Don’t worry, it’s not complicated at all. Just open your functions.php file in your theme’s folder and scroll to the bottom of the file. Here we’ll add the following code:

function adsense( $code ) {
    $code = '
        Your adsense code
    ';
return $code;
}
add_shortcode( 'myAds', 'adsense' );

Just insert you adsense code in place of the line: Your adsense code, save the file and upload it to your server. Now, when you’re writing a post, you can just type the [myAds] short code where ever you want your Adsense to appear.

A word of warning though, you might want to put the short code after the read more quick tag (<!--more-->) or it will show up in the loop and you might end up have more than the permitted number of ads on a page! Alternatively, you can use the is_single() conditional tag in the function to ensure that the Adsense code is only inserted when the single post is viewed, and not when it’s in the loop.

Just replace the code above with the following code:

function adsense( $code ) {
    if ( ! is_single() ) {
        $code = ' ';
    } else {
        $code = '
            Your adsense code
        ';
    }
    return $code;
}
add_shortcode( 'myAds', 'adsense' );

The obvious place to have your Adsense is on your home page. In this post, we’ll look at inserting Adsense on your hope page. This would be in the loop in the index.php page. As you can guess, it will also be applied to other pages that use the loop, namely the various archives pages.

Let’s begin:

Open the index.php file of your theme and find the line <?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?> and add the following just before this line:

<?php
    $postnum = 1;
    $showadsense1 = n1;
    $showadsense2 = n2;
    $showadsense3 = n3;
?>

Just change n1, n2, and n3 to whatever posts you want the Adsense to appear after. So if you want it to appear after the 1st, 4th and 8th posts, just change it to 1, 4 and 8 respectively. Also, if you only want one Adsense unit in the loop, discard the lines: $showadsense2 = n2; and $showadsense3 = n3;.

Next, scroll down to the line <?php endwhile; ?> and add the following code just before it:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
    echo '
        Your adsense code
    ';
} ?>

<?php $postnum++; ?>

Obviously, you need to replace Your adsense code with your adsense code. If you only want one Adsense unit, discard the second and third bits of php code.

That’s it, just upload the altered index.php page to your theme folder and your Adsense will be enabled.

Maybe you don’t want Adsense to appear on archives pages that have only one post as that might look MFAish? Not a problem, just show Adsense from the second post onward. Alternatively, you can filter out archive pages that have a post count of 1 by using $wp_query->post_count in the first bit of php code that inserts your Adsense code. In other words, you’d replace the code that you inserted before the line <?php endwhile; ?> with the following:

<?php if ($postnum == $showadsense1) {
    if (($wp_query->post_count) == 1) {
        echo ' ' ; }
    else {
        echo '
            Your adsense code
        ';
    }
} ?>

<?php $postnum++; ?>

There’s no need to alter the second and third iterations of the Adsense code as these won’t appear anyway if there’s only one post.

In our next post we’ll look at creating a short code to insert Adsense in your posts.

The date() function

The PHP date() function returns the current timestamp as a string that can be formatted to displayed particular elements of the timestamp, such as the day, the time, the year, etc. In this post we’re interested in the year and there are two PHP format for year: 'Y', which represents the full year, as in 2009, and 'y', which represents the last two digits of the year, as in 09. The format that we use in the four digit format ('Y').

Implementing the date() function

The copyright notice is in the footer.php file of your theme, so you’ll need to open that in a text editor, such as Notepad. Locate the copyright notice and replace it with the following code:

&copy; Copyright 2006-<?php echo date('Y'); ?> <a href="<?php bloginfo('siteurl'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a>

Just change 2006 to the year that you started your blog.

How? You might ask? Well, it’s really simple. Just copy the following code and include it in the .php file of the page in your WordPress theme where you want the RSS feed to be displayed.

<?php include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
wp_rss('http://feeds.feedburner.com/PoiesisWebDev', 3); ?>

This could be your theme’s sidebar, footer or a page template.

First line includes the rss.php file, which is a part of WordPress core and allows us to use the wp_rss() function, which appears in line 2. This function takes two parameters: the url of the RSS feed, and the number of RSS entries to be displayed.

$url = str_replace('index.php/Index.php','index.php',$url);

The only problem is you need to remember to add the line again every time you upgrade WordPress.

UPDATE:
The function clean_url has been replaced with function esc_url. It is at line 2220 in WordPress version 3.0.4.

So where do you insert the posts_nav_link() tag?

You insert it after the loop. In other words, after the <php? endif; > towards the bottom of the file.

If you want to find out more about the posts_nav_link() tag visit the following WordPress pages:

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/posts_nav_link
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Next_and_Previous_Links

Our first WordPress theme, which we’re calling the Simply Smart, is coming along nicely. It’s a dark red, two-column theme with a fixed width of 1024 pixels designed for an automotive weblogs and is sponsored by custom-car.us. It uses a solid background, with an automotive image in the header (of a Smart Car Roadster, hence the “Smart” bit in the name), and a simple (hence the “Simple” bit in the name) two-column layout with a widget-ready side column on the right. It also supports an Author’s Archive page, which is ideal for blogs with multiple authors, like this blog (I guess we’ll be implementing it here too then).

We’ve sorted out a subdomain for the themes and theme demos. The subdomain is here: WordPress Themes

Download • Live Demo