Since we released WP Guardian last month, we’ve only had a handful of support issues pop-up. In almost every single case, the issue has been related to the WordPress theme on the site not using the WordPress programming standard to properly call Javascript libraries. Bad designer, bad!
I’m putting together this tutorial to outline the process that I use to fix a theme so that it can be used in tandem with WP Guardian. I am also hopeful that a few theme designers will read this tutorial and learn a thing or two as well, specifically, how to properly use the wp_enqueue_script function.
The theme I’ll be using as an example is the popular MovieSitePress theme. Many of the issues we have discovered with themes have been with similar “movie” themes, but because this is the most commonly requested, this is the one we’ve created a tutorial for.
Note: Don’t steal premium themes or functions. Support the designers, even if they don’t follow standards. 
So, at this point, we’ll assume that you’ve installed and activated the MovieSitePress theme and plugins as well as the WP Guardian plugin and that you’ve assigned an advertisement to a post using WP Guardian.
When you go to the post, you’ll notice that the advertisement is not being displayed. While this it is rarely necessary to use any extra tools, we’re using the Safari browser which has a developer tool that allows us to see the errors that occur on a page. For FireFox, there is the great tool FireBug as well.
The error displayed by Safari says:
TypeError: Result of expression 'jQuery('#blocking-message').jqm' [undefined] is not a function.
This very general error indicates to me that there is another copy of the jQuery library being defined somewhere. This is very, very common in themes whose designers aren’t entirely familiar with all of the pre-defined WordPress actions and functions. One quick “view source” shows the following:
<script src="http://wpguardian.com/test246/wp-content/themes/MovieSitePress/scripts/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script> |
We can see that they are including a copy of jQuery, a very popular Javascript library, from within their own plugin folder. Unbeknownst to many WordPress theme designers, jQuery is included with WordPress and can easily be included using wp_enqueue_script will ensure that other plugins that use jQuery only find a single call to include the library.
Fixing this is relatively easy. We see that this Javascript call comes just before the closing tag. This means that we need to find where the tag occurs in the theme’s code and either remove it or replace it with the proper wp_enqueue_script function.
If you open up the header.php file of the theme and do a search for jquery.js, you’ll find that right after the < ?php wp_head(); ?>, the script makes the following call:
<script src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/scripts/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script> |
To fix MovieSitePress, all you have to do is replace that line of code with:
<?php wp_enqueue_script('jquery'); ?> |
A quick save and re-upload and wham:
So, by adding just a single line, we’ve updated MovieSitePress in a way that it won’t conflict with other plugins that also use jQuery, without compromising it’s need for the library. If we wanted to do the theme designers a really big favor, we’d do the same with all of the Javascript libraries and plugins it calls, but our purpose here is merely to get it working with WP Guardian.
If you have any questions, feel free to click the ‘Questions’ tab on the left-hand side of your screen or post a comment and we’ll get back to you!
Update 11:27AM: Just realized that WordPress was converting some of my code improperly. Fixed it. Also, using a newer version of jQuery kills the “slider” on the main page, which is based on antiquated code.
Warning: The information that follows was created solely for entertainment purposes and should in no way be seen as an endorsement of any methodologies that might break any company’s Terms of Service. The screenshots are fictitious recreations.
While out with some friends a few weeks ago, a discussion arose about how most of the jail-breaking utilities for the new iPhone updates were either a major PITA or have become vaporware and how much money someone could make by filling this void. Later that evening, while checking my email during a lull in conversation it occurred to me that I’d never tested to see if our WP Guardian plugin would display advertisements on an iPhone. As you can see in the screenshot above, they do. Not only do they load, but they function properly and will unload at the proper time after a link has been clicked and the user returns to the post. The fadeaway effect even looks really good.
So, we’ve got all the fixin’s for a good method:
- a captive audience
- lots of hot items
- a plugin that takes advantage of people’s need for instant gratification
To quickly test this idea, I threw together a really simple page using a popular sales/squeeze page theme. The “Click Here” link, which could just as easily be a nice, big “Download!” graphic, lead nowhere. The purpose was just to see how well it would work.
Obviously, we could have made this page look better, but this is what five minutes of work will get you. The next step was to put together a reasonably enticing ad. With WP Guardian, you can set how quickly the advertisement is displayed. We set it to pop very quickly so that the user wouldn’t have the time to explore the page and click the link.
The next step was choosing the right CPA offer to use. The key, and this is true of incentivizing offers in general, is taking advantage of short form offers. This is doubly-true when dealing with mobile users who are even less inclined to fill out detailed forms than your average desktop user. I decided to go with a few mobile-themed offers like the following:
You’ll want to make sure that the offer displays and functions properly on the iPhone before posting them into a live environment. This offer just requires the user to enter their name and email address, though many advertisers will end up blocking you from an offer if none of those initial sign-ups convert, so you’ll want to distribute your leads by rotating links. Rotating links is very easy with WP Guardian’s link management system.
The site was then spammed on various social networking and social news sites. One social news site in particular generated nearly 100 hits (and $XXX.XX* across 4 offers) in the 45 minutes or so before the link was flagged and taken down. Not bad for a site that took a mere 15 minutes to setup. The results proved to me that the concept was sound and with a little tweaking could be taken in very profitable directions.
Here are some ideas for taking the mobile method into different directions:
- Use PHP to grab the useragent and display a message to browsers that don’t identify as iPhone’s that says, “You must visit from your phone!”
- Offer legitimate mobile content to those who fill out the offers. Ringtones, instructional guides, downloads for people with jailbroken phones.
- Use the traffic and leads generated from these sites to buffer other campaigns. Mobile leads could make a great conversation piece to explain away other earnings to AM’s.
With a little ingenuity, I hope you’re able to take this method and run. WP Guardian is an extremely flexible, powerful plugin and we’re adding new features all of the time. If you have any questions about the post, comment below or click the “Questions” button on the left-hand side of your screen.
* – Hi, FTC.
New Website Launching!
We’ll be launching a new website by the end of the month. We love the old site, but think we need a bit lighter, more content focused design for 2010. Downtime shouldn’t have any major effect on customers as our support utilities are all hosted off-site. We’ll give everyone a head’s up via here before the switchover occurs.
Forum Generator 2.0
Today we began the development of Forum Generator 2.0 and Forum Generator 2.0 Light, two big steps in the Forum Generator series. After discussing many options with our customers, we’ve decided to split the Forum Generator series into two distinctly different versions. Forum Generator 2.0 will continue on the path that Forum Generator 1.x has, except we will be focusing on developing for VPS and Dedicated server environments. In juxtaposition, Forum Generator 2.0 Light will be designed as the “little brother” of FG, which will ensure runs on most shared hosting environments. It will have less features, but will also be sold for considerably less.
Our goal is to begin offering customers the opportunity to beta test both versions by the end of the holiday season. All current customers will receive both versions for free. Forum Generator 2.0’s release will also come with a bump in price, so if you think Forum Generator may be something you are interested in, I’d advise purchasing soon.
WP Guardian 1.2 Announcement
Today, we’re launching WP Guardian 1.2, which adds in a few, new awesome features as well as support for our new line of inexpensive WP Guardian add-ons. This blog content monetization tool now has the ability to post ads on every page and post on an entire site with a single click. We’ve also made it really easy to change the advertisement used for global blocks.
Free WP Guardian “Mobile Method”
To celebrate the release of WP Guardian 1.2 and the Referer Guardian Add-on, we’ve decided to post a very cool method we tested that utilizes WP Guardian and shows how versatile it can be with a little creativity.
Check it out here.
WP Blank Referer – Free WordPress Plugin
Last week, we launched WP Blank Referer, a simple, free WordPress plugin that makes blanking referers simple. It currently utilizes four different blanking services to do this. Simply activate it and select the blanking service that you want to use.
WordPress has accepted WP Blank Referer into their plugin repository, so download it from them for easy upgrading! Let us know if you have any feature suggestions for future version.
Description:
When activated, this plugin will automatically pass all outbound links on a WordPress blog through one of four different services used to hide the referer of traffic.
Supported Services:
- Anonym.to
- HideRefer.com
- HideRefer.org
- Referer.us
Installation:
Simply unzip the wp-blank-referer.zip file and upload the wp-blank-referer directory to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory, and activate the plugin through the admin panel.
Support:
Since this is a free plugin, I won’t be providing any sort of specialized support, but if you have questions or feature requests, feel free to post comments here or email us by clicking the ‘Questions’ tab on the left side of the screen. We also make no guarantees that this will actually blank referers with all browsers, as these are not our services.
Download:
Download WP Blank Referer from the WordPress plugin directory.
I’m happy to announce that WP Guardian development is a bit ahead of schedule and we’ll be releasing the 1.2 update on Monday, a full 5 days ahead of schedule. This new version adds a feature that will let users block their entire blog with the click of a button as well as giving users the ability to select which advertisement is used when doing global blocks.
We’ll also be releasing version 1.0 of the first WP Guardian add-on which gives users the ability to automatically blank the referrer of blog users when they click on links in advertisements. Lots of people have requested this feature and so we’re really happy to be able to deliver it.
Current WP Guardian customers who opted in to the AWeber customer mailing list when they purchased will receive an email from us when 1.2 and the add-on are released.
We’ve also locked in the new features and improvement we’ll be adding for WP Guardian 1.3, which we hope to make available later this month. We’ll be adding the ability to assign ads to categories as well as pages. We’re also working on another add-on, which will WP Guardian users the option to force their users to sign-up as members to their blogs to view content.
Also, expect some big Forum Generator news early next week!
