Permission restrictions

'You do not have permission' messages

If you see a You do not have permission error, it could be for a number of reasons depending on what you are trying to do.

If you're trying to change your login name, an explanation is here.

If you are trying to view or save an attachment in a post, and you are logged in but don't have permission to view the attachment, it is because you are blocking ads. See here for more information.

If you're trying to enter a competition and you get a You do not have permission or
Sorry, but you are not eligible to enter this competition error, an explanation is here.

If you're trying to start a new thread or post a reply in the classifieds forums, an explanation is here. If it's not in the classifieds forum, please look in the feedback forum for help.

If you are trying to leave classifieds trading feedback, and you are logged in but don't have permission, it is because you and/or the recipient are blocking ads. See here for more information.

If you're seeing this error anywhere else, please look in the feedback forum for help.

How do I disable adblock on AVForums?

If you have logged in to AVForums using a browser on which adblock is installed, your account may well be assigned the adblock flag. This removes permission to do some things on AVForums like post in our classifieds forums.
To clear the adblock flag from your account requires two steps.

First remove adblock for AVForums on your browser
Start by using your browser to navigate to AVForums.
If you are using Chrome, Firefox or Safari, then use your browser menu according to the appropriate screen capture below to click the indicated option.
With Chrome, click the area marked Enabled on this site.
With Firefox, click the area marked Disable on avforums.com.
With Safari, click the area marked Don't run on pages on this domain.
If you are using a different browser, there will be a similar method as one of these.
adblocking.jpg

Second wait for the ad blocking flag to clear from your account
This is an important step.

There is a flag set in user accounts when they are identified as blocking ads. This flag is cleared after a number of ad-enabled pages are loaded by the account.
The system counts the number of times that this flag switches from off to on and from on to off.

After enabling ads, the number of pages needed to load to clear the flag is multiplied by the switch count. This happens to discourage people from switching ads on when needed to access special site features and then back off when not.
So once you have disabled ad blocking in your browser, depending on how many switches you have made, you many need to do a lot of ad-enabled page loads.
There isn't a way of identifying how many at the moment, though this feature has been requested.

Thank you for supporting AVForums. Adverts keep us alive. See why here.

I use adblock. What features are unavailable?

Adverts keep AVForums alive because they pay our bills. For information on how to disable adblocking on AVForums click here.

Why it costs money to run AVForums
Some forums will be amateur/small and cost so little to run that the owners are happy to fund them.

Any forum with significant traffic will require a dedicated server (or several servers like we have) which will cost £several hundred+ per month to host. Plus a reasonable bandwidth allowance.

AVForums server costs are several £thousand a month including Cloudflare caching and anti-DDOS protection.

Larger forums like ours will need funding somehow. Some sites operate without adverts but rely on affiliate revenue instead. Moneysavingexpert is one of those.

We also publish free news, reviews and articles which require a CMS system and staff. These add up to a significant cost more than the cost of hosting and again, this needs paying.

Also there are other costs related to running AVForums like there are running any small business such as development (producing new functionality for the website), administration, accounting, staff etc.
So we need to generate a considerable sum every month just to break even.

Some sites will have a subscription model. Give a few paragraphs free and people have to subscribe for the rest. Which and The Telegraph are obvious examples of that.

Some sites will be part of larger organisations which help fund them. AVForums is not.

We don't have the type of forum where affiliate revenue will generate enough, so we have to have adverts.
Adblocking is so easy that people install it and don't think about the consequences to websites which rely on advertising to survive.

I would say that compared to lots (most?) commercial websites, we carry much less advertising. We don't use clickbait services like Taboola or Outbrain and we have a dedicated team who make sure that adverts are as appropriate as possible.

How we fund our running costs
We work hard to sell advertising campaigns on AVForums for relevant companies are shown to our visitors.
If we did not have these advertising campaigns, we would not have sufficient income to continue running a usable website.

People who block adverts on AVForums, are restricting the amount of revenue that AVForums can earn and therefore restricting the quality of the service we can provide.

As a reward for those people who disable ad blocking, we provide some premium services made exclusively available to them.
  • Our classified advert forums, which are overseen by a dedicated and hardworking team of moderators, is available only to people who support AVForums by viewing the advertising we serve.
  • Similarly our competitions are open only to members who do not block advertising on AVForums.
  • Other features listed below.

If I block ads, how is my experience affected?
The following limitations are applied to people who block ads at AVForums:
  • You may not request a change to your user name
  • Your conversations functionality and inbox size has restrictions
  • You may not enter Competitions
  • You may not post in our classifieds forums and send or receive trading feedback
What we don't do is prevent anyone from reading or posting in the main forum areas.
I hope this has given some insight into how forums operate their finances, why many need to display ads, and why, if you value that forum, you might consider turning off the adblocker.
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