Random Advertisement in dashboard….

I agree. This advertisement has greatly decreased any respect, which I might have had for the Maintenance Mode plug-in developers. I am giving you one star, because I am not as easily convinced, that completely wrong behavior, is somehow still correct behavior.

Dirk

Hi, you can remove the informational box by clicking the close button https://take.ms/eOt7Y .

Adrian

Hi.

The advertizement does not have a close button.

Dirk

@designmodo The problem here is that it’s not an “informational box”. It’s a spam advertisement and completely unrelated to the functionality of the plugin.

@designmodo. Yep, it’s spam.
This shows a profound lack of judgement on your part.
This was a good plugin, but I’m not prepared to tolerate this spam.
I’ve just deactivated the plugin on my site.
Ted

@dirkmittler can you send me a screenshot please?

@phil Johnston, @tedinoz – if you will remove the box, it will not be “like a spam”. It’s a free plugin, so, please respect our work.

@designmodo

I have to disappoint you, by telling you that I have deleted the plug-in by now. So I cannot prove this anymore.

But I do recall, that the message box at the top of my dashboard showed me one button, named “Tell Me More”, which seemed set into the ad itself. I looked in vain for another button that would have dismissed it.

I did click on the available button, in hopes that acknowledging the box once, would also dismiss it. And logically, a new browser-tab opened, on the site of the product being advertized. Nothing grievous happened and I closed that tab. But the message was not dismissed that way.

I think that if you give other users a simple way to read and then dismiss your box, they may come to accept your methods. I could not find any way to dismiss it, and also do not have the patience to search for some way, to get rid of a message box, that should not even be there in the first place, in my opinion.

Sorry,
Dirk

Have you seen my previous screenshot https://take.ms/eOt7Y ? We have a close button. Will be useful for us if you will send us a screenshot with your issue. We created conditions to remove the informational box, maybe the plugin style has some conflicts with other plugins.

@designmodo

This is the first time I saw that screen-shot, originating from you. Indeed, on that screen-shot, and therefore within your plug-in, there should be such a button.

But I do know with 100% certainty, that the message-box displayed on my dashboard did not have this button.

Now, I can just guess at what might have gone wrong here. I am using the “Twentyfifteen Theme”, and there can sometimes be problems with a specific theme, not displaying a specific feature, of some specific plug-in.

I think it just happened to you for real, that the Twentyfifteen theme does not always display that close-button. It is just especially inconvenient, that this happened in the middle of an advertisement.

And as I said, I cannot prove it, because I deleted your plug-in.

I can tell you, that using the Twentyfifteen theme is more important to me, because this theme strikes me as very accessible to smart-phones, and I happen to have it set up so that it works well, with the plug-ins I have decided to keep.

I am sincere when I write, that I even clicked in that, top-right corner of the message box, hoping to activate a close button that was not displaying. But the way any GUI works, If it doesn’t display a button or widget And we click, Then nothing happens.

Dirk

Thank you for details, we’ll check it. I have posted the screenshot yesterday and I have asked the confirmation if it’s well.

Anyway, we’ll check the conflicts.

Adding spam advertisements like this is against the rules of the WordPress repo. As a plugin developer, by putting spam advertisements into user’s dashboards, you are not respecting them. By asking people to “respect your work” by allowing you to put spam into their WordPress – shows that you don’t care about users or usability or the rules of the repo at all.

You don’t deserve to put spam into someone’s dashboard because they are using your plugin. You chose to put it up for free. You could have sold it if you wanted – putting it up for free on the WordPress repo was your choice and you must abide by the rules in place.

Imagine if every plugin author put spam in the WP dashboard header. I have upwards of 30 plugins – that would mean I’d have 30 spam ads at the top of my WordPress after every update. I would quickly stop using WordPress.

I have stopped using your plugin because of your blackhat techniques – as will many others if you continue this behaviour.

Why did you do this ? I totally agree with Phil and Dirk. People just don’t do this.

Plugin banned for ever. This kind of behavior should not be tolerated !

*Reads. Raises hand as a forum moderator.*

@designmodo I do not know if advertising outside of the plugin’s setting page is permitted or not in the plugin guidelines. I personally make a list of plugins that do that and make note to never use that author’s plugin again.

The dashboard belongs to the user. It’s not for you to use for advertising that way, regardless of if it can be dismissed or not. If it’s in your plugin’s setting page then that may be different. Using the admin alerts that was does not seem right to me.

BUT as I’ve said, I’m not sure and I’m not on the plugins team. So I’ve sent [email protected] an email with the details here and a screenshot asking them for their opinion.

I was referring to this portion of the terms:

“Note that if you do include what we consider to be “advertising spam”, or attempt to game somebody else’s advertising system, then we will not only remove your plugin, but also report your code to the advertising system’s abuse mechanism as well. We do not react kindly to spam. Don’t try it.”

https://en-ca.www.ads-software.com/plugins/about/guidelines/

We have fixed this issue.

Thanks guys!