AdPress - WP Plugin

The first step to design your Ads is by creating a campaign. A campaign is defined by three parts

1. Campaign Information The campaign name and description. These information will be presented to the buyers, so try to put something descriptive.
2. Ad Design Ad Type (Image/Link) and Settings (Size, number, columns...).
3. Contract Type Select if you are selling by duration, page views or clicks and also the price.

There are 3 ways to integrate AdPress Ads inside your templates

1. Widgets That's probably the easiest way to do it. There is a ready-made AdPress Widget. Just drag and drop the widget to the sidebar of your choice, change the title and select the campaign you want to run.
2. ShortCodes Another easy option. However, shortcodes are only useful inside a blog post or a page. Most of the time, this won't be the case, as you'll be looking for something that displays in every page or blog post without having to enter it every time.
3. PHP Code This involves editing your Theme templates. It's relatively easy and straightforward if you have some experience with HTML and PHP.

To insert AdPress Ads as a widget, your template must have widget-ready sidebars. Generally, templates has a right sidebar which you can customize from the WordPress Appearance menu. Premium templates might have footer and header sidebar. You can add the AdPress widget more than one time. You can customize the widget title, and the select the campaign to display.

[adpress campaign=5]

<?php
if (function_exists(display_campaign)) {
	display_campaign(1);
}
?&g t;

Customizing Ad appearance is possible with AdPress. For both Image and Link Ads, AdPress generate an HTML list (UL) where Ads are HTML items (LI). This is a sample of the default generated code for an Image Ad Campaign

<ul class="image-campaign">
  <li>
    <a href="http://adurl.com" target="_blank">
      <img src="http://siteurl.com/img1.png"/>
    </a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="http://anotherad.com" target="_blank">
      <img src="http://siteurl.com/img2.png"/>
    </a>
  </li>
</ul>

With AdPress, it's possible to change the generated code for the HTML items. This generated code can be found used Settings->Image Ad for image Ads and Settings->Link Ad for link Ads.

<li>
	<a href="@url" target="_blank">
		<img src="@image_src"/>
	</a>
</li>

<li>
	<div style="height: @banner_height; width: @banner_width; position: relative;">
		<a target="_blank" style="height: @banner_height; width: @banner_width;" href="@url"></a>
		<embed style="position: absolute;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="@swf_src" quality="high" 
                wmode="transparent" height="@banner_height" width="@banner_width">
	</div>
</li>

<li>
	<a href="@url" target="_blank">@link_text</a>
</li>

.image-campaign
{
	list-style: none;
}
.image-campaign li
{
	display: list-item;
	float: left;
	padding: 0;
	margin: 5px;
}

.flash-campaign
{
	list-style: none;
}

.flash-campaign li 
{
	display: list-item;
	float: left;
	padding: 0;
	margin: 5px;
}

.flash-campaign li div
{
  position: relative;
}

.flash-campaign li div a
{
  position: absolute; 
  z-index: 9999; 
  display: block;
}

.link-campaign
{

}

.link-campaign li
{
	color: #777;
	font-size: 15px;
}

;
(function($) {
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $('.image-campaign li').hover(function() {
      $(this).animate({
        'opacity':1
      });
    }, function() {
      $(this).animate({
        'opacity':0.5
      });
    });
  });
})(jQuery);

It's cool to have all your Ad Spots all the time, however, in the real world this happens very little. This is why we have made a CTA Ad feature. CTA for Call To Action. This new feature implemented in version 2.0 will help sell your vacant spots.

How it works?

When there is an available spot in your campaign, AdPress will display your CTA Ad. This is typically, an empty image with a text of "Advertise here" for Image Ads, or an "Advertise Here" link for Link Ads. The target URL of this Ad is a link your specify. It should be a landing page that explains to the user and gives him more information about advertising on your website.
The CTA Ad only appears when there is one or more few spots. Only one CTA Ad will be displayed.

Implementation

Click the Ad CTA Checkbox to enable this feature. If you are using an Image Ad, you'll need to upload an image, and enter the target URL. If you are using a Link Ad, you'll need to enter the Ad text and also the target URL.

After designing your Ads, it's time to start selling. AdPress offers a dashboard where buyers can see the available campaigns and order Ads. This dashboard is only accessible for registered users with the right permission.

Get your clients to register

Your clients must register so they can buy Ads. Make sure you enable registration in WordPress, so they can sign up. After signing up as a user, they get assigned a role. By default, this role is "Subscriber", but you can change that.

In AdPress Settings Panel, set the users role to allow access the AdPress Client Dashboard. Set it to "All" if you want all users regardless of their roles to access the Client Dashboard. Set it to "Administrator" if you want to disable the Dashboard for all users.

Once clients have registered and logged in to their WordPress dashbaord, and you have granted them the right to access AdPress Client Dashboard, they can buy Ads.

Once registered and granted access, clients can see the running campaigns and available ads. They can also order Ads.

To order an Ad, the client has to enter the required information. The client can also leave a message (if you allow it). This is optional. The message will be shown in the requests page.

Ads don't go live when clients order them. They are queued in the review queue. You can approve or reject them. The AdPress bar notifies you when there are new pending Ads. Once in the Ads requests page, click the more button to get more information about the Ad as well as the payment details (if PayPal is enabled).

Once Ads are approved, they are listed in the Running Ads List. It's worth mentioning that only clients that purchased the Ads can stop running Ads. You can only check the Stats for the Ad, and also how much credit (clicks, views or days) until the Ad expires.

Clicking the Stats button will take you to the stats page. You can visualize the Ad stats from this page in a graph and also in a table detailing all the click, views and CTR.

P.S It's still possible to disable a client Ad, by gaining control of the client account (from your WordPress Admin panel) and disabling the Ad from his control panel

To automate payments, AdPress has PayPal support. AdPress uses the PayPal ExpressCheckout process. Read more about PayPal Expresscheckout.

SandBox Mode If you are new to PayPal Express Checkout, please sign up for their Sandbox test suite and get used to how PayPal works. PayPal has got a sandbox mode, which is a virtual platform similar to the one running PayPal. Its purpose is to make tests and see how it works before trying in real life. By checking this box, you enable the Sandbox mode.

Refunds AdPress supports refunds. When a purchaser make a purchase and it gets rejected (or cancels it before running), it makes sense to refund the payment. If refunds are enabled, rejecting the Ad will automatically issue the refund.

Every purchase is recorded by AdPress. The history is available from the Settings->history (tab). The history displays the time, date and details of the purchase. For the first version, it's not possible to see Ad Stats. This feature is planned in the future.

AdPress has 3 types of data that you can export, import and reset: Plug-in Settings, Campaign Data, and History Data.

First select one or more types of data (Plug-in Settings, Campaign Data or History Data) and then click the Export Button. The page will reload, and a new box will appear at the top with a download link. Click the link to download the back-up file. This file has the data that you asked for. The data is encoded so opening the file with a notepad will not help much understand its content. It can be read only with AdPress.

Make sure you store the file in a secure location.

Before importing any settings, you should have a back-up file. This back-up file must have the data you are looking to import. For example, if you want to import "History Data", the back-up file must have history data too.
Select the types of data to import, and then select the back-up file and click the import button.

Important notice

AdPress doesn't do a data merge. The import feature will completely replace your old settings. If you have campaign data, they'll be removed before the import process. This is rather a lack in our plug-in, and we are working on a merge feature in the future.

The plug-in reset will return the plug-in to a fresh install state. You can specify which types of data to reset, though.