Text-Only Theme

[[violet]]

Hello admins.

As you all know, the NationStates site offers users the choice of several themes or "skins": Rift, Century, Dark, Mobile, etc. I would like to propose a new theme: Text-Only, where all images are disabled including flags, banners, forum avatars, and images in forum posts and dispatches.

The reason I would like to see such a theme introduced is because images consume bandwidth. Unlimited and speedy Internet connections are taken for granted nowadays, but some people have metered data connections, and many popular browsers (especially mobile) have removed the ability to disable images in the latest versions.

So would it be possible (and easy) to add a theme that displays text and nothing else? Thank you.

[[violet]]

I am very conscious of bandwidth and page speed.

FYI nowadays it's not images that consume most bandwidth. For example, on the World page, there are 33 elements over 5KB in size to download, but only four of them are images, totalling 79KB, and the largest of those are shared across all pages, leaving only 6KB in unique image content. Meanwhile there are 22 script elements, mostly related to ad display, totalling over 400KB, and a lot of that changes from page to page, meaning you need to download it each time.

So I think an image-suppressed theme would be problematic and also not very effective. But you can save quite a lot of bandwidth by becoming a site supporter via the NS Store, which disables the ads.

[Vincent Drake]

Q: If you have site supporter status, does that mean the ads are disabled from displaying, but the server still loads them, or are they simply not loaded at all? If it's the latter, that's a huge plus to me and I'll have to open my wallet.

Also, is site supporter specific to one nation? Do you have to buy it on every single nation that you want the ads not to load with?

[Phydios]

Q: If you have site supporter status, does that mean the ads are disabled from displaying, but the server still loads them, or are they simply not loaded at all? If it's the latter, that's a huge plus to me and I'll have to open my wallet.

Also, is site supporter specific to one nation? Do you have to buy it on every single nation that you want the ads not to load with?

It is specific to one nation. The game still has no concept of "puppet nations" and treats every nation as independent from all the rest. I just bought Postmaster-General on my main nation and used adblock for the others.

[Vincent Drake]

Adblockers only stop them from displaying, the ads still load. Hence, the reason for my question. Not being displayed vs not being called are very different things.

[Phydios]

Adblockers only stop them from displaying, the ads still load. Hence, the reason for my question. Not being displayed vs not being called are very different things.

I wasn't answering your first question. Only your second.

[[violet]]

Ads aren't loaded for site supporters. They're not simply hidden, they're never generated in the first place.

We don't have an account-style feature that lets you apply settings/status across multiple nations at the moment, so yes, site supporter status applies to a single nation.