Is promo on the dashboard part of the new look???

Hi Deleyna,

Creating and maintaining a free plugin is not cheap, especially when it has over half a million installations. So far, we had no ads; we had no pro version and we didn’t ask for donations. The plugin was as clean as possible. We only asked one thing from our users – to rate the plugin. And no, I’m not talking about rating 5/5; I mean rate with whatever they feel is right. And how many people took 30 seconds to rate? To say thank you? To give back in any way they can? Borderline nobody!

But when it comes to sending angry emails because something is not working, because “we’re to blame,” then all of a sudden, everybody has time. And after we resolve the issue and again, only ask for a rating do we get it? No. So basically, we’re expected to shut up and provide a premium product and service for free.

Well, unfortunately, that time has come to an end. Primarily because we too need to eat, and also because we’re sick of how users treat us and how they envision this whole “free” thing should work.

I understand completely. I try to rate and promote excellent plugins and I value the service that you have offered to my students. I’d only switched them to using your plugin during my last two classes. When I teach them about plugins, I explain about gratitude and that they should consider giving to the plugin developers who create these wonderful things, because yes: we all do need to eat. New sites take time to make money, and I ask them to remember the plugin developers once they start making money.

Unfortunately, I hope you will understand that at this time, because of the size and the intrusive nature of the dashboard notice, I will need to disable the plugin on my students’ sites and suggest that they use a different one in future.

Just so you understand, your ad rearranges my students’ dashboards so that they can no longer see their stats. This happens abruptly during an update. If they were power users, this would be a mild annoyance. Because they are most definitely NOT power users, they interpreted the ad as: their site was broken, and now their stats had stopped functioning completely. I had hoped that you had simply not understood what chaos this ad would cause to new users.

Now I understand that it was motivated by frustration and annoyance towards your users.

I liked what you had done very much and wish you much success in the future. It was a lovely plugin.

I agree, that ads in this case are bad. It’s against everything WordPress is founded on. The dashboard placement is horrible. If you need obstructive ads, something is not working. If the plugin is good, it sells the premium versions and more, the developers just need to change their product strategy and marketing like others do who sell premium versions without messing with people’s dashboard.