Adding WA Banners to an Ad Rotator

Ok so I know that there is a tutorial for adding the banners to a side widget and that is great, but I wanted more. I wanted the ability to place ads on the side widget and have it change every so often so that there is always a different banner that shows. I also wanted the ability to in the future to add banners from other affiliates that I may join but don't want the site to be cluttered with banner ads. So I went looking for away to easily do this with out having to do to much coding. I thought to myself that there has to be a plugin for word press that will allow me to do this so I went and searched the internet and found a few but none that would allow me to have it automatically rotate every so many seconds. I also wanted the ability to have it track how many clicks and impressions that I would receive as well. Well after some trial and error I finally found a plugin that had everything that I needed to display the banners, track impressions and clicks as well rotate every few seconds. The plugin is called adrotate and you can search for it on the plugins section of your site and install it and activate it. Below are some basic instructions to get you started and get rotating banner ads.

1. After the plugin in installed you will see the adrotate on the left side of your word press site.

2. Before we can add a new banner we need the image for the banner. Head on over to the WA banner section and choose a square banner ie. something that is 250x250, 350x350 you get the idea. Once you have the image you want click the download button.

3. After you have downloaded the image you need to upload it to your site. Go to the media section on your site.

4. Now click on Add New

5. Now click on Select Files and upload your picture

6. Once you have your banner image uploaded click on it and then select edit image. We need to edit the size to 250x250 unless the image is already 250x250 to fit in the space.

7. Once we click edit image we need to change the dimensions to 250x250 then hit the scale button to have the image scaled down

8. Now we are ready to insert the ad into the adrotate plugin but we need to get our affiliate link first so head over to the WA affiliate program section and grab your affiliate link from the top of the page.

9. Move your mouse over it and it will show you a menu first we need to create our ad so click on advert

10. Click Add New

11. You will be presented with the screen to add a new banner ad. You need to fill in the sections indicated below

12. Give the Title anything you want

13. The Adcode is the section that you will paste your affiliate link like it is below

<a href="Your Affiliate link goes between the quotes"><img src="%asset%" border="0" /></a>

14. Click the select banner button and then click on the banner image that you resized earlier

15. Click the check box to enable click and impression tracking.

16. Now click save advert

17. Now we have to create a group to add our ads to so they will rotate. At this point you can add more banners and then create the group or come back and add the banners later. If you add them later just remember that you will need to edit the group to add them to the rotation.

18. Now move your mouse over adrotate and select Groups

19. Now Click Add New to create a new group

20. Now we need to change the following

21. Type whatever name you want to call your group.

22. Change the mode to Dynamic. This will allow us to have our banners rotate.

23. Change the duration to whatever time frame you like

24. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and select the banners you want to include in the rotation then click save group.

25. Your group is now created and you will be returned to the group management section. You need to make note of the ID number you will need it in the last section to make this work.

26. Now its time to put this to our sidebar. Hold your mouse over Appearance on the left side and select widgets

27. Now that you are at the widgets section find Adrotate and drag it to the sidebar

28. Expand the adrotate plugin under sidebar and fill in the following info

29. Change the Type to Group

30. Enter in the ID number that you made note of earlier and enter it in the ID field then click save.

At this point you can go to your site and the banner ad will be there. You can now ad other banners using this same process to this group that you created and they will change automatically for you. Any questions please feel free to ask. You can also check it out on my site at http://mmwwa.net.