It’s with no small amount of fanfare that we announce the release of AdSanity version 1.1. It’s been over six years since the initial release of AdSanity and while we’ve made incremental updates over the years this is the first release worthy of a “dot 1” increment. We’ve made some significant improvements to the plugin that most users are going to benefit from immediately. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Default Ad Sizes

We’ve talked about the new standards that the IAB has put in place. Now AdSanity supports these new standards allowing the creation of flexible ad units via HTML5. We’ve kept all of the standard ad units as well, but now you can create a 1 x 3 Responsive ad unit, and leveraging the power of HTML5, build ads that will adapt to new presentations.

Easy Short Code Access

While we had a short code tool available on the page editor, we’ve made the ability to copy and paste short codes for your ads or ad groups even easier. You can access these short codes from the manage ad screen, from the specific ad you’re creating, and the ad groups page. Making ad placement a snap if you’re using short codes or template tags.

Translations Available

Another new feature in this release is that AdSanity is now fully translatable. To support this feature and ability we’ve created a translation site leveraging GlotPress. In addition, we’re offering a free Blogger license (or $39 towards a Publisher or Developer license) to folks who want to contribute a new language to the available translations. Please contact us here if you’re interested in providing that translation and we’ll get you sorted.

User Agent Detection Improvements

Alongside new features we’ve also taken a look at our existing feature set. One of the items we’re most excited about is the new user agent detection. The new implementation dramatically reduces the database impact of AdSanity, simplifies the management interface, and improves overall performance. What this means is a much more scalable plugin for when your blog is getting the traffic you’re building for.

Help Site

As part of the build up to this new release we’ve also put together a new support site for AdSanity. With any piece of software, there are nuances that can go unnoticed. Our goal with this resource was to give a complete guide to the features and functionality in the plugin.

New Actions And Filters

We’ve also improved the extensibility of AdSanity. New actions and filters give developers new ways to modify the display of ads as well as hook into the internals of the plugin. You can find details on all available actions and filters on the help site. These are just a few of the highlights. We’ve included the release notes below for AdSanity version 1.1 and we hope that you’ll check out the plugin and let us know what you think.

But Wait, There’s More

We’re really excited about the new features, changes, and fixes in the new version of AdSanity, but we have more planned for this year. We’re going to be using some of the extensibility that we purposely built into AdSanity. We have some Basic and Pro add-ons that are in development and as soon as we can talk about them, we will. Stay tuned.

Release Notes for AdSanity version 1.1

  • New: Introduces new default ad sizes based on the IAB standards
  • New: Quick copy/paste buttons have been added to the ad list, ad edit, and ad group list areas in the dashboard
  • New: Now fully set up for translations
  • New: Added actions to ad display for easier modifying of the ad markup without using theme templates
  • New: Added action to click tracking to allow custom code to be run on ad click
  • Fix: In WordPress Multi-Site with subdirectories, we now prevent a sub-site from being created with the name “ads”
  • Fix: Multiple widgets with the same ad group selected will now choose random ads for each group
  • Fix: Removed globals during rewrite rule flushing
  • Fix: Fixes permalink flushing issues on activation, deactivation, and upgrades for avoid 404s on clicked ads
  • Change: Switches from using the WP_Cache API to the Transients API for caching for broader compatibility
  • Update: Updates the plugin update library
  • Update: Updates to admin markup for WordPress compatibility and accessibility
  • Update: Updated default CSS to include fixed widths for fixed pixel based ad sizes
  • Update: Code standardization and formatting
  • Update: Improved inline documentation
  • Update: Introduced data management system for future proofing updates
  • Update: Overhauled the User Agent detection system
  • Update: Performance boosts for queries
  • Update: Removes dependency on Google APIs for external javascript libraries
  • Security: Increased security by adding index files so directories can’t be indexed in search engines
  • Security: Increased security by making sure individual PHP files can’t be loaded directly in a browser