Providing Adsense login on protected forums

sandnes

Member
Trying to get Adsense to work via a custom login (per Google's instructions). My forum shows nothing to anyone who isn't logged in. I used Adsense with no problems when I was on vBulletin (also completely closed to public) but can't get it to work with Xenforo. Google tells me I have crawling errors. The login I created for Adsense to use has not shown any login activity. I guess I must have something set wrong, but I sure don't know what.

Even though I get a check mark and it says "Crawling," when I click "Test Login" I get "If you can see the desired page below, Google's crawler will be able to see your pages. If you cannot see the desired page, please recheck your authentication parameters." And no, I can't see the page.

This is what I have, can anyone spot an obvious error or suggest something else? Are "password" and "username" the correct names for these fields?

189300
189304
 
The details look okay - well, the bits we can see match the way we have it set-up in Adsense.

The Restricted Directory or URL - is this the forum home page or a member-only page, such as user profile, that requires a member to login to see it?

Also (and I know it is probably obvious and you've checked) have you manually logged in with the user account you're using for Adsense and did it work okay? Can the Adsense user account see everything - do they have permission to access all areas of the forum in the same way regular users can?
 
Last edited:
First, thanks for trying to help!
The Restricted Directory or URL is set to the forum home page, like https://website.com/forum
I was sure the account was fine, but just checked again, and yes it is. When I log in to it, I can see everything. And the credentials match what I have in Adsense.
 
Can the forum home page be viewed by guests / people not logged in? If so, then it isn't a restricted URL!! ;)

You'll need a URL that can only be viewed when logged in.
 
All that can be seen by someone who is not logged in is the header, an error message "You must be logged-in to do that." and the login box.
But I'm suspecting from what you're saying that that means that the page itself isn't considered restricted? If that's the case, what URL can I use for that?
 
Well I expect user profiles are restricted so use one of those - we use our first user, the owner/admin, since it's not an account that will change or be removed.

To use my account here as an example:
Code:
https://xenforo.com/community/members/bimble.186748/

So you'd use your own forum URL and replace the username.userid bit on the end with one of your key user's accounts. 👍
 
The result:
I'm not sure. Something's still not right, I think. I do think that my original question was answered correctly and implemented successfully. But...

1. Adsense does say "Crawling" (with green check mark) when I look under Crawler access. Question: Should I see activity on the XenForo account I created for Google Adsense to use to log in? When I look at the account, it shows no login activity.

2. Error messages are gone from Adsense portal, which is good.

3. Most of my hits are now coming from the new ad unit on my main page sidebar, which is good.

4. I'm getting almost no hits at all from ad units at the bottom of my pages, which indicates something's probably wrong there.

5. Earnings still nearly nonexistent compared to my vBulletin days. Impressions are still only about 1/4 of what they were before my migration even though conceptually the setup is the same (sidebar ad on main page, two ads at bottom of every page). And my forum should be at its busiest time of the year right now. (Want an extreme but true comparison? Several years ago my earnings for one month in particular was over $1,500.00. Now, that was abnormal, but more typical was $700.00/mo. Traffic has seriously plummeted on forums overall since then, but even so, right before migrating off of vBulletin I was still averaging about $150-$250/mo. Since migrating, my monthly revenue has been around $15 to $20. For the full month.)

6. Even though some signs are better now than two weeks ago (see #1, #2, #3 above), a basic Adsense report tells me that basically nothing has changed in terms of impressions, RPM, clicks, or earnings comparing now to then. So despite fixing something, I don't think I've fixed (or identified) the real problem.
 

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