AdSense section targeting?

[tamhanna]

Hi sayontan,
thank you so much for this great theme!

I wanted to ask you whether you plan to implement AdSense Section targeting in the future? This could make it easier for us to increase CPR if it is around the posts.

You can find out more about the technology here:
https://google.com/adsense/support/bin/ ... swer=23168

All the best
Tam Hanna

[sayontan]

You can add this content yourself in your posts - you don't need the theme to support it.

[Dark_Fox28]

Hi sayontan,
thank you so much for this great theme!

I wanted to ask you whether you plan to implement AdSense Section targeting in the future? This could make it easier for us to increase CPR if it is around the posts.

You can find out more about the technology here:
https://google.com/adsense/support/bin/ ... swer=23168

All the best
Tam Hanna

There is a great plugin called Quick Adsense, it will enable you to add the ads in specific sections of your site and wrap text around it.

[jtracy]

You can add this content yourself in your posts - you don't need the theme to support it.

One of the great things about your awesome theme is that it makes everything easier. Yes, I can add Adsense post by post, but that would take way too long and then if I needed to change it out, I'd have to edit all my posts (unless I use a plugin like the last poster mentioned). I think it would be great if you added support for putting ads above a post, below a post, or aligned right/left in a post. That's a great feature. Other themes, like Heatmap, have recognized the value of this and offer it as part of the theme/widgets. I'd like to add my vote to this request. Right now I'm editing your comments.php and adding Adsense above it so that it appears below posts. But whenever I do an update I'll have to redo that. Having it as part of your theme/widget support would be greatly beneficial and would require one less plugin.

Thank you for your consideration of this as a new feature.

[sayontan]

Follow rule #4 above. Be reasonable. I don't have this feature planned anywhere in my to-do list and I doubt if I will ever address it.

Yes, I can add Adsense post by post, but that would take way too long and then if I needed to change it out, I'd have to edit all my posts (unless I use a plugin like the last poster mentioned). I think it would be great if you added support for putting ads above a post, below a post, or aligned right/left in a post.

So essentially you want me to provide the support even though there are plugins that do the task for you perfectly well? That is unreasonable. Even if you don't want to use a plugin, something like this is very easy to implement without edits to the theme - Suffusion supports child themes, it provides you an ability to hook in custom PHP and it provides you hooks for all of these positions where you want to include ads. You could very easily add your few lines of code to a child theme or through the custom PHP functionality and you will be done, instead of asking me to do all the stuff for you.

Other themes, like Heatmap, have recognized the value of this and offer it as part of the theme/widgets.

A theme like Heatmap is actually called "Heatmap AdSense Theme", so I would be surprised if it didn't offer this capability. I doubt if more than one of the top 15 popular / featured themes supports this, though.

Having it as part of your theme/widget support would be greatly beneficial and would require one less plugin.

What's wrong with using a plugin? Suffusion is a versatile theme, but I don't plan on making it a one-stop shop for all your site customization requirements, and neither should you expect it to be such. It is easy for you to ask for a customization feature, but when I protest against adding a feature it is with good reason - I never protest against something that is easy, but I detest something that is redundant and entails a ton of other customization and humongous amount of testing. If I have to support this kind of feature, I can envision thousands of other customization feature requests regarding the same - changing the size, changing the position, changing the fonts, showing it conditionally for some posts, showing it on pages and not on posts, and the like. And don't get me started on what I will have to test.

Frankly I have neither the patience nor the interest to build this kind of a time-sink.

[jtracy]

Follow rule #4 above. Be reasonable. I don't have this feature planned anywhere in my to-do list and I doubt if I will ever address it.

I must say that I'm surprised by your response. I think the request the original poster made is more than reasonable. I was simply echoing Tam's excellent suggestion. And that's coming from someone who has sent you coffee money via PayPal.

I respect the job you do, Sayontan. I love your theme. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to make suggestions, which this section (Feature Requests) seems to be for. Nowhere in your response to Tam did you say it was too hard for you to do or too time consuming, so I was unaware this was the case and I support your decision.

In response to your other comments:

1) No one made a support request in this thread. A simple Feature Request. That's it.

2) One (of many) of the great things about your theme is that you don't need a zillion plugins installed. This was a simple feature request and more than one person made it. A lot of what you do in your themes can be accomplished by plugins. So why do you do them? Because it makes your theme better, more versatile, further establishes you as a master in the art of thememaking, and shows that you care about user suggestions. I rarely make PayPal donations during this economic downturn that is affecting a lot of us. Yet I made one to you because I was so impressed with the work you put into the theme and how much could be accomplished without adding plugins. I'm one of your biggest fans.

I'm sorry you took the original comments of support for Tam's good idea the wrong way. If you ask for feature requests, please expect them and extend a courtesy to us that our tone is in the best of intentions. If could hear my tone in the original response I made, you'd know how much I respect your work and admire the job you do. I've even encouraged others to make PayPal donations to you because the work you do is amazing.

I submit this humbly and respectfully and I thank you, Sayontan, for your time and dedication to the Suffusion theme. Your work is both awesome and greatly appreciated.

[tamhanna]

Hi,
as the one who has caused the outrage, I can but apologize and share the plugin I have found to work excellently.

Auto AdSense Sections

Automatically implement AdSense section targeting to improve the relevancy of your AdSense ads.

Deactivate | Edit
Version 1.0 | By Mathias Amnell | Visit plugin site

Install it, configure and enjoy.

[jtracy]

It's a shame the Suffusion author decided not to take this request seriously and cannot see the value. Most Adsense plugins aren't that good or they siphon off revenue. In the end, I ended up going with Adsense Now which was quick and easy to set up and is still being updated. I'll check out your suggestion too, Tam. Thanks for suggesting it. And thank you, Tam, for your original suggestion too. It was a good one that I know many people would like in a theme, especially those that use Adsense with Wordpress.

[sayontan]

It's a shame the Suffusion author decided not to take this request seriously and cannot see the value.

You already have 3 plugins mentioned on this thread to do the task and each person suggesting a plugin says it works fine. And it is a shame that I am not taking this request seriously? It is not like there is a paucity of options. And I do believe I spoke about the cumbersomeness of providing such a feature through options - you are right, I don't see any value in pouring hours of development into this.

There is an underlying philosophy behind addition of features in the theme. If you look carefully through how features are added, they are added by concept and not by scouring plugins to see which I can replace. E.g.:

1. I provided a magazine template, so I started off with a featured content option (later a widget), a category posts option (later a widget), a headlines option etc. - basics you need to make things look like a magazine layout. You wouldn't find a separate plugin for a magazine layout, hence I had to build all of these features into the theme.
2. I tackled various aspects of modifying your sidebar's look and feel - boxes, movable boxes, flattened, sliding panels, tabbed etc. Again, these are extremely theme-specific and have little to do with plugins. Plus different options to position your sidebars are available - again non-plugin behavior.
3. I provided different layout types, blog, list and tile: again something that is not normally available through plugins.
4. Every now and then I add a set of very useful short-codes, which again, plugins don't provide.

I could continue about the list of features I have built in that cannot be accomplished by plugins. In comparison there are very few features that are exclusively built with a plugin-flavor: a Google Translator widget, a Twitter widget, a subscription widget, basic analytics support (which Analyticator thumps, moreover I didn't know about Analyticator when I built this in), basic SEO support (SEO is not complex, hence this is almost on par with All-in-one SEO) and theme optimization support (again, something that Total Cache etc thump).

The point I am trying to make is that unless a feature is critical for the functioning of the theme or for building/enhancing a concept within the theme I don't try to sweat over it. There are several plugin-like things I can think of from the theme's perspective - ordering of posts/categories/links, ability to control which page widgets should appear in, specific widgets for AdSense etc, which might make the theme look cool (and are probably a lot more useful than the AdSense targeting), but will only make me age rapidly if I have to implement and support them. Hence I leave a lot of these to existing well-proven plugins (apart from the AdSense widget, which can be implemented in a simple Text widget).

Instead I tend to focus more on theme-centric features, like different layout options, different templates, different widget capabilities etc. The point you are missing is that every feature I provide needs a ton of options to go with it. Even the 404 page can be configured. And even then it is not adequate for persnickety users. Just sample this - the number of lines of code in the theme is a whopping 30,000 and the theme has well over 400 options, yet the feature requests section of the forum is overflowing. Adding certain features is easy, but adding others is quite taxing. And this particular one falls squarely in the taxing bucket.

I have personally never been a fan of ad-supported blogs (it is something I have mentioned in passing several times), which is why apart from a small AdSense short code that I built for fun several months ago I haven't even tried touching any other aspect of AdSense. Since I don't like ad-supported blogs myself (none of the 5 domains I own runs ads and I have ad-blocking plugins installed wherever possible), I don't feel obligated to go overboard with AdSense support. Mind you, people still use the theme in droves, so obviously this is not a crippling deficiency.

Lastly please don't forget that the theme is free, while I bet that with a bit of polish I could probably charge $100 for it and a good number of people would still pay. If I were to force each of my users to pay even $20 for it (or pay a mandatory amount for support) I would still end up with a big bank balance in at least high 6 figures if not 7 figures. However I do none of these things just to retain the ability to opt-out: by not charging a user for anything and by not expecting anything only I retain the prerogative to say that I won't implement a feature (though I have busted my gut trying to provide a lot of features). Please respect this and refrain from making statements about what is a shame and what is not.

And apologies for my outburst in my previous response.

[jtracy]

Thanks, sayontan. And, BTW, while it's great that your theme is free, I find it to be much better than many of the themes people pay for (and I've paid for plenty). You do great work.