Hi alfuzzy and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Thank You

Any help please. Thanks

Sorry alfuzzy, weekends are usually a bit slow.

Hopefully someone with Adsense implementation on vBulletin experience will come along.

Cool. Thank you keyplyr. : )

@alfuzzy
I can't really help. But having never heard of vbulletin I checked it out. The wikipedia page has some not so kind things to say about the software, some relating directly to the implementation of AdSense. You may want to consider using a different forum software.

Thanks Nick. Yes...all things being equal...using different forum software would/could be a possibility. My website has been around a very very long time (I've taken over managing the website recently)...thus there are lots of custom tweaks & some Wordpress add-on pages. I would estimate it would cost $1000's & $1000's of dollars to replicate the site if using different forum software (maybe even more $$$$$ than that). And if the vBulletin database was not importable into new forum software...then unfortunately new forum software would be totally unthinkable.

vBulletin tends to get hacked hard and often. You may want to consider switching to another forum software, like xenforo or phpBB.

In general, php sites, including forums, are generated dynamically using templates.
The main page has it's own template, as does the category level, forum level, discussion levels.

There are likely also a header template and a footer template. If you want the ads displayed in an area that is contained in the header area, then locate where in the code you want it, add a DIV (if necessary, and style it if you wish so it blends in) then drop the code in there.

Otherwise you can choose from the above section templates and add the code where you want it.

Once you're familiar with the styles, you can actually duplicate various rows using the styling and div structure so that they'll automatically scale up or down according to existing mobile friendly styles, as well as blend in seamlessly with your template.

Download ALL template files and set those aside in case you accidentally damage the site.
Then copy it and place in another location on your desktop and use that for modification

Additionally, when Ftp'ing to your site, instead of uploading and replacing a file, simply rename the original version, like viewforum.html becomes viewforum_original.html. That way, you can upload, preview your edits. If you don't like it, delete the modified file and restore the original if you wish.

Always, always always have fresh backups!

Good luck!
:)
Roger Montti aka Martinibuster

Hey there Martinibuster. Wow...thanks very much for that info. Sounds exactly like what I would want to do. Only downside is...I'm not really very experienced doing what you mentioned. I'm a very fast learner...and can very probably do what you mentioned...but I work real good using examples the first time. Then 2nd and further times I'm good to go. Any sort of resources you could link me to that would show/explain what needs to be done (what the entire code looks like...how to do the DIV stuff you mentioned)?

I am familiar with the template way of doing things in vBulletin...and kind of familiar with the header & footer templates. I actually did insert the AdSense code at the very bottom of the footer template (below all other code)...but didn't get any ads showing up in the footer. So I'm guessing that just inserting the code that way (at the bottom) won't get it done. Someone else did sorta help me with getting an AdSense ad operational in the header area of the site pages. Person told me to insert the AdSense code at the very bottom of what's called the "headinclude" template...and that got ads rolling in the header area.

Not sure how familiar you are with vBulletin. But in the Admin Control Panel area there's a section for managing advertisments...which is supposed to make it easy. Just click on one of the predefined ad blocks...paste in the AdSense code...save...and good to go. Unfortunately this isn't working for me. 2nd option was to go directly to the "Ad Templates" (as you mentioned)...a whole list of them defined by their location on different pages. This is where I manually inserted the AdSense code at the bottom of each template...but as I mentioned above...I don't think this was good enough...since the ads were not showing up.

Thanks. Hopefully you can help further. : )

By the way. How would I go about adding an advertisement location in the right margin area of each page? Something like a small-medium sized square/rectangle block of advertising...or a tall narrow vertical advertisement bar?

Thanks

Well... how about create an image of an ad and insert that in there to see if it displays?

If it displays, then it might be AdSense is taking a few hours before displaying ads. In that case, remove the image and upload the code and wait. Use your admin ad module to insert the ads.

Let us know if that works. Sometimes the ads don't show right away.

Also, make sure you don't have an ad blocker turned on.

Maybe I didn't mention it in this thread...but I've been having trouble with the vBulletin Ad manager...which is why I started this thread. Also the "create an image idea and see if it works" I'm sure is a good one. But at this point probably more than my skill set can handle without instruction. Lol

Yes...all Ad Blockers turned off and/or uninstalled.

Do you have an image software, like photoshop or even the open source GIMP?

Just take a snapshot of an ad, crop it to the right dimension (the size of your ad) then upload it to somewhere on your site. Take note of the URL. Then go to your vBulletin Ad manager and enter the URL of the image there.

If it displays, then it's likely AdSense is delaying showing ads. This is common. It can take a few hours or so for an ad to show.

I'll give that a try...thanks for the details how to do it. : )

I should have mentioned...the last ad space I setup with the vBulletin ad manager was a couple days ago...so I guessing everything that's going to show up has already. You are correct...there were some ads that I setup that did take a while to finally populate. I guess I was expecting them to show up right away (or at least 5-10 minutes later)...but some did take quite a while to show up.

Another question. Since I didn't realize initially when I was setting up the ads that they might take a while to show up...as an example...I ended up setting up multiple header ad's (I may have setup as many as 4 or more for the same exact header ad space). Since it took a while for some of those ads to finally populate with ads...turns out some or all of those 4 header adds are now showing up. Sometimes only one ad will show up...sometimes 2...sometimes as many as 4 header ads will show up all stacked on top of each other (all 4 visible). I know I need to deactivate some of them. The question is...if I deactive some (but maybe deactivate the wrong ones)...and decide to reactivate them later...once reactivated...will it take hours once more for those reactivated ads to show up again?

Thanks

@alfuzzy
What is most likely happening is that since your pages never had ads on them, those pages are not in the Adsense index. AdSense will not show ads if the pages are not indexed (over-simplified explanation). When the page is requested with the ad-code, and it is not in the index Adsense will then direct its bot (MediaPartnersGoogle <== the bot name, in your logs) to the website to crawl the page and then index it. This can take some time, it can take over an hour for ads to begin showing.

Furthermore, to check whether the issue is related to Adsense not showing ads or your CMS preventing ads from displaying I suggest that you go into your ad-unit settings in Adsense and at the setting "if no ads available" set it to "collapse ad unit, or otherwise show color" then select a visible color. Now if your ads are blank because of AdSense they will show-up as colored square. (or collapse in which case that setting becomes pointless). Ideally your should "Inspect element" (ctrl-shift-i in Chrome) where the ad should show-up and check to see if the code is in the document. Also check the console for js errors.

If the ad block is colored (or collapsed), this suggests that the ad-code is working but Adsense is not filling the request. If the ad code is not present or there are errors in the console, this would suggest that the issue lies with your CMS.

Nick...thanks so much...that was an absolutely awesome explanation. I suspected some of what you mentioned...but you filled in a lot of blanks. : )

Yes I was thinking the exact same thing you mentioned about "showing color" in an ad space (but didn't know how to do it). I guess right now it may be set to a default setting of "white"...so if an ad space is blank...then the ad space is working...just no ad is there at that time (but hard to know). With color...it would be obvious what's up.

Thanks again for the great explanation! : )