I’ve finally decided to remove the ugly WordAds from this site, and upgraded to AdFree. I asked WordPress.com support about the possibility of spending the $30 I had accrued with WordAds on AdFree, knowing that they insist on paying out only when a user has accrued $100 of funds but reasoning that since I was spending money with them they might be able to make an exception. Nope:

Our finance department isn’t able to do it. One challenge is that our ad partners like Google Adsense don’t pay until a site has earned over $100. So if our finance department paid out accounts less than $100 we’d always be losing money on those.

I did appreciate the honest and frank answer though.

Custom Design

I’m also taking advantage of the Custom Design package, and I’m quite impressed with what they offer here. The colour picker and patterned background options are really smartly implemented. A user with no knowledge of CSS could easily make their blog look unique, without getting all MySpace.

There are some nice fonts available, but disappointingly not Open Sans, which I was hoping to switch over to. Now I have CSS access, I’ve taken the opportunity to make my h2’s a bit bigger (something that always bugged me about the Twenty Eleven theme) and to remove the grey bar from the top of the site header. I’m sure I’ll fiddle with more as time goes on.