The new wp-plugins.org adds extra incentive for plugin developers to use SVN.
There are a number of detailed SVN guides available, as well as an entire online book. But for casual plugin developers wanting to get the benefits of using the system most of the information is over detailed or not specific to the wp-plugins.org system. This tutorial covers adding and updating plugins through the wp-plugins.org SVN.
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While getting started using the new wp-plugins.org SVN I was looking for a quick way to download the contents of an SVN to local disk. This can be useful when doing research on methods employed by other plugins or for getting a local development copy where SVN access is unavailable. Under KDE you can normally access any remote location using the standard URL format. For example, an SVN (using the svn://) protocol would normally be accessed using the URL style svn://svn.wp-plugins.org.
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Adsense Manager is “Yet Another Adsense Plugin” which helps you manage the Adsense ads on your WordPress site. Unlike other Adsense plugins however, Adsense Manager generates the code automatically for you. Now you can create, edit and position Ads all from within your WordPress admin panel. On WordPress Widgets enabled blogs you can also drag the Ads around your Sidebar to position them as you like.
The plugin is currently fairly young (compared to some of my plugins) but it should be fairly stable and bug free. Feedback and suggestions for improvements are always welcome.
The instructions below will guide you through the first steps of configuring Adsense Manager 2.x.
Before you can do anything else, you will first need to set yourself up with an AdSense account and install the AdSense Manager plugin.
Take the downloaded file, unzip and copy the adsense-manager directory into your WordPress plugins directory at /wp-content/plugins/. Access your WordPress dashboard, and go to Plugins. Click ‘Activate’ to install and start AdSense Manager: you’re now ready to set up your account and ad details.
Once installed the first step is to set up your Adsense ID to enable Ads from your account to be displayed. To do this, go to Options » Adsense Manager.
Enter your Google Adsense Account ID in the box provided. You can get this from your Google Account Settings.
Below here are the settings for Be Nice! a method for supporting development by donating a % of your Ad space and Alternate Ads to raise funds for AdSense Manager. This new method is completely compatible with Google’s T&Cs and all ads are hand-selected and guaranteed to be family friendly.
Thanks for your ongoing support: the income generated in this way allows me to dedicate time that would be otherwise spent on a bar job.
Just enter a % value indicating the proportion of ads you wish to use to support us. If you enter 0 only your own ads will be shown (no hard feelings) but please consider donating instead.
You’re now ready to add new Ads to your site. There are a number of different types of Google Ad units available (Advert, Link Unit, Referral) and a number of ways to generate Ads (AdSense Manager Unit, Direct Code, Code Converter). The first is the simplest and should suit most small blogging sites.
To Add a new Ad Unit simply scroll down the Manage Ads page to the Create New form.
First you need to enter a name for your Ad unit. Names are restricted to alphanumeric characters (i.e. a-zA-Z0-9) and the “-” character, however if you enter anything else in the Name field it will be converted automatically for you. Keep it short and simple.
Next you can enter a Channel ID from your Google account. Channels are an optional Google feature for tracking which Ads are generating most clicks. Unfortunately because of the way Google works you have to copy and paste your Channel ID from generated code on the Google website. See tips and tricks for a quick way to do this.
Product identifies which kind of Ad unit you are going to insert into your site. At this point you can choose between a standard Ad unit, Link unit or Referral. There is also the option of a Direct Code Ad. Each of these is covered below.
The final step for basic setup is to choose the format and dimensions of your Ad/Link unit. You can follow the link to see a list of available formats on the Google AdSense website.
Note that both of these options allow you to “Use Default” as the setting. See the default settings section for tips on how to use these. If you’re unsure whether it’s worth it: Defaults give you the power to switch the colour of all the Ads on your site in a single click.
Colour settings allow you to configure how adverts appear on your site. These are configured in the same was as on the Google AdSense website – simply enter the hex colour code (e.g. FFFFFF for white, FF0000 for bright red, etc.) into the box provided. You may want to check your theme’s CSS file and copy the colours direct from there.
Again, as with format settings, you can leave these blank and AdSense Manager will use any default settings you have configured.
Google AdSense Referral units are links or buttons that direct visitors to signup for a number of Google provided services, including Google software (and Firefox).
Unfortunately because of the way that Google Referral code is generated, it’s not possible to provide a list of options to build a Referral Unit.
Instead, once you have selected your Referral type (Text or Image) you need to then enter your CPA code. You can find this in your Google generated code: simply copy & paste it across into this box. If you are using an Image Referral (i.e. a button) you will also need to choose the correct dimensions at which the unit is to be shown.
I’ll continue to look into improving the interface used to generate Referral Ads. If you find it too much trouble to copy and paste the CPA code/etc. you can instead use the Code Converter feature to import whole sections of Google AdSense code in one go.
Direct Code Ads are useful if you either want to use online Google AdSense code generator, or if you are using an alternative Ad system (not Google) and want to use AdSense Manager to position your ads. To use, simply choose Direct Code Ad from the Product list and paste your code into the box provided.
However, for users of Google AdSense there is another powerful tool available. By checking the box underneath the code area you can have AdSense Manager convert your code into a managed ad unit – taking on your defaults, and being configurable through the Manage Ads interface.
This is a simple way to ad previously generated code to AdSense manager, as well as a good (simple) method for importing Referral Ads.
All types of advert have additional “Advanced” settings shown on the far right hand side.
Here you can choose which pages Inline Ads (those that you add to your posts using the <!–adsense–$gt; format) will appear on. Sometimes you may not want them to appear on your front page (to prevent showing too many Ads on one page) or your may want to hide them in archives. The default settings have them visible everywhere, but you can configure this if you wish.
If you want to control the positioning of your Ads more carefully you can add HTML markup into these boxes and this will be inserted before/after your AdSense code. For example, if you want to float your Ads left (and have the text wrap to the right) simply enter: <div style="float:left;"> into the HTML Before box, and </div> into the HTML After box.
Google allows you to specify an URL for alternative Ads to be shown when it cannot find anything relevant for the page you are displaying. If you want to specify one, simply enter it here. Alternatively you can specify a solid colour to display.
An additional feature of AdSense Manager is the ability to set up Ad defaults. These settings are used as the basis for all your adverts and provide a way to change multiple adverts at once. For example, you can set up your Ad colours as defaults and then change all your ads simultaneously if you update your theme.
To set up your Default Ad settings click on the “Edit” button on the top line of your Ad list. Scroll down to the Edit form and enter your values in the same way used for creating Ad units.
Once you’re finished click Save changes »
Once you have a few blocks listed, you can manage each block using the buttons provided on the right hand side of the Ad list. Details of each of these are given below:
Clicking + generates a copy of the selected Ad, which can then be reconfigured with any necessary changes. This is a good way of setting up a series of similar Ads for example. Note: You can also do some similar things with default settings.
Set Default sets which Ad unit will be used by default on your site. When adding AdSense Manager code to your site (or in your posts) you have the option to either specify an ad ID or to show the default. If you opt to show the default Ad on your site, you can then cycle through different Ad configurations by changing the selected Default Ad here.
If you have the Sidebar Widgets plugin installed, each Ad block will appear on the Widgets configuration page to be positioned as you like. Each Ad will appear with the name of the block in the title.
Drag onto your sidebar and position as you want.
Because of a limitation in Sidebar Modules you cannot configure them in the standard way for Widgets. Instead, from the Sidebar Modules panel, create a “AdSense Ad” module and tag it with the name of the Ad block which you want to display in that position.
For example, if you have an Ad block named #myfirstad, you can place it in your sidebar by creating an “AdSense Ad” module and naming it “#myfirstad”. Note that you can add anything else you want to the name of the Ad as long as the name is included, preceded by the # symbol. Once created you can configure the module as normal.
This support is currently experimental so please let me know how you get on & I’ll work to keep improving the interface where possible.
You can include Ads into your Posts and Pages using the code below where “name” is the name of the Ad block you have created.
<!--adsense#name-->
You can also display the default Ad in your posts and pages by omitting #name. Doing this allows you to switch these Ads simply by switching the Default Ad in Manager » Ads.
<!--adsense-->
Of course any Ads in posts update automatically when colours or layouts are modified.
You can include Ads in your non-Widget blog adding the code below in your WordPress templates. For example, a good place to add Ads might be sidebar.php.
<?php adsensem_ad('name'); ?>
Again you can display the Default ad by omitting the ‘name’ e.g.
<?php adsensem_ad(); ?>
If you want to avoid errors when you disable AdSense Manager you’ll want to add a function check to the above code. For example:
<?php
if(function_exists('adsensem_ad')){
adsensem_ad("name");
}
?>
<?php
if(function_exists('adsensem_ad')){
adsensem_ad();
}
?>
If you have any further questions on using Adsense Manager or have suggestions for modifications, simply leave a comment & I’ll get back to you.