[jackson1way]

I couldn't agree more. Pi-Hole is essentially useless for real world scenarios.

I can't hear this short-sighted comments "it doesn't load with pi-hole? then I just close the tab!"

oh really? that's how easy it is in your world? and then you just don't buy that flight ticket? because that shitty online ticket agent uses third-third-party payment providers etc. whos domain is unfortunately blocked in pi-hole? even one single incident might force you to entirely disable pi-hole. most people can't afford to play around with that until it works.

you can't seriously maintain these block lists yourself. you have to rely on a 3rd party, usually some volunteers - great people btw - but even a huge crowd like them can't make sure, that from time to time, in some part of the internet, in some specific country and language, something will be blocked by mistake and you are stuck. with a browser plugin, at least you can disable it for that specific case. with pi-hole there is no such feature. i have to disable my browser adblocker at least once a month, because something doesn't load. and its always off for sites like paypal, because I really want that payment to work and not suddenly screw up the whole transaction.

[jackstraw14]

> Pi-Hole is essentially useless for real world scenarios.

This is a surprising statement because I've used mine at home with 6+ devices and zero issues for almost two years now. It seems fair to say it's not ideal for your needs, but why say something like this that will only deter people from seeing if it works for them?

[olyjohn]

Same here, I've never even touched the PiHole other than checking stats and doing updates. I've got about 15-20 devices on my network (a few phones, multiple computers, smart TV, Hue Lights, Nest, WeMo, etc). Haven't had a single problem. My Pi just sits there running constantly without even having to reboot it. Can't say the same for any other device that I own.

[JustSomeNobody]

We're running pi-hole network wide and we just planned a trip with no glitches. The only annoyance (if it's really an annoyance) is clicking on a link in a google search and it's blocked. Go back to Google, realize is was an ad, scroll down a little further and click the real link. No big deal. Nobody in the house is complaining about not reaching sites.

So, yes, it is possible to do this in real world scenarios.

[creeble]

This is my experience as well. I very rarely find sites that don't work because of pi-hole, other than their advertising links.

I can't actually think of a case where I've had to disable pi-hole because a site seemed to have broken functionality. I book flights on Expedia et al all the time.

Every once in a while I want to do competitive shopping, and disable pi-hole for an hour. It's a revelation now much crud shows up (and pops up) when I do.

[mobilemidget]

You made me giggle :-D

worried about resolving ad/tracking urls, yet ordering things via Expedia

If you don’t understand the irony here I’ll giggle even more

[pmilot]

Not the person you were replying to, but that was unnecessarily mean. Instead of just poking fun at someone else's ignorance, perhaps you can enlighten them?

[mobilemidget]

Parties like Expedia do more tracking and analytics of what you look at, when you look at and how you look at offers on their site then most of the urls on the pi hole url lists, which are typically referral counting urls (many also just for adult sites), or just for counting traffic. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they sell this data too. Not saying they are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.

Also since when is giggling mean? The assumption that I intended to be mean, is kind of mean too. This is about the same as somebody saying not to eat sugar yet eating lots of fruit that contain sugars, if somebody says that to you surely you giggle without being mean.

[sagethesagesage]

Ah, just let him giggle.

[wlesieutre]

If something's really important you could use your phone with wifi off to get an unblocked version via cellular. It's one more step, but some people may find it to be worth the effort.

[kup0]

Have used a Pi-hole for two years and maybe had to whitelist one or two sites (easily found looking at the log), which was easy using Pi-hole's web interface

Additionally, you can simply disable Pi-hole for temporary timeframes using the web interface as well, it has options like "Disable for 15 minutes", if you don't want to bother adding things to a whitelist.

I've used all sorts of financial, ordering, etc. sites and generally have not run into an issue. A single credit card site was one of the two I had to whitelist, and it was easy.

[EvilEndures]

> I couldn't agree more. Pi-Hole is essentially useless for real world scenarios.

As a user of pi-hole, I have no issues with small scale implementations (i.e. less than 20 users) but security is more important than access to random sites for personal use in the environments I work in.

It is just is for security-prioritized environments.

[cortesoft]

You wouldn't really be STUCK if you are blocked... you can just point your DNS to another IP (like 8.8.8.8 or something). This is DNS based, so if you don't use the Pi-hole DNS server, you aren't affected.

[phobosdeimos]

Agreed, sometimes you just NEED to use a shitty site. I have my main browser specially configured ad free and privacy secure but I always have a backup browser.

The people who build websites aren't thinking about us.

[spicyusername]

Been using pi-hole for over a year with no issues. Not sure what's going on with your experience.