I love WordPress and I love making money. But, there are really not a lot of simple, clean and professional looking three column themes that allow the easy integration of Adsense (or other standard ad formats) ad formats into strategically located positions on a WordPress blog. Well, that is until now. I have decided to release one of my flexible “Adsense Ready” layouts to the public.
Why Adsense Ready?
You may notice that the layout uses one table in the html. This is to make sure that it renders the background color for the entire column (there are three) if you choose to use colors. I don’t like to use tables for layout, but in the case of three column layouts, this is really the best bet until the new CSS spec actually gets created and integrated into the browswers we all use…not holding my breath.
Theme Configuration
Anyway, the “leftcol” (left column) is currently set at 250px wide, which is the width of one of the most productive Adsense ad formats…the 250×250 rectangle. I also call it a square. 🙂 You can widen that to 300px to use the larger rectangle ad as well, you will simply need to modify the width of the centercol div in the style sheet and widen the leftcol div. You can see how to use a php include in the page files (home.php, archive.php, page.php, single.php, 404.php) to easily insert the same ad in the left column. The file name that you will insert your 250×250 adsense code into is called adsense_left.php. Simply copy and paste your code in htere and ads will appear in the left column. See style.css (#leftcol) for color information.
The colors I have used are just to give you an idea of where the column divisions are. There is a white border around and on the sides of many of the divs. If you go all white in the column divs it really won’t make a difference and they won’t be seen…unless of course you change the color to something other than white (#fff).
Other than that, there are a few release notes below. All that I ask/require for using the layout is that you leave the footer link to this page and my blog intact.
If you have any questions, please let me know here or email me at jason at this domain.
Download the Adsense Ready Theme
You can download the Adsense Ready Theme and untar it on your server or computer.
Please see the README.txt file for notes.
Directions
Simply download and untar on your server in your themes directory (WPROOT/wp-content/themes/). Then activate the theme in your dashboard (under Presentation). Add your Adsense code to the adsense_left.php file (using the 250×250 ad). You are ready to go.