Help Me Help You, or #MakeTTACGreatAgain

Over the last few months, the number of comments chiding TTAC’s website performance has grown and grown. Slow page loading times, browser crashes, and comments sucked into the ether seem to be the daily norm.

As Nat King Cole once sang, That Ain’t Right, and I’d like more than anything to fix the issues beleaguering the site and your experience with it.

In order to do that, I need your help.

Let’s Make TTAC Great Again.

I must make something crystal clear from the outset: the editorial team has no control over the banner ads you see.

Sometimes an advertiser will completely take over our website, including the background image and all the banners, and I learn about the media buy when you do. Those ads are fairly clean and provide no issues to the overall browsing experience.

(Thank you to the advertisers that are willing to plunk down money directly on TTAC advertising spend. We need more of you.)

However, when an advertiser isn’t spending money directly with TTAC, we switch to the ad networks to provide a steady source of income. It’s when we use those networks that we typically see issues.

Many of the issues are reported by users running the Google Chrome browser, including yours truly. I experience the same issues you all do, multiplied by the number of tabs I have open at any given time. Given the state of the web in 2016, there’s also no reason we should experience these problems.

A couple of weeks ago, we ran into a problematic ad that took up half the screen on mobile devices. As you can imagine, trying to write something on a cell phone isn’t the easiest task, so we typically don’t have first-hand experience with mobile-centric issues. But as soon as we reported the issue to our dev team, they jumped on it and resolved it within the day.

The key ingredient in fixing these issues is knowing about them first. This is where you come in.

If you are experiencing any kind of issue related to using TTAC, report it. There are numerous ways you can get in contact with me, and I’m more than happy to forward those complaints onwards. (Well, maybe not more than happy. I don’t think any of us want issues to complain about in the first place.)

So, here are your options:

1. Send me an email: My address is mstevenson@thetruthaboutcars.com. Let me know what you’re experiencing and provide as much detail as possible, including, but not limited to, your browser, operating system, and — if you’re a proper nerd — more insight into how your computer is performing by showing us overloaded processes and memory usage.
2. Use the contact form: You can find it here.
3. Hit me up on Twitter or Facebook: Some people use social media. You can find me at @ MarkTTAC and facebook.com/mark.stevenson.

You know what? Let’s not limit this to TTAC’s browsing experience. If you have any comments at all, feel free to share them. I’m not here solely to write things I enjoy, but to adjust how we cover our industry to the wants and needs of our audience. I want to know if we’re missing the mark.

However, there’s one thing you definitely shouldn’t do: leave messages in the comments expecting me to see them. I try to read as many comments as I can — but, let’s be honest, you’re a prolific bunch. I can’t keep up with all the comments and do all the other things TTAC requires.

Hopefully, working together, we can make TTAC a better place for everyone involved.

Thank you,