AdSanity Core Lifetime

AdSanity is a light ad rotator plugin for WordPress. It allows the user to create and manage ads shown on a website as well as keep statistics on views and clicks though the following set of features:

  • Add and manage local image-link ads or external network ads via the WordPress Dashboard
  • Optionally set publish and end dates for ads
  • Create and manage ad groups
  • Insert ads or ad groups into the sidebar using included sidebar widgets
  • Monitor views and clicks of ads (excludes some network ads)
  • Quickly export custom view/click/ctr reports for advertisers

AdSanity was born from a need to find a simple and fast ad rotating plugin. Not being able to find a plugin that fit our needs, we built our own. We use a custom post type and WordPress core functions to keep the plugin fast. We avoided adding any tables to the database helping keep the impact light.

Easy Set Up

One of the main goals of AdSanity is to keep management simple. We took the lead from the WordPress user experience to develop the administration of AdSanity. Users familiar with managing posts and categories will find managing ads and groups easy.

We’ve created two custom widgets to add ads to the sidebar. Users can add a single ad to any sidebar area or add a group of ads.

Stats build automatically when ads are shown and clicked on the site.

Ad Widgets

We’ve created two custom widgets for AdSanity – one for displaying single ads and one for showing ad groups.

With the Single Ad widget, users can easily drop the widget into the sidebar and select which single ad to display. If the ad list grows too large, the Single Ad widget has a handy search function to sift through the ad list to find the right ad.

The Ad Group widget will show a particular group of ads. The Ad Group widget also allows for a bit of formatting by letting the admin choose how many ads from the group to show as well as how many columns used to display the ads.

Publishing Options

AdSanity currently allows for two publishing options – infinite or date-based – for the initial release. Infinite allows for an ad to be shown until it is manually removed from view. However, admins can also set begin and end dates for individual ads and AdSanity will show/hide ads based on that for time-sensitive ads.

Graphical Stats

Of course, knowing how ads are performing is a critical piece of any ad rotating plugin. On a per ad basis, admins can quickly learn how ads are performing on the site. Admins can also call up custom stats for selected ads in a defined date range.

Add-Ons

AdSanity was built from the ground up with WordPress developers in mind. There are several add-ons in our roadmap to extend the core functionality of this plugin, because we know that there are so many ways people like to advertise. We’ve included strategic actions and filters that WordPress developers can take advantage of to customize and increase the functionality of the AdSanity platform.

Many of the concepts used in this plugin are based on the ideas presented in Brandon Dove’s WordCamp Los Angeles session on “Building Pluggable Plugins.”