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It's 2016 now, and we've made some changes to the sidebar size. As such, we can now restart the Community Promotion Ads for 2016!

Keep in mind, we have updated some of the guidelines compared to previously - the changes are marked in bold in the Image Requirements section.

What are Community Promotion Ads?

Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.

Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?

This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

  • cool Ubuntu applications
  • the site's Twitter account
  • Ubuntu scripts or power tools
  • cool events or conferences
  • anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

Why do we reset the ads every year?

Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.

The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.

How does it work?

The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

  1. All answers should be in the exact form of:

    [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

    Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.

  2. The question must always be tagged with the magic tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

  • The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that for retina displays.
  • Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
  • Must be GIF or PNG
  • No animated GIFs
  • Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
  • If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border surrounding it.

Score Threshold

There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.

You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

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  • 6
    Wait a second. "Absolute limit on file size of 40 KB" How on earth are we supposed to create a 600x500 (retina) PNG image that is less than 40 KB? Anything consisting of more than simple "cartoon" drawings will be impossible to reduce to that filesize. Can't we at least use JPG?
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 6:28
  • Very minor issue, but the placeholder is still sized as the old ads (220x250).
    – kos
    Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 9:27
  • Note: the stats page is showing the ads with the wrong aspect ratio.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 21:54
  • 3
    Related discussion.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jan 18, 2016 at 6:07
  • One for Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) anyone?
    – carnendil
    Commented Jan 18, 2016 at 6:09
  • 1
    @carnendil - look at the top of the page....
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 19, 2016 at 15:08
  • 1
    @Wilf 👍 Thanks!
    – carnendil
    Commented Mar 19, 2016 at 20:58

16 Answers 16

Reset to default
25

Unix & Linux

1
  • This site is for Ubuntu, not just Unix! +1 for this.
    – EKons
    Commented Aug 29, 2016 at 9:09
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The GNU Image Manipulation Program

21

Ubuntu Touch

4
  • 1
    Filesize on this one is also too large.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 18:38
  • 1
    @Grace any word on this request? That would really help things out.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 20:22
  • I managed to get the size down to 132 KB through quantization but the artifacts are noticeable.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Mar 19, 2016 at 19:26
  • 1
    I would prefer "Many devices supported". sounds better?
    – pcarvalho
    Commented Apr 18, 2016 at 16:05
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0 A.D. Empires Ascendant

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  • 2
    Filesize on this is WAAAAAAY too big. Limited to 150 KB please.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 18:38
  • @Grace I'm afraid I posted this before seeing the new filesize requirements. Is there a way to temporarily disable this until I can fix it?
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 20:19
  • 1
    Never mind. I was able to pull a few tricks out of the bag to reduce the size of the file.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Mar 19, 2016 at 19:23
  • this needs more votes
    – Anwar
    Commented Jul 17, 2016 at 10:45
  • @GraceNote WAAAAY too big means slow loading times, right?
    – EKons
    Commented Aug 29, 2016 at 9:11
18

Vi and Vim Stack Exchange

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  • The... corners of the green shape seem off.
    – EKons
    Commented Aug 29, 2016 at 9:10
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Darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer

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  • darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.
    – GeoMint
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 23:00
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REVIEW!

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GNU Parallel - for people who live life in the parallel lane

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  • Need two :) , and is the last bit a command or something? If so formatting to look like prompt might work
    – Wilf
    Commented Mar 20, 2016 at 22:03
13

Love software? Visit Software Recommendations

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  • 1
    Derived from Undo's ad.
    – Tom
    Commented Jan 16, 2016 at 3:25
13

WebUpd8 - Ubuntu news and application reviews

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Join your fellow community members in chat!

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  • 1
    I'd like to eventually use Bytecommander's new mockup, but this is good in the meantime. Thanks!
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 15:24
  • 3
    @Seth If I have time within the next weeks, I might maybe design it properly. But I'm also happy if anybody else takes my sketch (link to image) I published in the AU General Room and makes something beautiful out of it. Maybe we should ask around then who (additional to myself :D) wants to get their user icon on it. I could also imagine adding some smaller ones in the background without speech bubbles.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 15:33
  • @ByteCommander: taking you up on the challenge!
    – Fabby
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 18:10
  • @ByteCommander: What do you mean in the background? Do you mean just like a screenshot of the chat which is a little greyed out to look like it's in the background and then have those profile pictures with the speech bubbles? I could probably do something like that... And what exactly should the text be in the speech bubbles?
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 18:15
  • @ByteCommander: Well, I don't know if others will think it any good (but I rather like it, and it's really actually quite hard to make it look at all good), but after a lot of time and effort I have finished my interpretation of your idea... So, what do you think, any good? :)
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 20:11
  • Gotta reverse my vote, the crazy backgrounds are just too distracting and look really weird in the context too.
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 20:43
  • @Seth: Well, if you know anything about making normal looking speech bubbles which aren't just black outlined and ugly, I'd love to hear about it!
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 21:02
  • @Seth: Ok, fine, which colour do you think wouldn't be distracting but would actually show the text and itself ok?
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 21:08
  • I like it. If the bubbles were a little smoother and the buttons/icon on the orange bar would have some more space between them and the border, it would be almost perfect. And you could/should design it in the doubled size. Another suggestion would be to slightly tilt the user icons and putting some kind of shadow below them especially mine is hardly visible on the light background.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 8:12
  • @ByteCommander: Because of the size it is very hard to make the speech bubbles more smooth and less pixelated, though with a larger size they would probably look better. I can move the buttons if you like. But why do I need to make one double the current size?
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 11:33
  • @ByteCommander: Do you buttons look better? I'll set to work next on the drop-shadows, but increasing the size of the image will mean I'll need to completely redo it...
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 12:03
  • @ByteCommander: Which I can do, but will the larger image replace the smaller one or will they both exist at the same time? Because I don't know if in terms of image placing they will look exactly the same...
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 12:04
  • @ByteCommander: Ok, I've done the drop-shadows... What do you think? Also, magically the speech bubbles have become a little smoother it seems... I don't know what was wrong before... :)
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 15:09
  • Looks really cool. I like it!
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 7:10
  • @ByteCommander: Ok, I've swapped in the retina version! What do you think? :)
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:59
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See all questions with active bounties

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8

Follow your fellow AU members in chat!

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  • Is that really 300x250 in size?
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 19:27
  • 1
    @ParanoidPanda no, it's 528x526.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 20:17
  • Maybe we should change the bubble colour to orange though? Blue just seems a bit off.. Really nice however!
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 20:39
  • @Nathan: Then it won't be accepted, as said in the main post, it needs to be of that size.
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 20:40
  • @Seth: All orange will actually make it look worse... (Haven't tried it though and won't unless you insist) ;-)
    – Fabby
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 21:06
  • 1
    300x250 pixels here to get size within 40KB...
    – Fabby
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 21:20
  • 1
    @Fabby: Apparently the size can be 150KB at most now, but the image size in terms of height and width has to be the same as before.
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 19, 2016 at 21:48
  • That was actually just a sketch, which I quickly made with LibreOffice Writer's simple drawing tools. I did not expect that you would really use that as template. It was rather meant as inspiration...
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 7:49
  • @ByteCommander That's how I once won a design contest: by sending in a sketch in Powerpoint, made in 15 minutes flat... :D How can I give you some extra credit? Give you a bounty with the same rep on AU which this one collected here on Meta?
    – Fabby
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 8:48
  • 1
    @Fabby Since when do you earn reputation on Meta??? Did you hack SE to enable some extra income? ;-D
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 9:44
  • a bit distorted...
    – lolrepeatlol
    Commented May 24, 2016 at 12:12
  • Ah, my advert finally has more votes than yours! >;P
    – user364819
    Commented May 28, 2016 at 18:06
  • Well, yours is better then mine! @ParanoidPanda
    – Fabby
    Commented May 28, 2016 at 18:17
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Help this community grow -- follow us on twitter!

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  • This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted, now with 80px more width! It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 3:25
-1

Tagline to show on mouseover

1
  • Why the lack of love for the GNU half of GNU/Linux?
    – haziz
    Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 23:10
-5

GNU Parallel - for people who live life in the parallel lane

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