“Design a site like this with WordPress.com”
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All blogs created in the past five or six years, by default, carry a banner saying that you can “Design a site like this with WordPress.com.” Older blogs used to be grandfathered in and did not carry this banner. However, in the past couple of days, I have started to see this banner on all blogs located at *.wordpress.com – including those which have not been touched for literal decades (example: asdf.wordpress.com, seemingly left abandoned for the past 19 years). This appears to be a recent decision and wasn’t announced on the blog. Why was this decision made for all *.wordpress.com sites, including older blogs?
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The wordpress.com banner makes part of the TOS you accepted when you set up your free site – https://wordpress.com/tos/
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I’m not talking about my blog. I’m not complaining about the banner being placed on my blog. I’m asking an Automattic policy question, about why WordPress has decided – in the past couple of weeks – to place it on almost every single WordPress blog, even ones that haven’t been touched in years.
The last time WordPress’ terms were changed was in June, to clarify that they also applied to Blaze Pro, the service that allows you to book ads on Tumblr. The last time they were changed in relation to WordPress was around New Year’s 2024, many months before I started seeing this banner. It’s therefore not possible that this was the result of a recent change in the terms.
In any event, the terms have never explicitly said that WordPress is to place a promotional banner for itself on all free blogs. It simply says that “we may display advertisements on your website and domain unless you have purchased a plan that includes the removal of ads.” It’s an open question what nature these advertisements take. There was definitely no notice of the spread of the WordPress banners.
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