Category Archives: administrata

You might have noticed things look a little different today.

I’ve been asked to be a part of WordPress’s new “WordAds” program beta test.

I’m a programmer… I’m a geek… how can I resist being part of a beta test?

The theme I was using wasn’t compatible with WordAds, so I had to pick a new theme. Just as well. I didn’t really like the prior theme, it was just the best for my needs of all the available choices at the time. But like all things in the WordPress world, always moving, always evolving, always improving. A lot more themes available now, and this new one I think looks good and offers a lot of features that fit my needs. So it all works well! I like the new look a lot more than the prior one, or really any theme I’ve used previously on this site.

So new theme, rearranged a few things, added a nice banner image. BTW, that banner image is a picture I took of a storm cloud that was rolling through my area on April 26, 2011. It was a HUGE storm, truly wicked to watch the cloud as it was rolling through. One of these days I’ll try to post some of the video I captured of it.

Anyways… the big change is WordAds. Because the back-end of this blog is presently hosted using the free wordpress.com hosting, you’ve probably already seen some advertisements when you come to the site. I believe the only thing that’s changing is the type of ad, from the old wordpress ads to these new WordAds. Exactly what it’ll all look like I don’t know… haven’t seen it yet.

This is my personal blog. It’s where I post what I want to talk about, from whatever angle I want to present it. This blog was not created to be a money-making venture. I tend to stay away from product promotions and other such things because that’s not what my blog is about. Plus, I don’t want to get into the bias that plagues a lot of magazines that do reviews but also advertise from those manufacturers. I mean, when was the last time you read a gun magazine that said the gun sucked? They can’t… the same manufacturer they review also gives them advertising dollars, and do you think that company will want to advertise with a magazine that trashes their product, no matter how honest it may be? I don’t want to get into that situation. If I say something is great, it’s because I think it’s great. If I say something sucks, it’s because I think it sucks likely due to my experience with it. I want the freedom to be able to do that without worrying about revenue pressures.

Thus advertisements that appear here? They appear due to the agreement with the server host. I have no control over them, and I have no idea what they are showing. In fact, while I knew they displayed ads in the past I never saw them because they don’t show them to me. Not sure if that’s because I’m the logged in blog owner, or all wordpress.com-based admins don’t see them, or exactly what causes them to be suppressed, but I don’t see the ads myself. So I generally don’t know what’s being advertised by wordpress. But, IMHO it’s a fair trade because I’m using their site for free, but they need to pay for all the costs associated in enabling me to do this for free.

We’ll see how this goes. It’s a beta test, and it’s a voluntary program in general (I could opt to pay wp.com an annual fee to suppress ads, or I could do my own full hosting on my own site… which was always my goal, but I have inertia to overcome, plus there are benefits to staying with wp.com vs. wp.org).