Comments on: WordPress Making Money The Wrong Way

By: fekdienihew

fekdienihew — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:35:03 +0000

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By: Nicole

Nicole — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 03:16:28 +0000

Just came across this. Ouch. (Okay, I laughed. But only a little.)

By: Nicole

Nicole — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 21:49:09 +0000

I just read his response. I have a lot of opinions on this matter, but honestly I don't care that much about it one way or the other. Yes, the posted articles struck me as odd and somwehat deceitful. However, it doesn't seem worth ruining a good European vacation over.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 18:37:47 +0000

Hell, after reading his response I stick even closer to what I said.

Rust, I didn’t demean or degrade him in anyway. I said he is a nice guy. Everyone seems to love him which is a brand I definitely don’t have, so maybe your comment is the type that doesn’t lend bloggers credibility. I didn’t know that I was trying to be a journalist anyways. Thanks for letting me know.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 18:24:34 +0000

I assumed that they got paid to place articles on their site. I assumed they were using a cloaking technique. I assumed that many open source projects thrive by using other methods of generating revenue.

That’s what I stated in the entry. I wasn’t reporting, I was giving my opinion. I can assume all I want then. Were those assumptions facts though? I think so.

By: Rust

Rust — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:57:25 +0000

Your article starts off by breaking a cardinal rule of reporting – you are “assuming” that you know what’s going on based on limited information.

Someone who actually cared about this situation would not assume the worst. They would have waited for Matt’s response (which was just posted a few minutes ago on his site) and used *both* sides of the story to form an opinion. You know, something based on knowledge instead of assumption.

Why do blogs have a bad name in so many communities? It’s because that while many bloggers wish to be taken seriously (to some extent, at least) as reporters, they the worst kind of reporter – willing to stoke the flames and jump feet-first into anything without researching their topics properly. Real reporters never assume.

By: Anil

Anil — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:04:33 +0000

Say wha…? I don’t think that’s ever been in there. There was a lot of misinformation spread after we changed our licensing, but I hadn’t heard this particular bit.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:05:06 +0000

Hey, I click those links. The 9rules network is cool, and it’s about to get even cooler!

By: JC

JC — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:51:15 +0000

Bob -
You’re an idiot. Really. I mean it. No joke.

You can’t compare links in the footer of a website that leads to other websites run by the same individual (like, oh, CNN and Sports Illustrated and the like) to putting links 9000 pixels off-screen and hiding them. The links are there for human consumption, they’re there in some basic form or another on all of his websites as a sort of global network-wide header and footer.

If scrivs had those links set to the same color as the background, or had a layer over the top of them so they were hidden in some other way, sure, that’d be spamming. But he doesn’t. And actually he seems to be missing a couple of sites… where’s the betfest link, scrivs? That’s my manager’s favorite website. lol

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:46:26 +0000

I don’t know why people assume that free software cost nothing! I know for a fact that Matt pays a pretty penny for hosting every month and speaking from experience, rent ain’t cheap in San Francisco. Why then when someone uses a personal space that happens to attract a lot of readers to make a little extra to fund the project costs, that the person must be doing something wrong. People get the wrong idea about open source. It is not about being free of costs and thrives off of good feelings. It is a development model and belief and no one would argue that development or beliefs are free! If google bans it, so be it but no one should think anything less of Matt for doing it. There are far worse things that could be done to make money to fund wordpress than allowing some articles to be hosted on the domain.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:54:03 +0000

It caught it and all the pages have been removed from Google’s index. It was pretty impressive how they acted on it.

By: cliche

cliche — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:45:24 +0000

text-indent: -9000px; overflow: hidden;

Very offtopic, but Google crawlbot can’t catch that? Sheesh.

By: Michel Valdrighi

Michel Valdrighi — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 14:56:53 +0000

WordPress Inc. is NOT WordPress.

That’s all I’d rather say about all the bullshit that is being said around the selfrighteous blogosphere.
For the record though, I do not condone such practices.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 14:46:47 +0000

Bob: Are you joking me? The links are at least readable and are for both readers and search engines. How is that a violation?

By: Pete Prodoehl

Pete Prodoehl — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 14:07:11 +0000

As far as the Six Apart thing, it didn’t come down to their licensing fees for me, it came down to the fact that the license stated (at the time, and still might) that they could force you to delete your copy of Movable Type, and you had to comply with that. I could not recommend Movable Type for any sort of commercial or serious use with that clause. I thought it was crazy to accept a license that forced you to be at the whim of it’s creators. On the other hand, WordPress is open-source, with a GPL license, and if you don’t like what Matt, or WordPress, Inc. or whoever is involved is doing, you are still free to use the software, and even fork it into another project if you like. So in the end, if you think Matt screwed up, or made the wrong decision, just be glad the right decision was made in choosing a resonable license that grants you the a good amount of rights as to what you can do with it.

By: Jonas M Luster

Jonas M Luster — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 12:47:53 +0000

Adam: Actually, I didn’t accuse Forever Geek of labeling Matt a spammer. In fact, I’ve said as much. Did you read my article? :) I know you must have, guess I am raving too intelligible sometimes. Apologies, if that’s the case.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 09:59:13 +0000

You condemn WordPress, but you own site is in violation of the Google Webmaster guidelines.

Or are those little links linking your network *realy* for human visitors and not just search engines?

People find it easy to point fingers – but a lot of fingers pointing will be pointed back at.

By: Adam Lyttle

Adam Lyttle — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:36:04 +0000

Jonas: Forever Geek did not label Matt as being a spammer, or spamming anyone. Scrivs was pointing out that he has concerns the way Matt is running the site and in the process he pointed out quite a few key points. None of these points have been addressed in your response, you simply directed us to a general response that you wrote up. Did you even read Scrivs article?

By: Jonas M Luster

Jonas M Luster — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:47:27 +0000

Being you don’t have Trackback/Pingback enabled, I’d like to point to my response offsite (see supplied URL). I general I agree with a lot of the notions, but would like to supplement a few of my own. And, yes, I am being hammered about it, right now :)

By: Adam Lyttle

Adam Lyttle — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 01:51:18 +0000

He is definitely exploiting the open source model. As you pointed out Scrivs, there is definitely other ways to make money from open source models. But on the same token, this is business. People may not like what he is doing (and he may lose some of his userbase), but in the end he might insure the longterm success of the site by changing to a more mainstream way of making money out of it.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 01:37:22 +0000

I think the route Dean Allen took with TextPattern was a wise one. He created TextDrive, a web hosting company focused on the people using the blogging and other open source software (Textpattern, Wordpress, PunBB, PhotoStake, Rails, etc…). This allows him to get money, but keeps TextPattern as an open source project.

Having an option to contribute to other open-source developers is also nice. I wonder how Wordpress, Inc. will play with TextDrive.

By: Steve Eyre

Steve Eyre — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:54:26 +0000

I think the biggest problem here is the situation has been handled really badly – I was shocked when I first saw these adverts earlier today. I think advertising is definitely a choice WordPress will probably have to take, but something like this just won’t work, rather we need something more open and not as “dirty”.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:29:51 +0000

Well I don’t follow the WordPress development that much, but I have never heard of any sort of ways to raise money and I think that is what bothers me most. Instead of asking the community for suggestions, they took this route.

By: Matt Burris

Matt Burris — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:13:23 +0000

Wow, that’s just sad. I can understand the need to make money, but to take advantage of the community, game search engines, and basically have the same amount of appeal as comment spammers, it’s going to create another crapstorm like MT had when they started charging license fees.

Is this another case of greed hurting another project? :|