Open Journal Montreal

We have decided, for the time being at least, to incorporate ads into the layout of Open Journal.

We had been talking and thinking about this for a while, and wondering if it would be a good idea. There are so many sites out there that are, in our opinion, flat-out ruined by ads and popups. You can read what Elran has had to say about this in a conversation that has followed from a post on his TechBlog about Search Engine Optimization.

I am a devoted Firefox user, so I’m protected from that brand of awfulness by the popup blocker most of the time, but I still get the odd intrusion popping through to remind me of what we’re definitely not going to do.

After some research we decided to go with Google’s Adsense. I like that I can tailor the colours and size, and I like the dynamic content that tries to relate itself to the contents of our pages. I find the fact that their magical math tries to tailor the ads toward our viewers’ larger search interests a teensy bit creepy, but that’s a fact of Google-dom whether we welcome them here or not.

For now my position is this: it’s a fact of the world that for us to stay open we are going to need a little dough (plants need water, you know?)

And, inherent in the idea of openness is an openness to other people’s idea of the good, to other systems, and products, and practices, and attempts to make a livelihood.

Basically, the ads are there in hopes that you will find something interesting or curious there and click on them. We get a small amount of money for each click which will, (someday, if we ever make enough for it to be worth Google’s while to send it to us,) go toward site hosting, development, authors and artists and community projects.

Please let us know what you think of this new step. You can drop in on the forum thread “Why Ads” to have your say.

Thanks, as always, for your time,
Risa

risa @ open. touchbasic. com