On 21/05/2005, at 12:55 PM, Gwilym Griffith-Jones wrote:
I have a small wiki (about natural building processes) and I would like to run targeted ads on it from Google Adwords. Is there an easy way to do this?
It is actually a bit tricky to add Google Adsense adverts to your MediaWiki, but it's not too difficult. Dan Kohn has a good HOWTO document on his website: http://www.dankohn.com/archives/000338.html. This will add a 'tower' style block of adverts down the left-hand side of your Wiki, underneath the navigation box.
On my wiki, GamerWiki (http://www.gamerwiki.com), a video game encyclopedia, I have added the Google Adsense block on the left, but have also added a text block of adverts at the top of each page. I did try to get this block to appear above the [article, discussion, edit, history etc.] tabs, but it wasn't clear where I needed to splice in to the PHP code to achieve this. Instead, I've included the advert code in some of the Mono template PHP. I will be putting up my HOWTO for this in the near future and will post a link when it's available.
Both methods are tricky but not difficult if you're confident digging in some of the Wiki's PHP files. It would be nice to generate a patch for MediaWiki that would permit admins to simply include one or more HTML blocks at key positions in order to insert advertising. -- rik