On Potentially Removing Google Adsense from this Blog

On Potentially Removing Google Adsense from this Blog

Byrichard

Recently I have been toying with the idea of removing Google Ads from my site and adding a donation option instead. This escalated, when, yesterday I was seeing ads in the admin panel of my wordpress blog. Ads are disruptive enough for users, with full screen invasive ads that require you to acknowledge the ads, as well as others that take up the lower third of the screen.

These ads bother me so much because they’re impossible to see subconsciously. They’re not passive. They’re invasive. On quite a few sites the ads are so invasive that it interrupts your browsing experience. What makes this so bad is that we choose to give free reign to place ads as Google sees fit, but rather than place discrete ads that are noticed subconsciously they want ads that stop us in our tracks.

Initially ads would be inserted in the blog feed so that every few paragraphs or every few posts you’d see an ad. Now they interrupt your browsing experience on every single page load. Not only do these ads disrupt the browsing experience, and encourage people to browse away from our pages, losing views and interest but they don’t generate any income anyway. We’re bugging people for nothing.

Google is getting the long tail income from all those disruptive ads, and we’re providing a bad user experience to those that browse to our site, rather than read what we write, in feed readers.

Recover Revenue From Ad Blockers

It gets worse. Not only does Google Adsense spam us in our admin panel but it wants us to pester people to turn off ad blockers. People turn ad blockers off in the first place because of how obnoxious they are. If an ad fills your entire screen you’re likely to turn ad blockers on. If ads take up almost all the screen you’re likely to turn ad blockers on.

I used ad blockers on YouTube because I didn’t want to see a minute of adverts before watching a video for ten seconds before deciding that it’s crap.

A Need for Better Adverts

When I use Twitter I block every advertiser I see. Anyone that advertises on Twitter deserves to be blocked. I hardly use ad blockers because I do want websites to benefit from my visits.

iOS App ads

When I use several iOS games I sometimes watch ads to speed up game progress but in so doing I get frustrated that the ads last for thirty seconds to a minute, and that they’re for spam games, rather than fun games. I call spam games those that require you to watch crappy adverts to progress, and that pay for ads for you to play games that are so awful that they need ads, rather than word of mouth to gain users. Ads are barely ever for something useful or desired, despite “we want to show you personalised ads”.

Looking for Advertisers

I currently write blog posts every single day about a diversity of topics. That I have written daily for 317 days or more should be a selling argument for encouraging brands to pay me directly for placing ads on my blog, rather than taking the easy “Google Adsense” route. If my blog was niche I could target specific brands or companies, but because it varies from day to day I could find a number of advertisers, or ask for donations. It depends on how pro-active, or passive I want to be. Google Adsense was a good option but now it has lost steam.

And Finally

With what I have learned over the last few years I could take control of how Google ads are displayed on my site, to make them less disruptive. It’s simply a matter of taking the time to tweak the layout to display ads in a way that I am content with. If I switch my blog to Hugo then the change is very easy to make. With Wordpress it will take a little more time.

Converting This Blog To Hugo
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Converting This Blog To Hugo

Byrichard

On Saturday I converted my blog from WordPress to Hugo as an experiment and it went quite well. I downloaded the xml file and then I converted that xml with blog2md to go from xml to md pages. A page was created for every single blog post. This took a while. I now have my blog both as static pages, and as a wordpress blog.


Two challenges


There are two challenges. The first is that Hugo has to generate over 5000 pages each time I generate the site, or at least it has to check 5000 pages per change. That’s several minutes of work, every time I tell Hugo to build the site. The next concern is that if I make a change I don’t know whether I need to re-generate the entire site to reflect that change or whether it will just generate one page. I can run tests using Git Version control to see what’s happening.


Is Hugo or WordPress Lighter


I don’t know whether Hugo is heavier, because of every individual file, or whether WordPress is heavier, due to all the functionality that I barely ever use. WordPress often feels bloated and slow, especially in the admin console. It would be nice to play either with markdown, as I’m doing for this post, or html, as I could do, if I want more flexibility


Images Still Load


One of the surprises I came acrosss is that images still load, whether I am in the blog directory I created for testing purposes on the website, or within the wordpress blog folder, as I did by mistake. It’s pretty easy to make the change, as long as you keep the assets where they’re expected. I might consider deleting most of the wordpress install except for the media assets. That will be decided lateri.


What I Like About Hugo


What I like about Hugo is that the blog is generated and links between pages are taken care of automatically. As long as the tags and categories are set ahead of time, the generator will take care of the rest. As I browsed through the blog generated by Hugo I liked the look and feel. That’s before I spend time tweaking the theme and trying to add more.


An Alternative Approach


The blog I use now has been around for 20 years or so. This means that if I make a big change, like migrate from WordPress to Hugo I will kill all the hyperlinks and hierarchy and it will take time for search engines and links to be written to make the new version visible. Having said this the traffic to the site is low and there is a chance that the change will not be noticed. It’s by updating and linking to pages that I will make the entire site more visible.


And Finally


I have written the last two blog posts using VIM and I like the interface. It’s limited in functionality, because I haven’t spent enough time playing with VIM but it feels fast, and effective as a blogging tool. If I use Day One it takes time to load, I theoretically need to pay a subscription and then I need to cut and paste the content from there, to the blog. With this I could press esc, :wq, save, and write hugo and it will upload automatically. My reason for not doing that, for now, is that I don’t want to risk sharing the configuration for connecting to the server. Time will decide.

One Hundred and Eighty Two Days of Blogging in a Row

One Hundred and Eighty Two Days of Blogging in a Row

Byrichard

With the decline in the value of social media so the value of blogging has come back up. By blogging, rather than using social media, for at least an hour or two I am forcing myself to think, and to elaborate on ideas that would otherwise go without conclusion. Having a thought that is shared in 140 characters is easy. Having a thought that is three hundred words long is not. 


Although three hundred words doesn’t sound like much, and takes a few seconds to skim through it can take an hour or two to write. Today I wrote about chatGPT and why I didn’t like this move, but decided to leave that post as a draft, rather than publish it. I want blog posts to be positive, when possible. 


The issue with social media, in recent years, is that it has forgotten that it should be about individuals and communities, rather than advertisers. If individuals and communities are scuppered by the social media giants then it makes sense to return to the metaphorical village of personal blogs and websites. 


Now that social media has become a waste of time I enjoy investing that time in blogging. For an hour or two I spend time thinking, elaborating ideas and then writing a blog post. Most of these posts are never read. Blogging isn’t about being seen or read. I think blogging is akin to mindfulness or meditation. 


I use meditate in the French sense of the word, deep thinking, or to prepare something after a lot of thought. Blogging is the result of reflection, although it might not feel like it, when read. Blogging is a break from the world, to elaborate an idea, before posting it and forgetting about it. 


Most blog posts are not read. I’m developing a writing habit, and my writing skills, in a public place that no one visits.  

Learning About Laravel and PHP
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Learning About Laravel and PHP

Byrichard

Today I started to follow a course where someone turns a static html page into a Laravel blog. I experimented with home.blade and one or two other features and I got two pages to load, and the login to work, without more than that.


What makes today’s learning and experimenting interesting is that the time I spent creating PHP arrays for my website content is now easy to transfer to json files for use with dynamic websites. What this means is that content that was stuck on individual pages is now organised by website section. I am now free to do more.


The primary goal is to convert the static part of my website into a flexible content management system as well as to possibly swallow up the WordPress powered blogs. For at least a year I have disliked that Wordpress uses react, so if I can replace WordPress with Laravel then I will be happy. All websites that use React look the same to me, and I don’t want to use technology that was developed by Facebook, no matter how popular.


Having a website is not just about writing blog posts and creating content. It is also about playing with technology and learning new skills. I want to understand how laravel works, and to have a way to demonstrate that I have learned relevant skills for future job applications. This website isn’t small. It has quite a few sections, topics, content and more. It’s worth working on and improving this website.


And Finally


I am curious about playing with ActivityPub. It is still in early days but if and when it is ready, it will be a more advanced of interactive RSS. I want to see what possibilities it will open up.

Friendconnect

Byrichard

Today I got round to installing friendconnect on this blog. This means that everyone that has a gmail account can log in and become part of the community sprouting from this blog. You can also comment about things in general now.

There’s a new layout now, as a result information is easier to find and the whole site should load quite a bit faster.

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The week ahead: Blog Wars, Seesmic meetup and more

Byrichard

This week should see me dropping by the Frontline Club in London for the first time in weeks. I want to see Blog Wars which could be quite interesting. “Blog Wars provides a sharp and funny look at the explosion of political blogs, which have become the loudspeakers for a new generation of activists speaking out and picking fights across the political spectrum”

I’m looking forward to yet another Seesmic meetup and I’ve heard that some interesting people should be present although I haven’t seen this written on paper yet. The usual London suspects should be there so that should be a really good evening. That will be on the 17th and more details are to follow.

I’m not sure whether there’s another Social Media Cafe but if there is then there’s a very good chance I’ll be present. I’ll keep you informed.