MUSKRAT RAMBLINGS, November 22, 2011

Muskrat Ramblings
Full-page click-thru purgatory!
posted by John

A message came in – late, because my website sucks. But here it is:

I read webcomics all the time, and I make it a habit to donate after a web crawl.

I will NOT be doing so to you. Dork Tower is interesting, but the humor isn’t worth the redirect ads that pop up every third or fourth attempt to read a damn comic.

It’s your website and your work. Do as you wish, but know that THIS customer is taking his custom elsewhere.

I suppose I could take umbrage at the tone of the message, but, you know, I really can’t, since – as previously noted – my website sucks.

Anyway, my reply, essentially, ran something like this (edited a bit, but essentially the same):

Trust me…nobody hates that full page click-thru ad more than I do. To make matters worse, I get nothing from it. It’s a Gamespy thing. It even pops up when I try and load a new comic! (In fact, I had to click through it just now, to post this.

We are in the process of changing to a new site, one that will be totally full-page click-thru ad-free. We had hoped the change would have been before now. In any case, or should be very soon.

I am so sorry for your frustration, and I absolutely share it. But thank you for supporting web comics!

Best,

John Kovalic

I’m hoping the change will be in a matter of weeks. But I’ve been hoping that for the last couple of months. Still, it’s a top priority, and I’ve got the help of some really good people on this. It’s just taking longer than expected.

In the meantime, I struggle with even a simple post like this one, as even a slight revision will send me to the click-thru ad, and play silly buggers as the admin portion of the page leaps into a perpetual full-page loop. It is a despicable thing. I hate it like poison.

I won’t miss the click-thru ads in the slightest – I can almost hear readers being lost every time the accursed thing pops up. I’m truly sorry my host went to this format, but if you’re hanging in there with me, I can’t thank you enough. Really.

I may miss the irony of some of the ads being for Visene eye-drops, given the sheer ugliness of it all.

But not much.

I may even add a “Donation” button, just so folks who angrily declare they’ll never donate will actually be able to actively not donate, instead of just saying it as an abstract concept.

Because I care. 🙂

****

Seriously, my website sucks. Can I apologize enough?

****

I’ll also be blogging more, once the new page goes up. Given the difficulty the teeny text lends to reading the current blog, though, it seems a bit of a time-waste, at the moment. To say nothing of the teeth-gratingly loopy hijinks the full-page ad re-route ensures, both in updating and viewing. So most news of my professional life goes up either at my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/johnkovalic) or on my Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/muskrat_john).

****

Onto happier matters: my birthday is this Thursday. My only wish is it be celebrated with turkey feasts and football games in the USA. Possibly a parade or two. Sound do-able?

John

 

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