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Even Easier Automatic Insertion of Advertisements in WordPress Posts
Even Easier Automatic Insertion of Advertisements in WordPress Posts
The Situation
You read through the primer on campaigns, allocations and rules, and have set up an ad campaign for two affiliate ad rotation or perhaps an ad campaign to share ad slots with a guest blogger. You’d like to take advantage of automatic placement of advertisements but after reading the tutorial you still aren’t comfortable editing the template files for your WordPress theme.
As of version 1.0.8 of the Advertwhirl Advertising Manager and Ad Rotator for WordPress you can automatically place ads in posts and pages with nothing more but clicking a check-box.
The Nuts and Bolts
While modification of a themes template file as in the automatic placement of advertisements tutorial can give you very precise control over ads placement, for 99% of sites that level of control is unnecessary. And, Advertwhirl’s built-in advertisement placing is a simple and quick way to get your ads into your blog posts.
Setup your Campaign and Ad Sources
The first step is getting your advertising campaign ready to roll. ”The Situation” assumes you already have this done. But just in case you don’t now is the time to do it. Here are a few tutorials to get you started. The first two will walk you through setting up an ad campaign for two of the more popular uses for Advertwhirl. The last has the gory details of what each bit means, that the first two tutorials don’t get into.
- Sharing Ad Slots With a Guest Blogger
- Simple Two Affiliate Ad Rotation
- Campaigns, Allocations and Rules oh my!
Tell Advertwhirl Where to Place the Ads
Alright, you got the campaign and ad sources configured and are ready to place your ads. Automatic placement of ads is now so trivial in the Advertwhirl Advertising Manager and Ad Rotator for WordPress that I almost feel bad writing about it. As of version 1.0.8 you can find controls for automatic ad placement of an ad campaign right in the edit window for that ad campaign.
Locations for Ad Placement
There are three sets of controls for automatics ad placement. They control the placement of ads on your home page, other pages and in posts.
The controls for “Home Page” effect ad placement on the front page of your blog when Settings->Reading->Front page displays is set to “Your latest posts”, or when it is set to “A static page” and the front page is the current page being displayed.
The controls for “Pages” effect ad placement on static pages. If Settings->Reading->Front page displays is set to “A static page”. The static page used as the front page will instead use the settings for the “Home Page”.
The controls for “Posts” effect ad placement in posts.
The Controls
Each grouping of controls is the same with the only difference being which page type they effect. The controls for each group are broken up into 2 rows. The first row of controls effect placement of ads in headers, footers, before content and after content. The second row of controls all effect placement of ads in the content of a page or post.
Place in header – places an ad in the header of a page or post. In technical terms that is between the <head> and </head> tags of the pages html. The exact location in the pages header isn’t configurable and is dependent on your theme and what plugins you have installed. This is only appropriate for javascript based ads such as you get from adsense. Where the ad shows up in the actual page depends on the javascript itself, for adsense it will be at the very top of the page.
Place in footer – places an ad in the footer of the page. In technical terms this is immediately before the </body> tag of the page. Like “Place in header” the exact placement is dependent on your theme and what plugins are installed. This will place the ad at the bottom of the page and is suitable for html and javascript ads.
Place before content – places an advertisement right before the content of a page. The content of a page is everything you enter in the WordPress editor when you edit a page or post through the admin interface. In technical terms this is immediately before “the_content();” in your themes template files. Other plugins that filter “the_content” can effect the exact order that the ad gets placed. This is suitable for all types of ads, html and javascript.
Place after content – places an advertisement right after the content of a page and works exactly like “Place before content” just it places the add after “the_content()” not before. This is suitable for all types of ads, html and javascript.
Place in content – places advertisements(1 or more) in the middle of a pages content, this is the exact same ad placement as the “Advanced Method” in the automatic placement of advertisements tutorial only it doesn’t require any editing of your theme template files.
The first drop-down lets you limit how many ads will be displayed in any one post so you don’t overwhelm your readers. Ads lose potency the further down the post they appear and t0o many can annoy readers. The default is to show a maximum of 2 ads. If you don’t want to limit the number of ads that will be shown you can set it to “no limit”
The second drop-down controls how many paragraphs of content are between each ad. The default is to show one ad every 4 paragraphs.
The third drop-down controls which paragraph the first ad is placed before.
The fourth and last drop-down controls where in the content the ad is placed.
On the left – the ads are aligned to the left of the page and the page content wraps around it on the right.
On the right – the ads are aligned to the right of the page and the page content wraps around it on the left.
Alternating on the left then on the right – the ads are alternate which side they are aligned to. First on the left then on the right. The page content wraps around and between the alternating ads.
Alternating on the right then on the left – the same as on “Alternating on the left then the right” but it starts on the right. The page content wraps around and between the alternating ads.
Download Advertwhirl
References
Mobile Sentience Advertwhirl page
Advertwhirl in the WordPress gallery
Tutorial with instructions for installing Advertwhirl Plugin
Original advanced method code
