Ad Buttons version 2.0
Written by Nico on September 27, 2009 – 5:53 am -
Version 2.0 of the Ad Buttons plugin has been released. Now, the plugin itself hasn’t changed much, but an exciting new feature has been added: Ad Buttons Ad Network Ads. The Ad Buttons Ad Network has been created for the plugin and allows you to show 3rd party ads on your blog. So, if you don’t know what ads to add to your site, let adbuttons.net handle it for you. The credits you earn by showing ads on your site can be used to finance your own ad campaign on the network.
Right now, adbuttons.net is still very limited, but functioning. I like to give people access to the system as early as possible, so I can extend the software based on feedback from the users. I’ve done the same with the Ad Buttons plugin and, based on your feedback, this seems to be a model that the users like.
Joining the Ad Buttons Ad Network is not mandatory, you can still use the plugin to manage your own ad inventory for your blog.
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Tags: adbuttons.net, ads, plugin, traffic generation, WP Ad Buttons plugin
Posted in WP Ad Buttons plugin, adbuttons.net, blogging tools, make money, plugins, traffic | 31 Comments »
September 27th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I downloaded ad buttons version 2.0
Uploaded to my plugins directory.
Activated the plugins through admin dashboard.
Added affiliate link and image link and set the remaining parameters.
Saved Changes.
PROBLEM
I can see the ads in the admin panel but they are not showing up on the site.
I’m sure I’m just overlooking something minor, it looks like you’ve done a good job…
Any suggestions? Common Problems?
September 27th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Mark, sounds like you didn’t add the widget. On your wordpress admin panel under ‘Apperance’ -> ‘Widgets’ you’ll have to add the Ad Buttons widget to your sidebar. Without it the plugin won’t know where to show your ads.
September 27th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
hello,
great plugin.
I was wondering if you plan to release a version of this plugin that applies to ads placed in other parts of a blog(such as between posts).
Thank you
September 28th, 2009 at 12:19 am
That could very well be something to be added in a future release of the plugin.
September 29th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Is there a way to have multiple ad buttons, or a way to define a region other than in the Sidebar? I’m working on a site with two sidebars and need ad buttons in both.
September 29th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
At the moment the plugin does not support multiple instances of the widget, but since I’ve gotten more than a couple of requests for this functionality it will probably be added in one of the future releases.
To use the plugin outside of the sidebar you could add a call to the ad_buttons(); function to your template files. This would also enable you to add more than one ad block to your site
October 10th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Great plugin!
Was looking for something like this, but need to be able to add more than one column. My sidebar will take 2×125 side by side.
Anyway to do this with current version?
Thanks much.
October 10th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Absolutely Terry, on the Ad Buttons->Settings page you’ll find the “Ad block width” setting. Set to the appropriate size it will make your ads show side by side.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
i want to add two ads on different sidebar. one for small ads and other is for big one. how can i do this…?
November 7th, 2009 at 3:30 am
that is currently not possible with this plugin. You can only have a single sidebar widget. A second one could be added by add ing a call to the ad_buttons function into your theme files, but there is no way of selecting only specific ads to show in each
November 12th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Hi there
This is a great plugin and I had been looking for something like this since I downloaded the new version of my theme and discovered it didn’t support ads!
However, I can’t get the buttons to display side by side, even although I’ve shrunk the padding and ad block width as much as possible. Any clues?
Also, it would be absolutely amazing if this plugin supported javascript code, which loads of ad networks provide, and also flash files, as I’ve got a few flash banners I’d love to use.
Any help would be really appreciated!
November 13th, 2009 at 1:47 am
Liam, looks like the sidebar in the wordpress theme you are using is too narrow to fit in two ads side by side. You should be able to change this by going into ‘Appearance->Editor’ in your wordpress admin panel, find the stylesheet for your theme and change the sidebar width to a higher value
November 13th, 2009 at 3:37 am
Thanks for that Nico, I’ll give it a try.
Any word on javasrcipt and .swf compatability?
thanks
November 13th, 2009 at 3:50 am
I’ve been looking into .swf a while ago. Tracking the clicks would be a real problem here, since the .swf would have to process the click. The same goes for javascript ads, they are very different from simple image links and would be hard to integrate with this plugin. I could add custom ad placeholders which could be filled with the javascript or .swf code, but they would not show up in the stats (like the AdSense ads)
November 13th, 2009 at 6:40 am
Tracking them would be an issue for sure, but if tracking were not too important for someone, it would be really handy. Nearly all the ad networks I’m a member of provide their ad code in java and it makes it very difficult to implement unless the ads are placed in the posts themselves, which I’m not to keen on.
Thanks for all your help and your prompt replies and in the meantime, I’ll keep a look out for any .swf and java updates!
All the best!
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Hi Nico
I managed to sort out the sidebar width, sort of. Still can’t get the padding between the ad blocks the way I want them and extending the sidebar width past around 273px makes the rest of the sidebar content over stretched. Not sure how to fix that as I suspect there’s something else within the CSS affecting it.
Anyway, I wanted to ask if there was a way I could change, or get rid of the “sponsored Links” test at the top, above the ads. I’ve searched through all of the code for the style sheets and Ad Buttons but still can’t find it.
Any clues?
Much obliged!
November 24th, 2009 at 1:10 am
Liam,
I have some issues with the ad buttons layout on one of my own blogs as well. I will look into changing the layout options so you will get a few more parameters to control it.
The ’sponsored links’ is the default heading for the widget. To change it go into Appearance->widgets and change it into whatever you want. If you don’t want the widget to have a heading at all, you can put a single space character into the title field.
November 24th, 2009 at 3:01 am
Excellent. Once again, thank you so much for your quick and helpful replies!
Liam
November 25th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Excellent plugin, amazing idea, great
My only problem is that i am showing different ads for different categories. For example:
if this post is category ‘a’
show ad ‘a’
if this post is category ‘b’
show ad ‘b’
And i can’t think how to maintain that while integrating this plugin. I either need a way to do:
if this post is category ‘c’
ad_buttons(c)
or just
ad_buttons()
And have it automatically detect the category based on settings. But the first option would be awesome enough. I guess basically i just need multiple instances of the ad_button, as was mentioned previously in the comments but for another purpose.
Keep up the great work, really awesome.
Cheers!!
November 27th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
also a way of showing different ads to different locations is essential in my mind
November 28th, 2009 at 2:17 am
you can already show ads only to people from selected countries with the geo-targeting functionality.
November 28th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Right, I was thinking about it differently, my mistake. It’s the ability to display based on category as mentioned above that would be great.
Cheers!
November 29th, 2009 at 4:30 am
that is something that will be added to a future release
November 29th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Nico,
I am another person that is very interested in running multiple instances of your plug-in.
I would be very interested in making a donation if you could make this happen.
Thanks
December 6th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
I love the plugin. Google adsense is working great. But when I created an affiliate 125 ad this is what shows up on the site. How do I fix it. I am not a code person. Thanks
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December 7th, 2009 at 2:51 am
Darrell, line 98 reads the country codes from the ip2nation database. Looks like you have enabled geo-targeting without installing the ip2nation database. You can install the database from the Ad Buttons settings page (it takes a while, so be patient) or uncheck the ‘Enable geo targeting’ checkbox.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Hey! Is there any way you could add a custom size feature for the images? Or some flexibility. Perhaps in a range of 125px – 200px width and height? And would it be possible to flex the ad padding a little? so one can choose the vertical and horizontal padding separately.
Otherwise – great job on the plugin!
December 15th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
You can use different size images without a problem. The layout, however, would be unpredictable when mixing several different sizes. As long as you keep the size of all ads consistent, there shouldn’t be a problem.
Regarding the padding values: the layout options will be greatly improved very soon!
December 19th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Thank You very much! The custom image size just didn’t occur to me, but now I see so much more potential in this plugin!
Padding options are very welcome!
All the best!
January 5th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I know it’s a no brainer. But make sure you take the version number off the file when you add it to the plugins folder…otherwise the edit/activate links etc won’t work.
(Shhh I was tired)
January 5th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
You won’t have that problem when you install the plugin from within your wordpress admin panel instead of manually uploading the plugin folder