We’ve snapped the evil capitalist cord. We just deleted all the ad slots on Freethoughtblogs — we hope everything is faster, smoother, and more enjoyable.
Unfortunately, we still have to pay for our server costs, and it would be nice if our bloggers got coffee-money now and then. We’re going to try and figure out as a group how to do all that, so may soon be going the crowd-funding route, or having donation drives, or something. Watch this space, we’ll announce our new strategy soon.
I do have to say that going into the guts of the WordPress machine and savagely murdering all the ad-bot code was one of the most satisfying things I’ve done today. Easy, too.
Nice! I remember I didn’t trust checking the site directly on my tablet because the ads frequently caused issues with site redirects.
I guess you could set up a Patreon for the site network as a whole. Not sure whether you’d want to do tiers with special awards/early access, or just the subscriber route.
Congrats. I imagine a Patreon-style setup might be difficult since one has people who read individual blogs as well as folks who read across the blog network, and figuring out any tiers needed would be difficult.
Wow. Even though I was already using an adblocker, the pages here load much faster now.
I never minded the measly $30/year for FtB Ad Free. I guess when you get something set up, I could still pass that much along to grease the wheels.
You folks know you can already subscribe, right?
I’ve been enjoying ad-free FtB ever since I subscribed about a year ago… Reckon I’ll just keep it up….
I’ve been a subscriber since you started having subscriptions. I’ll continue to support FtB in whatever form you set up.
And it still says “© 2014 – FreethoughtBlogs.com” at the bottom of every page.
No rush.
Some how I’ve run my web site for 25 years without advertisements. (Indeed, it was one of the first web sites.)
Welcome back to the club!
I’ve subscribed for several years. Early on, for my work computer and its MS operating system, and for my iPad. I’ll support FtB by subscription if that is your decision.
Hey! I’m still signed up for 181 days on my sub!? Do I get a cookie?
I have the ad-free subscription. I’ll chunk in more at the new year. Thanks PZ.
I am a couple of days away from renewing my yearly subscription.
Do I just carry on as usual?
Sure. But if you can’t afford the donation, don’t worry about it.
Also, another factor to consider: we’re gonna roll out some new mechanisms for supporting FtB, which I’m hoping will include ways to support individual blogs.
@Becca Stareyes #2
Perhaps something like what, AIUI, Twitch does with their premium account: You get a number of free ‘subscriptions’ that you can throw at particular bloggers. The bloggers themselves can offer perks for their subscribers.
Theres the mechanism whereby subscribers see everything and others see 3 or 4 articles a month and the rest are seen only as abstracts.
And you probably want to be able to grant free subscriptions on a case by case.
Well…I guess I won’t really miss them because I’ve been paying to not have ads and so seldom saw them. But they did make me hesitant to send friends links to FtB…especially during days where I remember there being pop-up adds..as I didn’t want them getting that crap.
I’ll go ahead and keep paying if you all keep allowing me to do so. $30 a year is no big deal; not with how much time I spend reading these blogs.
Huh. I just came here after a couple days not being here, and thought “Oh how nice, I’m still logged in! They must have fixed the ‘log me out way too fast’ bug.” But no, it’s permanent. Well, in recompense I have resubscribed for another year.
I might buy some merch too, if there were some merch.