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My Ad Buttons wordpress plugin just got a little better again. After a few updates that didn’t really add any new functionality, I’ve just released version 1.4.0 which now allows scheduling of the individual ads.

Ad scheduling is simply done by specifying a start and end date for the ad. When filled in, the ad will show in your admin panel with the appropriate status: scheduled, active or expired. I’ve received quite a few questions about ad scheduling, so there you have it!

To support scheduling, a few new fields had to be added to the database. They should be automatically added when you run the automatic upgrade process. If you want to update the plugin manually, make sure you disable and then re-enable it in your wordpress admin panel to make sure the database is updated for your installation.
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I like checking out other blogs for inspiration. Sometimes this brings new ideas that I can use on one of my own blogs, but I also see blogs that show you what not to do. I’m not going to point the finger at anyone, but there are some blogs that are just too horrible to visit. Here are a few things for you to think about when figuring out the layout of your blog (or any other website for that matter)

Readability
People come to your blog or website to read your content, so make sure they can read it. Some people like to use pretty background pictures that continue behind the text and make the content very hard to read. Use an even background color for your content and make sure your text has sufficient contrast to the background. Font size is another important factor to think about. Too big or too small makes text hard to read.

Video and audio
Video can be a great medium to communicate a message to your website visitors, but it shouldn’t start playing as soon as your page opens. Please let me decide if, and when, I want to press play. The same goes for audio, I don’t need to hear your favorite song playing when I visit your site.

Ads
Some people have more ads than content on their website. Ads should be subtly integrated into your website, if at all. All too often I see sites trying to sell their own product or service and show ads of their competitors. Do you want to sell your own stuff or make your visitors aware of the competition?

Plugins
There are a great number of useful plugins that you can add to your blog. Before adding them all, think about which ones would be useful to your visitors. I don’t care what the weather forecast at you place is. I’m also not likely to be interested in the current moon phase when reading a blog about cars. When adding widgets to your sidebar, try to use static ones. Flashy, animated gifs distract your visitors from the content.

If you don’t agree with the above advice, you are not alone. There’s a huge website with people just like you, it’s called MySpace.

I want to start by saying thanks to all the nice people that have emailed me with feedback on the Ad Buttons plugin! Meanwhile the plugin has been downloaded over a thousand times and seems to be getting a nice field test.

Thanks to your feedback, I could iron out a few major bugs and it gave me inspiration to continue development on the plugin. Some helpful features have been added since the initial release and today I have uploaded another update. Earlier today AdSense ads have been added to the plugin, after which I got quite a few questions regarding layout control.

After quite a few hours on the programming chair I’ve managed to integrate a really easy to use way of giving you control over the ad layout. You can now easily change the appearance of your ads. This latest update has just been uploaded to the wordpress.org plugin repository and should be available for download shortly is available for download. If you already have the Ad Buttons plugin installed, you should be able to auto-update from within your wordpress admin panel.

I’ve just uploaded a new Ad Buttons release to the wordpress.org plugin repository. This time it’s more than only some bug fixes. I have incorporated Google AdSense ads into the Ad Buttons plugin. You can now select to show an AdSense 125 x 125 ad unit right alongside the ad buttons. Clicks and views for the AdSense ads are not tracked by the Ad Buttons plugin, but you can create a custom channel in your AdSense account to see the detailed stats of the AdSense button.

AdSense ad colors can be changed right on the Ad Buttons settings page and an ad preview is shown for your convenience.

All the nice feedback I am getting on my Ad Buttons plugin is quite motivating! I decided to put a few hours into it, to get things cleaned up a bit. Things have been moved around a bit in the menu and should be easier to find now. I have also added a new option to the settings page: target attribute. This gives you control over how links should open. You can choose to open links for the ads in a new tab or window, in the current one or not use the target attribute at all, so your page can validate for a strict DOCTYPE

I’ve been getting quite a few mails from people that had problems getting the plugin to work. Turns out that the installation procedure, which creates the necessary database table didn’t run correctly when activating the plugin. I never noticed the problem on my own blogs because I already had the table created with an earlier version of the plugin.

The problems started when I uploaded the plugin to the wordpress.org plugins repository. My earlier versions where running in a folder named ‘ad buttons’ which contains a space in the name. The name of the folder has been changed by wordpress to ‘ad-buttons’ (with a hyphen) The code has been fixed to work correctly now and has been tested on a fresh install of wordpress. If you had trouble activating the plugin, just upgrade to the latest version, deactivate and then activate it again.

If you are running into any other problems with the plugin, don’t hesitate to contact me!

I have just uploaded another update to the Ad Buttons plugin. No major changes, just a bugfix. People who where using the plugin might have noticed that the widget title couldn’t be changed. This has now been fixed and you can enter your own custom title in de widget screen. If you don’t specify anything, it defaults to ‘Sponsored Links’

The plugin has been downloaded 550 times since I uploaded it to the wordpress.org plugin repository. I have gotten quite a few nice feedbacks and some very interesting suggestions for improvement. Keep your questions and suggestions coming!

If want to give the plugin a try, head on over to the WP Ad Plugin page. Anyone who is already using the plugin can automatically upgrade to the latest version from the wordpress admin panel. I am working on a new release with some added features, so stay tuned!