Many of us have a sense of loyalty and devotion to WordPress. I’ve had several WordPress blogs since migrating from TypePad in 2013. But something may be afoot that will put our loyalty to the test.
I don’t know if there is a conspiracy theory going around or if it’s a bad April Fool’s Day joke. But rumor has it that WordPress will be combining the Personal, Premium, Business, and eCommerce plans into one “Pro” plan and will only be offering either a scaled-back free plan or a $180/year Pro plan. This seems to be a pretty credible story, but I have personally opened a support ticked with WordPress to try to get a confirmation if this is true.
If this is true, then, if you’re currently on a paid plan (I’m in the Personal plan), when it expires, you will be reverted back to the free plan or will have to shell out $180 a year to use the Pro plan. And if it’s true, it’s just another demonstration point that WordPress is abandoning its base of casual, hobby bloggers in order to pursue professional e-commerce blogs.
If these changes are confirmed, we need to all reach out to the Happiness Engineers to express our anger at this latest affront. We need to flood the message boards with our outrage at being cast aside by the blog hosting site to which been loyal. We need to let our yowls of indignation energize us, like we did a few years back when we learned that a site called Tygpress was stealing our intellectual property.
Our efforts worked then, and maybe if we make enough noise, WordPress might actually hear us.
Written for these daily prompts: Word of the Day Challenge (devotion), The Daily Spur (conspiracy), Your Daily Word Prompt (express), My Vivid Blog (message boards), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt yowls), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (energize).
This, That, and the Other 
Good idea. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to grab a blogger blog with your desired name, just in case…
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If it IS true — and it certainly has a ring of truth to it — that will make my departure easier. I think I might be too old to start over. There ARE other sites. I just don’t know if I have the energy to do this again — and I’m not entirely sure that I want to do it again. I’ve been doing this and other things like it for longer than any job I held — ever. $180 is a lot of money especially because I won’t get anything I need or want. Basically, it’s an 80% price rise for the same stuff. I already pay for additional space for photographs. We’ll see. Pardon me if I don’t jump on the bandwagon, though. I’ve been through a lotta shit and I’m exhausted. Aren’t you?
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I am. And IF this is true, I might just quite blogging and focus my attention on writing The Great American Novel! 😉
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But you’ll still send me a word prompt everyday, right?
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Sure, Judy. Just for you! 😉
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Phew…Of course there will be no readers because everyone will have left, but…..
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😠
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You need a blog to be the home base of your great American novel.
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Actually, I should mention that there have been a lot of “little” price rises already. We no longer get our URL address as part of the package. It’s a separate payment. So actually, it already costs me $120 a year. So it’s only a 50% price rise. Kind of like gasoline or oil for the furnace.
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If true they assume that most of us will stay for the community, rather than uproot ourselves from the people whose efforts we appreciate. Actually if their claims to powering such a large amount of the internet are true they could afford to keep blogger prices low just for the PR benefit.
It would be interesting to explore this a bit more deeply and see if – for instance – a vulture capitalist group has taken a recent equity interest in the company, and is doing what the vultures love to do, dismembering viable entities in the name of profit.
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I hope we can collectively get to the bottom of this.
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In Australian money that would be over $200 a year I believe. A lot for me to find in one hit. I hope we can get to the bottom of it but the emails I’ve been receiving lately from WP sound more and more like they are aimed at business owners than hobby bloggers. There has also been talk of new editing features which we need like a hole in the head. I hope we can find out what is going on.
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It never seems to stop, does it?
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2 things:
1. VERY nice and seamless use of the prompts.
2. https://wordpress.com/support/plan-features/
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Yep, it sure seems legit to me. Damn!
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I truly think it is…unless someone hacked them and created a fake page
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I certainly hope this does not happen but it prompted me to check when my two plans expire. One was due this week so I paid it right away hoping that it will give me another year to decide what to do if this plan goes ahead. I would need that long to save all my photos elsewhere I think.
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Hopefully you got in under the wire.
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Well, I have my receipt. I would be very angry if they changed it now.
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I hope it’s not true.
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I currently use the free plan… can’t afford the fee now and if it would really go up that is ridiculous. I will wait to see what happens next. I would so hate to lose the community here.
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I hope you do find out if this is true, as this year has already thrown us curveballs. One more might just be the prompt I need to find pastures new (and better!)
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I was just thinking of getting the personal, ugh! I am glad I didn’t now. Thanks for the information. It’s helpful, Fandango. I also agree with Paula.
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I have never paid a penny to WordPress, and am amazed that I am able to do so much for free. I never saw any advantage in signing up to a plan.
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I post a lot of photos/images and my biggest worry is that, if they cut back the size if the media storage, I either won’t be able to add more or they’ll delete the images from my old posts. Also, they’re allegedly putting a limit on the number of monthly visitors allowed for the free plan.
I pay around $48 a year for the Personal plan, which is ad-free, gives me 6GB of media storage, and perfectly suits my needs as a casual blogger. But it seems that WordPress has lost interest in those of us who are not business or e-commerce bloggers, so they are scaling back on what’s available to us, while eliminating any upgrades options other than a $180/yr Pro plan geared toward, as its name implies, professional bloggers.
And that pisses me off!
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I found that so long as I convert any photographs to a png file, I am nowhere near reaching the media storage limits. You have blogged for longer than I have, but the huge difference in the memory that an original photo uses and a png file seems to make all the difference. I only twigged that was the case when I realized that the Bake Off seemed to munch up massive amounts of storage. So I had to go back and convert all the photos everyone had sent in to pngs….and that freed up more memory.
I noticed that it said something like 10,000 visitors for a free plan, but I don’t think I get anywhere near that, especially as most bloggers read my posts in the WP Reader and don’t visit my site at all….and I do the same. The vast majority of my reading is in the WP Reader. I only visit sites on Sundays when I click the pingbacks listed in Jim’s SLS post.
I wonder whether the changes they make will make a big difference?
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It will be the end of me. WP is a hobby.
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For me, too, Deb.
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I think we need to message Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) and Automattic ( @automattic) on Twitter. This is a $3 Billion dollar company. They own Tumblr now, too. Maybe include their board members? https://automattic.com/board/
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An excellent idea, Maggie, except I am not on Twitter.
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Easy to get there. Might be worth the effort. I am doing more research. Expect a post from me about my findings soon.
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If this is true, then it’s another story of a company getting big and then forgetting the “little people” who made it what it is.
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It means R2 629,59 in South Africa! Far too much for this hobby!
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I just started a new blog (but have had others since 2012 on WP) and was about to start a personal plan for it yesterday… hanging on for a bit now, to see how they deal with the hobby blogger backlash on this. It is waaaay to much of a jump when you only want about 10-15% of the functionality that Pro offers but ‘free’ is not enough!
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I agree. I’m hoping they’ll offer something in between free and Pro.
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I’m not staying if I cannot renew my personal plan. This change also means, there will be no new personal bloggers on WordPress moving forward. No refreshing the community.
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I’m hoping the powers that be at WordPress will reconsider this bad decision.
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We will all be yelling at deaf mutes who know what is going on BUT lack the resolve to help us. Nice try though.
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Yeah, they seem to not really care much about what their casual customers want or need.
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