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Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

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Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#41

Post by faeyanpiraat »

nsomaru wrote: post #30
sleavey wrote: post #20

I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Almost all popular plugins come with a free version that spams you to upgrade to "pro". They add menu items to the admin panel with different colours so you find it harder to ignore them. They add messages to the dashboard. The look and feel of their settings pages don't match WordPress core. And, even if yo…

Have you released this plugin?

Making a functional plugin for one’s own purposes is one thing, releasing it to the public requires quite a lot more work.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#42

Post by sojmq »

asadkn wrote: post #39

Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading. - It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam. - The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area. - It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that. Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as n…

What makes you think those "entitled pseudo devs" as you call them charged the client for a premium version? You're making an assumption too many.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#43

Post by phito »

JacobSeated wrote: post #16

Well, people need to learn not to depend on redundant Wordpress plugins. The plugin-landscape in Wordpress is plagued by bugs and ads, some spamming you to update or pay for a premium version. That is not something you would accept for professional CMS solutions. If you consider yourself knowledgeable in SEO, then learn to walk the talk and stop relying on phony third-party plugins! SEO is such a small part of owning…

> It is totally redundant for people who can code themselves.

Not really, it saves time. I have my own website and I am a profesionnal developper, but I don't want to spend time learning wordpress programming. The few things I had to code for WP was very off putting.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#44

Post by asadkn »

jonny383 wrote: post #40
asadkn wrote: post #39

Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading. - It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam. - The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area. - It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that. Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as n…

1. It goes directly against the WordPress Detailed Plugin Guidelines to both upsell, and to hijack the admin dashboard [0]. 2. If the ad was an admin notice, it didn't look like one. It's a banner image with an outbound tracking link [1]. [0] https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detail... [1] https://imgur.com/a/oN7ZFRU

I believe they played with the semantics here to perhaps get a pass on it not counting as an exact violation of wp.org repository guidelines. There's a proposal to have strict policies and disallow any sort of global ads now but it seems dismissed [1].

It was a dismissable admin notice that looked like an ad and wasn't exactly a tracking link (in the wp.org classifications at least), but a generic marketing campaign link [2].

[1] https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-plugin-guidelines/pull/69... [2] https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/blob/12.6.1/admin/cla...

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#45

Post by momokoko »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #33
sleavey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Truly sorry" I'd prefer it if CEOs would rather say "we got too greedy and clearly the market didn't like it" rather than disingenuous apologies.

I have a lot more respect for a response that contains the words "sorry" and a statement that the entity admits that they made a mistake, vs. the usual corporate statement that contains neither.

The apology is basically the modern version of that corporate statement.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#46

Post by saagarjha »

asadkn wrote: post #39

Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading. - It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam. - The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area. - It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that. Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as n…

> It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that.

Making something available for free doesn’t absolve you from blame when you make stupid decisions. Well, it does legally, but from a social standpoint it’s still not nice.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#47

Post by levosmetalo »

sleavey wrote: post #20

I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Almost all popular plugins come with a free version that spams you to upgrade to "pro". They add menu items to the admin panel with different colours so you find it harder to ignore them. They add messages to the dashboard. The look and feel of their settings pages don't match WordPress core. And, even if yo…

> I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess.

Well, the root cause why the plugin ecosystem is a mess is the way plugins management and monetization is implemented in the vanilla wp.

As oposed to, e.g. Atlassian Jira plugins, WP doesn't really help plugin developers to seamlessly integrate with the core product.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#48

Post by aliswe »

asadkn wrote: post #44
jonny383 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It goes directly against the WordPress Detailed Plugin Guidelines to both upsell, and to hijack the admin dashboard [0]. 2. If the ad was an admin notice, it didn't look like one. It's a banner image with an outbound tracking link [1]. [0] https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detail... [1] https://imgur.com/a/oN7ZFRU

I believe they played with the semantics here to perhaps get a pass on it not counting as an exact violation of wp.org repository guidelines. There's a proposal to have strict policies and disallow any sort of global ads now but it seems dismissed [1]. It was a dismissable admin notice that looked like an ad and wasn't exactly a tracking link (in the wp.org classifications at least), but a generic marketing campaign…

Dismissable? Didnt the x button lead to a sales page?

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#49

Post by simonswords82 »

withinrafael wrote: post #12

The Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt responded on Twitter: > That BlackFridayBanner was not the best idea. We’re truly sorry for the annoyance and difficulties it may have caused. We did not think this through properly. If you want, you can update to a new version of our plugin without that banner. #blackfriday #neveragain #apologies"[1] > I OK'd this. I am the CEO. And I made a big mistake. I am sorry. [2] [1] https://…

"There but for the grace of god go I"

In other words, we all make mistakes in our businesses.

Some of them are more obvious to the outside world than others. This one was a pretty serious cock up.

I admire her for owning it and saying sorry. Plus they fixed it pretty quickly.

Re: Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission

#50

Post by csomar »

asadkn wrote: post #39

Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading. - It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam. - The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area. - It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that. Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as n…

I used to work in this WP field and I can confirm your story about this industry clients devs. I have one more story:

Back then (maybe still possible now?), if you have a custom plugin named "abc" but which is not uploaded to wp.org repository, I can upload a plugin with the same id "abc" to wp.org, bump the version and WordPress will suggest to update the plugin. This will replace the real plugin with yours. I voiced the problem to the WP guys but they seemed cool with it.

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