[dylan604]

Holy cow that's an insane website design. So, where exactly do I see the tracking? Is it below the grift of a 3D printed moon? Is it near the ads for casinos. Or maybe the mood rings?

This isn't a bitch about ads. It's I honestly cannot easily find the actual information the site is supposedly hosting.

[grayfaced]

I spent way too long trying to find basic info before I gave up on that site. The two questions I was hoping to see: 1. When will it be the strongest 2. What latitudes should expect to see auroras.

The first question is answered by: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-forecast (Strongest at Fri 2100-0000 UTC)

[drmpeg]

Looks good to me even on Netscape 4.7.

https://www.w6rz.net/netscape.png

[dylan604]

Best viewed at 640x480. That way, there's no extra space to place those ads

[ithkuil]

Any constraint is a driving force for art. I'd love to see creative pixel-art ads.

How do we call the equivalent of steam-pubk aesthetics but where tech has stopped on pixel art instead of steam?

[hattmall]

That site design is awesome. That level of information density is exactly what makes a good site. The information is right in the front, ads are off to the side. It's basically like a newspaper. Which is great for information.

[pfdietz]

And it loads really fast. Slow-ass loading (and things jumping around as the ads load) are what really drives me to ad blockers.

[gonzo41]

You've just been sheltered by bootstrap for the last 10 years. All science on the web is 'fun' like this.

[animex]

Insane? It's pretty typical for an early 2000s era site.

[partomniscient]

My 'local' page is [1] which is fairly simple but likely has only the information you're interested in, nothing else and none of that side-scrolling bullshit you need to do to see the forecasts on the https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ page.

[1] https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/

[pfdietz]

I love the design! It has heart.

[BenjiWiebe]

There's an information/status bar on the left. There's a header on top with important info/ current events. Then it's kind of in blogpost format. And if you ever want to know what info was there last year, there's an archive viewer on the top right, that actually shows the page just like it was, at any date!

[mystified5016]

Woah, they must be doing something weird to get past ad blockers. This is an outrageous monstrosity of a website

[dylan604]

Weird as in self-hosting? This is what ads should be like instead of 3rd party auction data harvesting non-sense. It's just some people have no concept of couth, or less is more, or self control. There's no stopping bad taste.

[damiankennedy]

They're not using an automated ad service of any kind they have manually put these ads in the source code of their web page. We all see the same ads.

I prefer it, these ads mean something to the people that run the site, they put some effort into putting them there and presumably purchasing the products benefits the organisation in some way.

They also have a no AI disclaimer at the top.

[dylan604]

> these ads mean something to the people that run the site

I wouldn't go that far. They mean something as in somebody was willing to spend money, so this is what they get in return. Just look at the randomness of the types of ads. I doubt there was any "qualifying" of the ads other than did the check clear.