A Guide To Using Adsense With The Genesis Framework

Out of the box, the Genesis Framework doesn’t offer support for adding Google Adsense to your site. If you want to include these adverts in your blog, you’ll need to come up with a manual method of doing so.

Luckily there’s a plugin that makes adding Google Adsense to the Genesis Framework a piece of cake. Now of course you could use one of the many Adsense plugin’s that exist for WordPress, but why clutter your blog with a number of different plugin’s that will simply slow down your site?

The plugin I’m speaking of is the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin, developed by StudioPress (the same developer of the Genesis Framework). I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have piece of mind knowing the plugin I’m using on my site was created by a reputable developer.

Genesis Simple Hooks Plugin

The purpose of this post isn’t to review the Simple Hooks plugin, but you do need some knowledge of this before we get into the specifics of using it to add Adsense code to your Genesis Theme.

The Simple Hooks plugin allows you an easy way customize your Genesis Child Theme, without having to understand how the theme was architected. You can “hook” into any of the key sections of your theme (header, footer, content, sidebar, etc…) by simply placing some code into the appropriate sections of the plugin.

If you really want to understand this in more detail, here’s a great explanation called What The Hook?!

Adsense With The Genesis Framework

So back to the original question, how do I leverage Adsense with the Genesis Framework?

1. Create Your Google Adsense Ad

This should go without saying, but you’ll need to ensure you have an Adsense account set up, and have defined the appropriate ad types for you blog. If you need help with that, simply visit the Google Adsense Overview, and it will walk you through everything you need to get started.

2. Install The Simple Hooks Plugin

I’m assuming you know how to install a plugin right? Well, head over to your WordPress Dashboard, and under Add New plugin’s, search for Genesis Simple Hooks.

Once installed, you access all the settings of the plugin from the Genesis Menu in the left sidebar of you WordPress dashboard.

3. Add Your Adsense Code To The Simple Hooks Plugin

When creating your ad on the Google Adsense site, Google will provide you with the JavaScript code required to display the add in your blog. You’ll need this code now.

You’ll want to insert your Adsense code into the appropriate hook of the Simple Hooks Plugin, and there’s a lot of them to choose from, so you’ll need a map of sorts. This visual hook guide will help guide you through the various hooks that can be leveraged from the plugin (hover over each hook for a description).

My suggestion is to start with two hooks for your ad placement, one immediately before the content and the other immediately after.

To have your Adsense ad displayed after the post heading but before any of your content, use the genesis_before_post_content Hook as shown below.

You’ll also want to display an ad immediately after your content, as that will catch the readers that have read your entire article, so use the genesis_post_content Hook.

4. Testing It Out

Once you have all your code in place, it’s time to take it for a test run. If you’ve done everything correctly, you should start to see ads displayed on your site. Don’t panic if you are not seeing anything right away, as it can take up to 24 hours for ads to start appearing.

Limit Adsense Ads To Only Post and Page Types

You probably noticed as part of your test, that the Adsense ads will display on all areas of your blog. This means you’ll have ads on the home page, blog index page, and other areas where you may not want ads displayed.

So how do we correct this? This is the beauty of the Simple Hooks Plugin, it gives you the ability to add custom PHP code right within the different hooks you are creating.

To ensure Adsense ads are only being displayed for your Posts or Pages, simply add the following two lines of code to the hooks you created in the above steps.

<?php if(is_singular() && ! is_page()) { ?>
<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<!-- csonPost2 -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
     style="display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px"
     data-ad-client="ca-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”
     data-ad-slot=“xxxxxxxxxx”></ins>
<script>
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script>
<?php } ?>

The two highlighted lines of code in the above example is all you need to limit the ads to a single post or page. What we’ve done is add some simple PHP code before and after the Google Adsense script. It simply checks to ensure we are on a single post or a page, and if so execute the Google Adsense script.

You’ll also notice a checkbox immediately after the text box where you’ll enter the above code called Execute PHP On This Hook. You’ll want to ensure that’s checked, so the above code will execute properly.

I do hope you’ve found this post helpful, and if you are running into any issues using Adsense with the Genesis Framework, by all means leave a comment. I check often and will be more then happy to offer any help.

Bonus Feature

Have you ever wanted to set up a CDN for your WordPress site? Look no further, I created quite the post to assist with using Amazon CloudFront for WordPress.

Image courtesy of Flickr