Will XenForo support an Ad Supported Site

[owtlawatv]

I know, no one likes to have there browser cluttered with ads all over the place, but this is a valid question.

I have ran many forums/websites through my years and have somewhat figured out the best way to do this. In my experience, I have paid the bills with more membership/ad reduction fees than actual advertisement commission.

With that said. I would like to know how easy it would be to implement an ad system to Xenforo and turn them off with an account upgrade. I'm not talking about ads galore, just ads at the top bottom and after the first post.

 

[Paul B]

There are ad templates included with the default style.

You can use group or guest conditionals to show them to certain groups or members.

The User Upgrades system can be used to remove adverts from those members who upgrade.

This is exactly how I implemented it on my site.

 

[owtlawatv]

Thank you for the quick response.
This forum just keeps getting better and better.
I've spent hours in the past to implement ads into a template.

Thanks,
Matthew

 

[Paul B]

I don't know if you've seen the online demo, but you can check out everything for 3 days: Admin Demo

All of the ad templates begin ad_, for example ad_above_content, ad_above_top_breadcrumb, etc.

 

[owtlawatv]

ok i will check that out. i did use the demo but just messed around with the settings.
I will go back and check out the templates.
thanks

 

[owtlawatv]

I am sure I am completly missing it, but I cant seem to find the area to display them to certain groups.
It would be nice to be able to make a user group called "paid" and assign the style called "paid" to it.
So when the account upgrade places a regular member to the "paid" user group, it also switches their style to "paid" and the ads are gone.

 

[Paul B]

You need to use conditionals, as I posted previously.

So for example:
<xen:if is="!{xen:helper ismemberof, $visitor, 3} AND !{xen:helper ismemberof, $visitor, 4}">
Ad code here
</xen:if>

The User Upgrades system will add the members to the new group and the conditional will do the rest.

The code above will hide adverts for members of user groups 3 (Administrative) or 4 (Moderating).

 

[owtlawatv]

ok i understand now.
but I thing the whole linking a style to a user group would be a great plus.

 

[Kuma]

You would use a template conditional to check if a user is part of a specific group. Brogan's signature has more information about template conditionals.

Edit: What I get for walking away to answer the door.

ok i understand now.
but I thing the whole linking a style to a user group would be a great plus.

I agree to a point, however unless you're going to do something drastic with a members only style, template conditionals will cover what you need as a whole.

 

[owtlawatv]

That is just the thing. I do drastic changes to some of my members sites.
For starters I change the ad banners to advertise different ads.
Then I will change logos, and backgrounds.
On some sites, I will add different menu options.
The whole goal, is to make members feel like members. So I change the whole look and feel.
Im sure this info is no secret but it helps to bring in more membership dollars.
Ive spent hours among hours customizing members sites.... and it just seems that this would be a very good feature in the future.

 

[Brett Peters]

You might also wish to track the progress of Digital Point Ad Positioning Mod

 

[James]

You could create a style for each usergroup and allow each usergroup access to use only the style created for them. Just create them as childs of the public style and make the appropriate edits to the advertisements (sizes, etc).

Example:

-| Default Style
--| Public Style (non-paid members)
---| Paid Members (less ads, etc)
---| More Paid Members
---| More & More Paid Members

The idea is that you only make the changes to each child style as relative to the public style that everyone sees.