A Twitter direct message received this morning from Scott Gillard of Minter Ellison in Australia read:

Love the new iPad version of your blog. Nice job.

I did not know that there was a new iPad version of my blog and hastened to look. There is no new App (not, at least, one commissioned by me), but opening the blog in iPad’s browser gave me not my usual header but a full screen version of the photograph from my penultimate post with the words “e-Disclosure Information Project” superimposed on it.

There were a number of things wrong with this from my perspective. For a start, the photograph was of Indiana Jones and a cobra which, although relevant to the post in which I had placed it, is not necessarily the introduction I want to the blog generally (I don’t mind being mistaken for Harrison Ford, but would not want to be confused with the cobra). It did not help that the photograph had been expanded to fill the screen and was distorted. Swiping that aside, I found an exciting new layout for the headers for the last few posts. I should make it clear that “exciting” is not a compliment in this context – fine, perhaps, if your blog is of the “what I had for breakfast” variety, but not for a serious business site.

A little research suggests that WordPress is very proud of this new development, but also led me to the setting which allows me to switch this “feature” off. I resent the default being changed to give my users something I did not know they were getting.

I only discovered recently that WordPress sticks advertisements at the bottom of my blog. You do not see these in Admin mode, so I never got the full user experience. I spotted it on a page reporting Lord Justice Jackson’s less-than-complimentary views (which I share) on the type of solicitor who incites people to begin no-fee, risk-free litigation. The WordPress word-association technology worked perfectly, for there at the bottom was an advertisement for just such a firm. I think I can pay my way out of this embellishment and will do so when I have time for the mechanics, as distinct from the contents, of the blog.

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