This started as a quick patch for deleting Adverts, but once I got going and dove into the code a bit deeper to fix the renaming mistake I made in an earlier update I found a bunch more quirks. AdRotate Geo was acting up again and generally what was going to be a small patch turned into a full update with many tweaks and improvements.
Google & Tag Manager
AdRotate Pro now supports Events through Google Tag Manager. This is a new(ish) and “handy” system from Google to unify their various spy tracking codes. It’s a bit of a hassle to set up. But if you already use Google Tag Manager you should be familiar with custom events and trackers already.
Read more about that in the Google Tag Manager guide here.
Because I do NOT want to support everything from Google, their older Universal Tracker is now depreciated. If you still use that old thing, switch over to their newer Global Tag if you use Google Analytics, or Tag Manager if you use other services as well. You can read more about installing the Global Site tag here.
And lastly the the Google Analytics manual got revised and clarified.
From the Bin to the Trash
The Bin (Deleted Adverts) has been renamed and is now called Trash – This, I think, is more recognisable since Trashes on your computer and in WordPress are commonly referred to as Trash as well.
Geo Targeting
AdRotate Pro now forcibly refreshes the ‘adrotate-geo’ cookie when you save the Geo Targeting Settings, regardless of the lookup service. This should make it much more easy to test and reset things for Geo Targeting. Just click save and see your quota update or your new Location Data be cookie’d.
Simple as that.
AdRotate Geo & API
On my end, on the AdRotate Geo server, things got changed a fair bit too. I’ve removed the IP Banning system and raised the banning criteria from 20 faulty lookups to 50. This should prevent sites from getting banned a bit more easy. Not that many people went over the limit, but still… It’ll help for a few.
On top of that, I discovered some nasty behavior from WordPress, which apparently likes to take over “unknown” urls and redirect them to, often, the wrong pages. Your site does this too and in many cases it works fine. But if it intermittently breaks AdRotate Geo. That’s less exciting. This has now been fixed.
In a similar event, the update system got overhauled a bit. A new version of the API was introduced over the weekend. This one works again faster and uses a less bulky format to tell your site about updates. Updates are shown more consistently in your dashboard and integrate even better with your dashboard now.
Cleanup
A number of quirks and bugfixes have been resolved for Advertisers. The dashboard now actually works.
Some old code from the defunct “Responsive” feature has been removed. Left over code from the defunct “Transactions” feature has been removed. The dashboard for it is no more, as well. And just a whole bunch of small things got looked at and fixed or improved.
Changes for AdRotate Pro 5.4
- [new] Support for Google Tag Manager
- [new] AdRotate Geo cookie reset when saving Geo Targeting settings
- [fix] Adverts not moved to Trash properly
- [fix] Spread impressions requires ‘Maximum Impressions’ to be set
- [fix] Geo Targeting layout for Advertisers
- [fix] Permissions not declared for some Advertisers
- [fix] Live Previews for Advertisers
- [change] Reset lookup quota when disabling Geo Targeting
- [change] Bin renamed to ‘Trash’
- [change] Depreciate support for Google Universal Tracker
- [change] Stats Settings redone/modernized
- [change] Google Analytics Event renamed to “Adverts”
- [removed] Obsolete “Responsive Advert” code and database column
- [removed] Defunct Message option from Advertiser dashboard
- [removed] Defunct Transactions, code and database items
