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The Free Dictionary will not work properly with ad-blockers Options

TFD Posted: Sunday, February 8, 2015 9:44:59 AM



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We offer The Free Dictionary as a free service to all users; alternatively, we also offer an ad-free version of The Free Dictionary (



We have to pay our bills. Without the revenues from ads, subscriptions, or donations, The Free Dictionary, Google, Wikipedia and most other websites in the world would not be able to exist and would shut down. Imagine the world without them—the Internet without professionally created websites. Please consider this before installing software that blocks ads.



We recently became aware that some ad-blocking programs are preventing The Free Dictionary from loading correctly. We had reports of the following features not working: audio pronunciation, citation, bookmarking, and log-in. We also had confirmations that disabling ad-blocking software fixes those problems.We offer The Free Dictionary as a free service to all users; alternatively, we also offer an ad-free version of The Free Dictionary ( https://secure.thefreedictionary.com/premium/subscribe ).We have to pay our bills. Without the revenues from ads, subscriptions, or donations, The Free Dictionary, Google, Wikipedia and most other websites in the world would not be able to exist and would shut down. Imagine the world without them—the Internet without professionally created websites. Please consider this before installing software that blocks ads.

jacobusmaximus Posted: Sunday, February 8, 2015 10:25:42 AM



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I do not have ad-blocking software ( never even heard of it) yet I still get the message saying I should disable it.

SteveB Posted: Sunday, February 8, 2015 1:11:21 PM

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Please try to clear your cache and reload the page.

marumaru Posted: Sunday, February 8, 2015 3:01:58 PM

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No idea how to remove ad-blockers, can you help me?

Hebble Tyson Posted: Sunday, February 8, 2015 3:18:09 PM



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I have added nothing that would block ads in all the time I've been a member, yet I still get the message. I get an abundance of ads on other sites and have always gotten plenty of ads on TFD. Suddenly this notice in red began appearing yesterday and today. I have to believe it's something that's been tinkered with on your site. I don't know what to do on my end--I can't change back because I haven't changed. Does this mean I will continue to get this message? Barring a fix, should I just leave this wonderful site? As Yul said, "It's a puzzlement!"

NeuroticHellFem Posted: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 6:02:35 PM



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Hebble Tyson wrote: I have added nothing that would block ads in all the time I've been a member, yet I still get the message. I get an abundance of ads on other sites and have always gotten plenty of ads on TFD. Suddenly this notice in red began appearing yesterday and today. I have to believe it's something that's been tinkered with on your site. I don't know what to do on my end--I can't change back because I haven't changed. Does this mean I will continue to get this message? Barring a fix, should I just leave this wonderful site? As Yul said, "It's a puzzlement!"



I've made no changes either, yet I started getting these messages yesterday or the day before. I just refresh the page each time it happens & the page reloads fine.

Allana Posted: Monday, February 16, 2015 7:16:51 AM



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NeuroticHellFem wrote: Hebble Tyson wrote: I have added nothing that would block ads in all the time I've been a member, yet I still get the message. I get an abundance of ads on other sites and have always gotten plenty of ads on TFD. Suddenly this notice in red began appearing yesterday and today. I have to believe it's something that's been tinkered with on your site. I don't know what to do on my end--I can't change back because I haven't changed. Does this mean I will continue to get this message? Barring a fix, should I just leave this wonderful site? As Yul said, "It's a puzzlement!"



I've made no changes either, yet I started getting these messages yesterday or the day before. I just refresh the page each time it happens & the page reloads fine.



Me too, but only on the Archive page, not my personal home page: even more of a puzzlement.

Allana Posted: Tuesday, February 17, 2015 9:29:31 AM



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I'm now getting on my home page and 'Match Up' answers. No new programs, ad blocking or otherwise

TFD Posted: Wednesday, February 18, 2015 11:41:40 AM



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Allana and NeuroticHellFem: Thank you for your responses to my messages. It sounds like everything is working properly today. If you run into any problems, please let me know.

CoolSmooth Posted: Friday, February 20, 2015 1:17:45 AM



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Hi,I am not a member. But to My knowledge I don't have any AD Blocking Software. This Message started about a Week ago. What can I do. I love Your Services,etc. Thanks.

NeuroticHellFem Posted: Friday, February 20, 2015 4:59:08 AM



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CoolSmooth wrote: Hi,I am not a member. But to My knowledge I don't have any AD Blocking Software. This Message started about a Week ago. What can I do. I love Your Services,etc. Thanks.





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It sure looks like you're a member.

I tried refreshing the page & that was enough to work for me. I've still been getting the message too & I don't have Ad blocking software either. If that doesn't work, close the page then reopen it. I've found firefox doesn't like TFD so I use IE. I hope that helps (I'm not admin, just a fellow member). You're not a member? Your details at left of your post state that you:It sure looks like you're a member.I tried refreshing the page & that was enough to work for me. I've still been getting the message too & I don't have Ad blocking software either. If that doesn't work, close the page then reopen it. I've found firefox doesn't like TFD so I use IE. I hope that helps (I'm not admin, just a fellow member).

Maximilian Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 2:36:33 AM

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Everything seems to be working fine again Thanks for finding out what the problem was! I've been having problems with the site since several days ago, but never imagined the situation could have anything to do with Adblock Plus —a Firefox plugin for blocking ads, in case someone reading this isn't aware of it being installed in their system (go check your plugins list). I've had this plugin for quite a while and it never gave me trouble before on this site, but I guess ad blockers may eventually become the problem itself as far as I've been able to experience in a couple of websites so far. Many features were not working until tonight when I got a message suggesting that the problems may be due to the ad blocker, so I went to the Adblock Plus options and disabled its ad-blocking mechanism on The Free Dictionary. Curiously, I may need to repeat the disabling operation a couple of times for the same website, or even more than twice. Somehow, ad blockers do these things to youEverything seems to be working fine againThanks for finding out what the problem was!

Judith Rosenthal Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 7:14:20 AM

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I have the ad-free subscription but nevertheless receive the notice in red that I have to disable the ad-blocker. When I try to look up a word in English I get the Italian definition. Help!

agatbr Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 8:05:37 AM

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Ok, I disabled it for you.



Thanks for your work :)

TFD Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 9:53:17 AM



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Judith Rosenthal wrote: I have the ad-free subscription but nevertheless receive the notice in red that I have to disable the ad-blocker.

The ad-free subscription is not related to any external ad-blockers, which are causing problems with the site by erroneously blocking non-ad content.



Judith Rosenthal wrote: When I try to look up a word in English I get the Italian definition. Help!

Can you provide a few examples so we can take a look? The ad-free subscription is not related to any external ad-blockers, which are causing problems with the site by erroneously blocking non-ad content.Can you provide a few examples so we can take a look?

Terry BlueJag Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 12:46:48 PM



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My FreeDictionary won't load either. This is new as of July 2015.



I'm not going to disable ad block for all sites just to make one work. This is the objective of ad block.



Can you fix it back? Else, there are other webpages.

TFD Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 1:33:46 PM



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Terry BlueJag wrote: I'm not going to disable ad block for all sites just to make one work.

You can try checking the settings to see if you can disable it for individual URLs.



Terry BlueJag wrote: Can you fix it back?

The problem is with the ad-blocker: it is recognizing non-ad features on our site as ads.



We offer an option to remove ads here:







You can try checking the settings to see if you can disable it for individual URLs.The problem is with the ad-blocker: it is recognizing non-ad features on our site as ads.We offer an option to remove ads here: https://secure.thefreedictionary.com/premium/subscribe

Jyrkkä Jätkä Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:02:36 PM



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I have cleared my cache, I have disabled my add-blocker, still I get these error messages, and the main TFD site won't work.



TFD Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:14:29 PM



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What version of Firefox are you using?

Jyrkkä Jätkä Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:16:13 PM



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The latest, 39.0.



TFD Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:33:14 PM



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Do you have any other extensions installed for Firefox that may interact with the site in some way?

Jyrkkä Jätkä Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:43:34 PM



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Not any that I could think to be the reason for this. TFD just stopped being a friend with me a week ago. Forum works ok.



TFD Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:48:10 PM



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Unfortunately we're not aware of any other similar cases and we don't have any clues about what the problem might be.



This case is the only remaining report of this issue occurring when ad-blocker has been disabled. In all other cases, disabling ad-blocker resolved the error messages.



We will continue to investigate.

Zapou Posted: Monday, July 20, 2015 4:51:03 PM



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I have been having the problem for at least two weeks. I have been cleaning my cache and I don't have any add blocker installed.

It does this both on my laptop and my computer at work. I use Firefox (no pluggin) at home and IE at work (where I don't control much of the environment).

I hope you can resolve this soon; I love TFD!

Spao Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 2:38:03 AM

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This is definitely due to issues happening on TFD's side, not users', as it's also affecting both people who are Premium subscriptors and those who don't even have an ad-blocker enabled/installed.



Based on the current discussion, it leads me to two plausible conclusions:



1) The developer of the site made recent changes that broke functionality for everyone. In this case, he must check what's going on and fix it asap. Everybody will be happy and everything will be back to normal in no time.



2) He is rendering the functionality useless on purpose, so he can shiftly offer Premium subscriptions and plead users to whitelist this site, disguising it as The solution to the problem (just like the OP said in their post).



I really hope it's not number 2. I'm not against website owners/developers kindly and non-obstrusively asking people to allow ads to be displayed and I don't mind them offering me Premium subscriptions, because I know, servers cost and all that, but it would really suck that he/she/them are jeopardizing their well settled user prference by preventing people from properly using the site until they disable their ad-blockers, and passing any undesireable effects off as users' fault. I'm really sorry if this is not the case, but I have seen this kind of dishonest behavior countless times I can quickly recognize it.



I've been using this site for years with an ad-blocker installed and never had a problem until now, but it's obviously not the software's fault since, as I have already said, other people are having the same issues. Ad-blocking software does not break functionality unless the developer chooses to make the elements behave like ads or blockable material. They can choose not to, they have all the control, so it's up to them fixing these issues if they want so, not the users.

Zapou Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 8:39:09 AM



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Zapou wrote: I have been having the problem for at least two weeks. I have been cleaning my cache and I don't have any add blocker installed.

It does this both on my laptop and my computer at work. I use Firefox (no pluggin) at home and IE at work (where I don't control much of the environment).





Using IE and clearing my cache on both computer did it for me, on both computers... Hope this helps someone. Using IE and clearing my cache on both computer did it for me, on both computers... Hope this helps someone.

StarlostOdyssey Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 5:20:01 PM



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For me, using IE 10, the site was listed under Compatibility View (under Tools...)



I removed it from Compatibility View and it works now.

Spao Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 7:47:18 PM

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You know... people shouldn't really need to switch to other browser just to visit one site.

reniram Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 5:27:17 AM

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This morning, for the first time after many years I have been using it, entering the TFD site with Chrome, on my screen appeared "Something went wrong!

The page has not loaded completely and some content and functionality are corrupted. Please reload the page or if you are running ad blocking disable it. More info." After clicked on "More info" I have been moved to the answer given on the present form by the TFD administration posted: Sunday, February 08, 2015 9:44:59 AM. Entering the same site immediately after with IE, no problem at all. Any news about how overcoming this described issue?

TFD Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 9:48:45 AM



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Are you running an ad blocker on Chrome? If so, please disable it to allow the site to function properly.

blue2 Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 9:56:41 AM



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Hi! I haven't been in the forum for a long time but I use TFD a lot. Just since yesterday I've been getting the same thing. I've deactivated my ad blocker to no avail. Something else must be up.

At least the dictionary is working fine! Touch wood.

TFD Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 9:58:57 AM



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Please try clearing your browser cache completely and then reloading the site.

blue2 Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 11:10:36 AM



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Unfortunately clearing my cache didn't work.





TFD Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 1:55:02 PM



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To disable AdBlock, make sure you choose the option "Don't run on pages on this domain."







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reniram Posted: Saturday, July 25, 2015 3:19:05 AM

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TFD wrote: Are you running an ad blocker on Chrome? If so, please disable it to allow the site to function properly.



I've disabled the ad blocker and now all is running ok. Thank you so much. I've disabled the ad blocker and now all is running ok. Thank you so much.