A quick note from Mar about adverts: please read!

Hi peeps. It’s been brought to my attention that WordPress is inserting Google Ads at the bottom of all my posts here on SL for Nowt. Since I use Firefox and the AdBlock plugin (and I have many of those ad sites added to my Hosts file, so I never see them) I was completely unaware of this until just now:

I’m not happy with this. I do not want my readers bombarded with ads when they come to my blog. I understand that this is a WordPress.com thing; that they do it to generate some revenue in return for their free blog hosting. I have no control over this. I can’t even specify what kind of ads are shown (although if I had a choice then NO ads would be shown).

Hop behind the cut. I have more to say about this. *angryface*

I’m seriously considering moving the blog to a dedicated server of its own. I already have one set up, and have been using it to host the pics for the blog for years now. The only reason I didn’t move the blog there fully was that, by the time I had it up and running, a lot of people were reading it here on the WordPress-hosted site, and I didn’t want to inconvenience my readers.

However, I’m pretty bloody annoyed that I was given no warning of this. The ads have, apparently, only appeared very recently, and they were completely unannounced. Apparently, every WordPress-hosted blog now has them, so if you have a blog of your own it might be a good idea to turn off AdBlock (if you’re using it) for a while to check them out and maybe make a post explaining to your readers why the heck you appear to be trying to make money off them all of a sudden. It’s only because a good friend of mine asked if I was making any money from my Google Adwords on the blog that I realised they were here at all!

I write this blog for the love of it, not to make money from my readers, and it angers me no end that WordPress have done this and not even told their users they will be doing it. I want you all to know that I have no desire whatsoever to make money from pageviews on this blog, and I hope that none of you think that’s why the ads have appeared :(

In short, please be prepared for SL for Nowt to move to its own hosting. This may take a few days (or even a couple of weeks, as I’ll need to import all of the old posts onto the self-hosted blog) but rest assured that I’ll let you know when to change your bookmarks :)

For those of you using Firefox, I highly recommend the AdBlock extension. Chrome users can use the excellent AdThwart extension.