AdRotate Pro 3.13 – Better HTML5 support

logo-512x512It took some doing but it’s finally ready. A number of tweaks, bugfixes but also something new. HTML5 adverts now enjoy better support via the AdRotate file manager.

HTML5 adverts

HTML5 adverts are becoming more and more popular and while they’ve always worked fine with AdRotate (Pro) the extra assets involved often made it rather hard to use them. Requiring manual uploads and stuff like that.

AdRotate Pro can now handle those files in it’s media manager. Where before you could only upload images and flash files, you can now also add javascript and html files.
So no more FTP’ing of stuff.
What you do still need to do though is edit those files involved and change the paths/urls in them. But that’s not so hard and I can help you with that if you need it.

Getting HTML5 adverts to work

While you can probably do most of the tweaks your self this may be a daunting task the first few times. Editing code and all that. Many people are not very comfortable with that.
To help out those who are unsure what to do or simply don’t know or want to edit the files themselves I can do that for you. For a small fee I’ll help you out with any number of HTML5 adverts you have. The only requirement is that the advert is ‘working’ and complete. Check out pricing here.

Changes

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  • [new] Fallback groups now take their parent multisite id into account
  • [new] Manage HTML5 file assets via the AdRotate Media manager
  • [new] Create HTML5 adverts more easily
  • [new] More ‘after paragraph’ options for Post Injection
  • [change] Removed all ‘every N paragraph’ options for post injection
  • [tweak] Faster tag adding when using Google Analytics
  • [tweak] Faster tag adding for Piwik Analytics
  • [fix] Responsive and adblock class overwriting existing html classes
  • [fix] Tracking pixel for some adverts that didn’t need it
  • [fix] Redirect when advertiser exports stats
  • [fix] Post Injection cutting off content at the end of posts
  • [fix] Impression timer not always accurate for some users
  • [fix] Timezone notation not always valid
  • [i18n] New and updated strings

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Interesting times ahead? HTML5 more prevalent!

logo-512x512It’s been quite for the past 3 weeks or so around AdRotate. Mostly because I usually take a bit of a cooldown after each release. But also because my shoulder screwed up last week. Typing with one hand is harder than you may thing. And running a business lacking the upper right part of your body is even harder. Sigh. But it’s slowly getting better.

Post Injection

Today I managed to get some stuff done for the next version of AdRotate which will improve (once again) Post Injection. The new regex filter introduced in a recent version doesn’t work as well as I’d thought. Some people have reported missing parts of content such as galleries or like buttons. Highly undesirable. And suddenly I was so fed up with the damn feature that I, for a moment, considered just removing the feature altogether.

Alas, sanity came back quick enough and I decided to re-do the options available in it a bit.
The ‘insert adverts every Nth paragraph’ option goes away. It doesn’t work, it’s broken and I’m tired of wasting time to try and fix it.
Instead we’re going for a lighter faster code that adds adverts after certain paragraphs and a new function that adds an advert in the middle of a post. Using this option AdRotate counts the paragraphs and adds the advert close to the middle.

HTML5 advertising

HTML5 keeps growing as an advertising thing. This is good. I like the format. Anything that allows you to ditch Flash adverts is good. A common problem with HTML5 ads is that they usually consist of various files. Typically a HTML file, a Javascript file and sometimes a set of images/assets.

Currently AdRotate has no good way of managing those extra files. Leaving you with a mess of files and inconsistent crap to work with. The next version of AdRotate will address that.
The AdRotate Pro Media Manager will accept those extra files and in effect will be more of a file/asset manager than a banner image manager from then on. You can easily upload your assets for each advert and therefor create your HTML5 advertising campaign more easily.

Often with minimal tweaks to the actual adverts beyond perhaps renaming the files or changing a path.

HTML5 adverts setup help

Because HTML5 adverts often need a tweak or 3 to work on your particular site I’ll be expanding my services to help you with that. If your advertiser shoves a bunch of files your way and you’re not sure how to put it together I’ll help you with that for a small fee. This fee is the same as my WordPress support fee – Check prices here.

I will not make adverts from scratch or fix broken ones. I am no graphics designer either. If you have no graphics or creatives for the advert, get those from your advertiser first.
I will help you tailor your specific and working adverts to work on your site with AdRotate.

AdRotate is the most popular advertising plugin for WordPress

AdRotate is now ranked the 95th most popular plugin according to the Periodic table of Plugins for WordPress. Which uses actual data from wordpress.org.

number-95

What’s even better, if you look at all the plugins in the periodic table. AdRotate is the only advertising plugin on there (at the time of writing). This makes AdRotate the most popular advertising plugin for WordPress.

As you may know, there are over 36000 plugins available. Being in the top 100 of most popular plugins is no small feat I think. Being the most popular advertising plugin for WordPress is huge.

The “update now” banner – What does it do?

Last month AdRotate Pro and AdRotate Free underwent a small but important change in how updates are done. Updates are of-course important for advancing the plugin. Keeping things secure and modern. And to complete these updates you may see this banner from time to time after the update via WordPress.

adrotate-update-banner

What happens when you click it

Some updates may require you to click the big “update now” button. For example if the database has changed or certain data sets need updating. It’s important to do these updates from time to time to add new features, improve existing features or generally to make the plugin better.

For example, in a recent update the budgeting fields in the database were changed to accommodate future features. Another update re-instated the automated maintenance routines in AdRotate. And yet another update re-did a few indexes in the database to make things faster.

AdRotate Pro 3.12.8 and AdRotate Free 3.11.6

logo-512x512Well so much for version control and fancy methods. Earlier today I released updates for AdRotate Pro and AdRotate Free which contained a few issues. AdRotate Free was more affected and notably broke Dynamic groups and Block groups. In AdRotate Pro on some setups adverts wouldn’t save correctly if you have Geo Targeting enabled.

Somehow files got mixed up and for both releases I released the wrong files… Or, that’s what I gather so far. I guess I’ll go back to managing files manually myself. Something similar to this happened last year also, you may recall a broken release sometime in March last year :(.
I have tested the correct versions some more just to be sure and they are indeed working. Updates are being pushed out right now.

If you have received a beta/test version in the last few hours – You can either keep that version or update to this official release. Aside from the ‘b1’ marker on the version number the versions are identical.

AdRotate Pro 3.12.8

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  • [fix] strip_tags error when saving adverts on some setups
  • [fix] Typo on AdRotate Info page

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AdRotate Free 3.11.6

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  • [fix] Output of Dynamic groups and Block groups
  • [fix] Notice error on schedules page
  • [fix] Typo on AdRotate Info page

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