Plugin:
Adsense Manager
Description:
Adsense Manager is a WordPress plugin to help manage Adsense ads on your blog.
Features:
Adsense Manager instead provides all the options within the plugin to change Ad colours, size, layout, etc. which can all be updated on the fly – and checked in situ on the blog.
Default settings can be applied across all Ads allowing for site-wide changes (e.g. colour scheme) with the click of a button.
Implementation:
Once activated all you need to do is enter your Google Adsense ID and create a single Ad block unit. Once done this is gone you can position Ads on your site using either WordPress Widgets (on enabled blogs), inline code in posts (standard edit box has an automated tool to insert ads) or by adding adsense calls to template code.
Future Plans:
– Extend the types of Google Adsense products supported to include referrals units, etc.
– Support for other Ad systems (e.g. from Yahoo!)
Review:
Before I begin with my review, let me clarify that this isn’t a plugin I have used and possibly may never use. And the reason is because I prefer handcoding everything into my template as much as possible and thus cut down on the number of plugins that I use.
However, for the sake of this series, I decided to give the plugin a test run and will say that I am impressed by what I saw.
To begin with, the installation of the plugin is extremely simple and you can manage your ads from within WP-Admin itself.
The first thing that impressed me while reviewing the plugin is the detailed instruction page the author has. Reading through it is all you need to figure out how to use the plugin.
You first need to setup a default ad unit. This default ad unit is used whenever you don’t specify an adunit by name. It also works as a fallback in case you don’t specify colors for the units you create. My suggestion is to use this default ad unit to define all the colors for your ad units. Only specify the colors of the new ad units when you need it.
You can create multiple adunits after you create the default unit. Each of these new units can be called seperately.
You can embed the adsense ads using several methods. For one, it comes with complete widget support so you can embed these in the sidebar of your theme if it supports sidebar widgets.
It also has support for K2 Modules, if you are running K2 or a theme based on it.
Ads can also be embeded in your post by entering simple comment tags in the body. This is a suggested method if you have a long post and would like to display an ad in the middle of the content.
The last method is via template tags. You can call the various ad units and embed them in your template.
Overall, this is a great plugin to manage all your ads. For now it doesn’t support link units, which means you will have to handcode those. Additionally, support for Google’s Referal Buttons would also be a welcome addition.
Just one note, the author has a system where, with your permission 3% of the adspace on your blog displays his own ads. This works as an indirect donation for his work.
Are you using this plugin? How do you find its performance. Do you have any suggestions?
Removed from distribution. Please remove this plugin from your blog if you are using it.
oh, that’s advance version of previous AdSense Deluxe. The plugin is great for bloggers who do not know how to edit template/html.
Personally I use AdSense Deluxe, but only to be able to disable the ads at some points of time when I need to do so (for testing and such). I think developing such a plugin is waste of time… Anyone can open a PHP file and insert the generated Google Adsense code somewhere where it should be shown, no? But yeah, if the author was bored… 😉
Max Thrane said: “Anyone can open a PHP file and insert the generated Google Adsense code somewhere where it should be shown, no?”
That is a very resounding NO, actually.
You can, I can…
The “tech community” so often forgets that the vast majority of users have no knowledge of what’s under the hood and absolutely no desire to see.
Great addition to the plugin arsenal!
Great plugin! I´ve just added it to my Blog and it works fine. Installation is as easy as usage. I like the option to configure a default plugin, wich is then very easy to put in into new posts!
Thank you! 1% of my earnings is for you… 🙂
Well, I can “go under the hood” and put the Google code where I want, but I use this plug-in to put the code right within my posts. It’s great for doing just that.
Exactly! Whatever makes your life a bit easier is nice! There’s no reason to do something the hard way just because you can!
(unless it’s competitive athletcs…)
Sounds like a great plugin.
Unfortunately, Adsense seemed to be ridiculous lately. So I’ll just keep this plugin Deactivated in my WP folder – just in case I need it in the future.
the script seem good to me though…i find it unprofessional opening up PHP pages and placing adsense codes in between them, newbies’ll find this very annoying…All the same, i have already deployed the use of the script on my website.
AdSense Manager has since been banned by Google for being in violation of unspecified T&Cs. Google unfortunately refuse to provide information on the cause of the violation and as such I cannot code around it. Further, since I now have a lifetime ban on owning a Google AdSense account I would not be in any position to test any code I produced.
AdSense Manager has been removed from distribution as of today.
Thanks for the support.