaller than Wookieepedia and maybe smaller than Memory Alpha.
 * WoWWiki kept growing and Wikia was pretty happy to host it. Unfortunately, WoWWiki.com was getting all the click credit and Wikia was selling ads based on Wikia.com aggregate data (I think), so they wanted to make the default domain for WoWWiki something more like wow.wikia.com. So Wikia management asked the admins to discuss the idea with the community.
 * The admins decided to hold a wiki-wide vote about changing the default domain to *.wikia.com, but the majority of the community voted against it. Wikia honored the communities decision. So that is why you still see WoWWiki.com all over the place. I think Wikia makes an effort so that any automatically generated links to WoWWiki take the form of wow.wikia.com, but they don't force or directly urge any users to use that domain.

So, if you look at the various Wikia with non *.wikia.com domains, they generally some share some common traits: started outside of Wikia, big userbase and lots of pages. Wikia has been pretty good about accommodating a certain level of autonomy for sites like that. Does anyone have any examples that don't fit that mold? -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 1:48 PM PST 27 May 2010

New options about ads in wikis with paid subscriptions
To those who haven't read the blog of Sarah Manley, it will soon be possible to remove ads in wikis by paying $19.99 per month. I hope this answers the questions in this forum discussion. --Liliana (my talk). 22:06, May 25, 2010 (UTC)