Wordpress-seo: Remove animated advertising banners

[adriantoll]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

The Black Friday animated banner is really intrusive. I tend to use as few plugins as possible, but I still use around 20 - 25 per site. If they all decided to behave like this my dashboard would be a mess. The fact that it's animated and completely out of keeping with WordPress styles just makes it worse.

Describe the solution you'd like

Ideally never include any advertising banners at all, but if you're convinced that you absolutely have to, don't make them animated, and make the design more in keeping with WordPress styles.

why you think the feature request is something we should consider for the Yoast SEO plugins?

I bet I'm not the only on that finds this kind of thing intrusive, irritating, and if anything less likely to make me think about the paid plugin.

[tsharms]

Totally agree with this. If you even consider to append adverts like this (something I really don't agree with), please only show them to users with admin roles...

[adriantoll]

Hi @jdevalk - Perhaps I could have used clearer language, but I wasn't suggesting that you remove this specific banner now. My comment was more to give feedback about how intrusive it felt - so happy for this issue to be considered in that light.

[jonbp]

As one user has mentioned on Twitter, you're violating the Plugin Guidelines for plugins submitted to the Plugin Directory.

This plugin is used on professional websites, I don't mind clients seeing a little bit of advertising for premium but this is vehemently unacceptable.

Looking at the source for this, it would appear that this message would persist until the 3rd of December. Well past Black Friday.

You've also marked this as closed without providing a solution, so here's one for people who don't want their clients seeing this blatant spam. You can add this code to the functions.php file of your theme to remove the banner.

// Remove Yoast Black Friday 2019 banner
add_action('admin_head', 'remove_yoast_bf_2019');
function remove_yoast_bf_2019() {
  echo '<style>
    .yoast_bf_sale {
      display: none !important;
    } 
  </style>';
}

We're also strongly considering alternatives to Yoast, we have been for a while and this is the final nail in the coffin I'm afraid.

[nicomollet]

So you need feedback on this?
It's a big NO, it's not a free to play mobile game here.

Put your ads on your plugin screens, not in my dashboard or other screens, thank you.

[JulioPotier]

For anyone here who wants to fix the guidelines, add your +1, thank you.
https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-plugin-guidelines/pull/69

[cameronjonesweb]

I think the feedback is clear. This was a terrible idea

[boomtemp123]

What is really annoying about this is it appears for all user roles too not just the administrators who would install it.

[xsonic]

@jdevalk your response to people complaining about this (completly unacceptable) ad is that you post another ad on github? Way to go!

[seb86]

Unable to dismiss the banner. The X still takes me to the sales page. 😡

[nielsvr]

I really don't understand this... not by Yoast not by any other plugin.

It's _my_ admin page, it's my piece of real-estate. If you must, do it on your own pages. I'm not forcing my graffiti on your building either.

[Mamky-Ebal]

we're not going to remove it _now_

You keep strange position

You tried to force sales but peoples are uninstalling your product right now and go to competitors
You could try to keep face. But send negative reply on correct feedback instead

What is wrong with you?

It that kind of "premium" support you talking about in adv?

[sn404]

This is a spam exactly… I condemn such advertise.

[peter-fb]

It's spam, plain and simple and such behavior should not be tolerated.

[seb86]

I would patch this quickly to recover your loss of users and potential customers @jdevalk I like your plugin but this is just not acceptable.

[razorfrog]

I've been looking at other plugin options for a while now, but this is the final straw. Time to switch 150 sites to Rank Math.

[BusinessBloomer]

Also, the fact that once you get closer to the "x" to close the banner you're redirected to your sales page it's quite evil.

I'm actually pretty surprised. Seems so ridiculous that I honestly can't believe this.

[jdevalk]

We've released 12.6.2 which removed the banner entirely.

[jdevalk]

Hey, I removed my earlier comments because we were clearly in the wrong, hence our earlier action to release 12.6.2. We do appreciate the feedback given here.

You may, or may not, have seen this:

https://twitter.com/MariekeRakt/status/1200077958700044290?s=20

If you're wondering about other deleted comments: we've deleted a few comments from people who we thought were outright offensive or purely here to promote competitors.