Site Maintenance

Here is what I see on a desktop in Chrome with Ghostery tracker and ad blocker installed:

It’s simply not there. If you use chrome and the ad bothers you, there ya go. You can even see websites atrociously larded with ads (you know who they are I am not going to shame them publicly) without a single ad showing.

Here is what I see with Firefox and Adblock Plus installed.

Again, no ads.

And finally, Edge with adblock:

THIS IS NOT to get you to stop submitting your screen shots to Watergirl. Please keep doing that. All this is is a way to help anyone who is minimally competent with web browsers to improve their browsing experience everywhere. I just did the big three, but I have about 15 browsers installed including Opera, Brace Defender, torbrowser, duckduckgo, and a bunch of others I can not remember (I like to check things in every browser for the CMS’s I use for work, so basically if you need help installing an ad block in any browser, let me know.

I hope this helps.

And if you are wondering why we are doing this, it is all on me. Watergirl is fighting me every step of the way on this. But here is the deal- we have not had search engine optimization done in over a decade, and we are getting no new visitors from searches. This is a problem for any website, but particularly for a blog where the comments run the show. Without new people coming in, we stagnate, and we die. We don’t have other blogs feeding us new readers (think of how many of you came from somewhere else), we don’t have a tiktok presence, and how many of you all are sharing posts or the website on bluesky or wherever else you go? And you don’t have to and that is not to shame you (it’s not your fucking job to promote the website), it’s just a statement of the status quo.

And I hate saying this because I know it will get the usual suspects all pissy, but we already have several commenters here who have been here for a while and seem to relish making everyone miserable and telling us how much we suck in every comment but come back every day, and we have an umber of ideologically rigid people who try to attach a carrot to a new person’s nose or anyone who challenges the received view with a heterodox take and then weigh them to see if they weigh as much as baked gravy and if you don’t get that reference, well, that’s on you.

So, in order to seek out new blood, we needed the search engine optimized, which costs money and time and a lot of work on the back end. I don’t want to pay for that, I don’t want you to pay for that, and an easy way to get it done is to have the web designer install an ad through their company and they get a cut of the ad revenue. It pays for itself.

Additionally, it has been seven years since our last rebuild. We have no intention of changing the layout or how the comments work, but a lot of software changes over seven years and there are lots of open source addons and widgets that change and compatibility takes a major hit and things start to break. And it’s going to cost money to fix it and I don’t have the money to pay for it out of pocket, so we will have to do a fund raiser, which I FUCKING hate because no one has money in this fucking economy, I hate asking for money, and we already have people donating every month to cover the server fees.

So if I can get all of this accomplished- web designer happy, website optimized, a little money store up for what I fear is going to cost a shitload of money this year rebuilding, and I am gonna do it. I know this pisses some of you off. We are working to make it as comfortable as possible, and please email me if you need help or it is just intolerable for you. I made sure there is no sound, no horrific autoplay, and is just something at the bottom of the screen.

And one last thing- I have already had several people say they would pay for the ad to go, except from my perspective, angel donors scare me. I have to think of the website in terms of five to ten years at this point and make decisions that I think will best position this place for the next decade. It’s why I rely on Watergirl so heavily- if she did not do all the little shit she does the place would die because I don’t have the energy. From my perspective, I do not want the site beholden to angel donors giving a large gift or, for that matter, donors in general. If Patreon suddenly goes out of business, then what? I still have 1500 a month minimum I am on the hook for, so I need to know that at the very least, the website is optimized and can take ads should the shit hit the fan. And unlike in previous decades, I simply don’t have the personal scratch to make things work when money is tight. I got two houses to maintain so my personal money is tight.

This might not how you look at things, but it is how I view things. Yer dealing with a guy who overthinks and stresses about everything and brings a fucking snake bite kit to picnics and has enough medical equipment in the boot of my car to handle all the victims of a bus wreck if I happen across it. For you, the current irritation is an ad. For me, the current panic is “can i keep this fucker going another decade.”

At any rate, I hope you understand my explanation of what and why I am doing what I am.

Mousetrap Part 2Post + Comments (142)