Hidden advertisements
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- Zorro
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 114
- Thanks: 0
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Andy,
in reference to
forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,61518.0
and
www.open-sef.org/forum/joomla-seo/rocket...den-advertising.html
I must say I'm a little irritated. What's your stance on this?
Kind regards,
Zorro
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- damo
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 2142
- Thanks: 0
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it's hardly hidden advertising as if you view source it's clear as day. if anyone wants to remove it though follow these instructions:
in the template index.php file look for this:
</head> <body
just below this you'll see:
<div class="hide">Another great <b>RocketTheme Joomla Template</b> brought to you by the <a href="http://www.rockettheme.com" title="RocketTheme">RocketTheme Joomla Template Club</a>.</div>
removing the above code will remove the link back to rockettheme.com
i should also say that with every rocketheme tempalte you download there is a link at the very bottom of the tempalte when published. you can normaly change this in the index.php file to whatever you want or just remove it. i personally change it to 'deveoped by and a link back to my site' - Last Edit: 17 years 11 months ago by damo.
- www.c3p0.se - sweden
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
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I'll just copy my post here:
It's one line, please remove it if you don't like it. There's nothing to stop you doing so. These are commercial templates, so I have every right to advertise in them. If some component you bought had text in it that contained the name of the company you bought it from would you consider that unethical? I just made the text hidden so it would not disturb the layout of my member's sites.
As a member of the OpenSEF team you should know that just having text on your page that mentions something that is not the core of your message will not affect your SEO unless you basically have no other text there. In that case your SEO would not be good in the first place. Your inflammatory topic is clearly meant to incite people and cause more conflict.
That's my stance. A request please, if anyone has a beef with my templates or my service, please contact me privately first, if that does not satisfy you, post on this forum. Ken just has a new target in his sights this week and it happens to be RocketTheme, posts such as the one he made could be considered to be slander as they are technical and factually inaccurate.
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- Stew Thompson
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 573
- Thanks: 0
- School Teacher
- Agree with damo, I have seen this in the templates as I have been "editing" them and chosen NOT to mess with it. As I did not create the template, I only took a few minuts to change the colors, but I never take credit for creating it. I paid for the template, but the least I could do is give "hidden" credit to the one who created it. If you wish not to (and you can if you like), just take out the line.
- www.bentonhighschool.com/
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- Zorro
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 114
- Thanks: 0
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Not trying to create a stirrup, it was already out in the open. Also, I disagree with Ken's reasoning about duplicate content (the one sentence and link shouldn't hurt that much) but what I'm concerned about is the violation of Google's quality guidelines that say not to use hidden text or links.
I do support RocketTheme, in various ways. Personally I also know how to edit templates. But your clients might be penalized by Google without knowing why.
Kind regards,
Zorro
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
- I was unaware of this requirement of googles, an in the future i will remove the link part, but i don't see a problem with removing the text part itself.
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- Vishal Pahuja
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 148
- Thanks: 0
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I have been thinking about this as I discovered this myself the other day...I felt that I should have been told that "there is some hidden text in there and if you want you can delete it"...So the key is letting your customers know that its there...I would have had no problem if I was told about it...
But not a big deal for me personally as I love the templated produced by Andy, so I will give him that benefit.
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- Max Hyatt
- Newbie
- Posts: 8
- Thanks: 0
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If it can be proved that this isn't hurting my SEO on my pages, then I only wish it was @ the bottom of the page. I'll need to know that this isn't hurting my SEO.
Why did you feel it was unnecessary to inform your customers about this? I would of loved to of known about this before purchasing. While I am completely satisfied w/ the quality of the templates offered, I disagree with the way this was handled. Theres no such thing as "hardly" hidden, its blatantly hidden.
While the manner Ken brought this topic about in the Joomla forums was direct and a bit harsh, its still something that needs to be discussed.
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You are right, one can remove the code in question, but you forget to mention code like this exists!!!!
The fact is, majority of your customers are people who aren't skilled in HTML/PHP/... and they don't check the source code.
So your excuse "the code is there to see and everyone can remove it" isn't worth anything. What you did is just plain bullshit.
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
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I really didn't realize this could have any effect on SEO. I would never of done it if I thought it would. I'm going to remove the links from these two templates in question, and will not be putting any links back there in the future.
That said, Ken should of definitely brought this up to me in private. The public 'bashing' is not appreciated especially considering the amount of work I put into Joomla! as a core developer, the constant innuendo about being a 'unethical' and 'sleazy' really ask why I even bother.
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