WordPress Pop Up Sidebar Box Insisting Readers Enter Email and/or Sign Up
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Is anyone else having an issue with WordPress forcing your readers to enter an email address to “Follow” your blog and/or forcing them to create a WordPress account. If you are a signed-in user this will not show up, but when helping relatives set up their new tablets this Christmas I went to check out my blog. I was very disappointed to find an annoying box appear near the side bar that hovers over the page with no way to remove it. The first box was asking you to enter email to follow the blog, which I did thinking that would be a natural thing to do (which I questioned after the fact, whether I could trust WordPress to do the right thing with that private info). No sooner than I got the window to disappear a new one appeared asking you to set up a user account. The box was very distracting and overlapped the edge of my blog text and kept following down the screen as I scrolled. It apparently would not go away without the you giving up the desired info. In digging, I found old forum posts (September 2011) that said this was something WordPress was “trying out” and there was no way to remove it.
I cannot believe that I am the only one that thinks this is a very bad move on WordPress’ part. Needless to say, having my readers be annoyed by insistent pop ups and having to go through another sign-up process (which nobody enjoys) is going to hurt readership and WordPress use, not help it. The fact that this has been happening for several months and this is the first time I have noticed, makes think that WordPress is not getting the feedback they need on this. This should be a no brainer in the first place (Don’t do to others what you would not want them to do to you — business rule number 1), but maybe they would remove this annoyance if enough people complained.
I tried leaving a feedback, but their feedback is closed until early January. If anyone else has discovered this and thinks this is a questionable practice that you are not happy with, would you mind leaving a ditto in the reply feed? If anyone knows of a way to make this go away manually, I would greatly appreciate that info as well.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I was very disappointed to find an annoying box appear near the side bar that hovers over the page with no way to remove it.
More traffic for your blog with the follow button
2. I don’t like it. How can I turn it off on my blog? Easy. Go to your Dashboard. Click on Settings, then Reading, then Email.
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The fact that this has been happening for several months and this is the first time I have noticed, makes think that WordPress is not getting the feedback they need on this.
Email Newsletter
“Missing out on the latest WordPress.com developments? Click below to receive future announcements direct to your inbox – it’s free, it’s easy, and we won’t send you any junk.” http://en.blog.wordpress.com/
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This is a very negative development. I am following a few on behalf of others. They simply x’d out of wordpress thinking that there was no way to stop the jumpy popup on the bottom of the screen, and they won’t be back.
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