This is the official Discourse advertising plugin. It allows advertisements to be served by supported advertising platforms for users with a Discourse forum.
### Step 1 - Install the Official Discourse Advertising Plugin
As seen in a [how-to on meta.discourse.org](https://meta.discourse.org/t/advanced-troubleshooting-with-docker/15927#Example:%20Install%20a%20plugin), simply **add the plugin's repository url to your container's app.yml file**:
* Navigate to the Admin section in your Discourse forum.
* Click on Settings and a left vertical navigation bar should appear.
* Choose your advertisement platform by clicking on "Adsense Plugin" if using Adsense as your advertisement platform and/or click "DFP Plugin" if using the DoubleClick for Publishers advertisement platform.
2. Choose your trust level from the dropdown box. This will only display ads to users with a certain level of trust. For more details about trust levels go to the **Plugin Features** heading.
4. Add parts of your ad code to Discourse's site settings as per the color coding in the images below. Only use the image for your ad platform.
5. Choose Your Ad Size - this is the same size that you've put into your ad provider to create your ad. Go to the **Plugin Features** heading to see a list of supported Ad sizes.
Once you've configured your settings and your advertising platform has ads that are ready to serve, navigate to the page where you've inputted for the location and you should see ads.
1. Non-Docker Installation - If you have experience with programming. This will set up this plugin as a git submodule in your Discourse directory.
2. Local Development - If you want develop locally and have experience with programming. This will set up this plugin as a symlinked file in Discourse's plugin directory.
* Clone the [Discourse Adplugin Repo](http://github.com/team-melbourne-rgsoc2015/discourse-adplugin) in a new local folder.
* Separately clone [Discourse Forum](https://github.com/discourse/discourse) in another local folder.
* In your terminal, go into Discourse folder navigate into the plugins folder. Example ```cd ~/code/discourse/plugins```
* Create a symlink in this folder by typing the following into your terminal
:
```
ln -s ~/whereever_your_cloned_ad_plugin_path_is .
For example: ln -s ~/discourse-plugin-test .
```
* You can now make changes in your locally held Discourse Adplugin folder and see the effect of your changes when your run ```rails s``` in your locally held Discourse Forum files.
- Input ad codes + do a few other things. - DFP in detail with custom targeting - write guide on this.
- Display ad.
* Available Locations for Ad Display
* Ad Sizes Supported
* Trust Levels
* Other.... (TBC)
### Available Locations for Ad Display
Location Name | Description | Image of Location
--- | --- | ---
Topic List Top | Ad will appear at the header of Discourse homepage | [Topic list top](https://www.dropbox.com/sc/cpm9i6jj5dtivjc/AACmgp6qxI-8kMp3F2VVWsvba?dl=1)
Topic Above Post Stream | Ad will appear in the header of all Discourse forum topics | [Topic above post stream](https://www.dropbox.com/sc/1ze0dikrmkfj0wg/AADMGWGVsECEOwZdnmSLGkhZa?dl=1)
Topic Above Suggested | Ad will appear in the footer above suggested topics of all Discourse forum topics | [Topic above suggested](https://www.dropbox.com/sc/y3p2iqwggb5he0e/AAAbrTqZCAYgIhIYE4necmfXa?dl=1)
Post Bottom & Nth Post | Ad will appear on the stipulated nth post within a topic. So if you have 5 posts in a topic and you want the ad to display after on the 2nd post, put 2 in ```ad_platform_nth_post_code```. | [Post bottom](https://www.dropbox.com/sc/pguxq17zo2rovyd/AAD--LTH_IIgVhgczoaY1Ljva?dl=1)
Issues and Pull Requests are greatly appreciated. Bear in mind that when submitting feature requests, if it's not something that most people will use, it probably won't get merged.
