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

The Internal Stylesheet

If you use a CSS style in the header element you need to enclose it in a style element, as in:

<head>
<title>Your Page Title<title>
<style type="text/css">
CSS Content
</style>
</head>

The CSS styles defined in the head element will be applied only to that page, which means you need to define CSS styles for each page, and you need to update each page when you change your design.

The External Stylesheet

An external CSS stylesheet exists in a separate .css file and is referenced by a link in the header element, as in:

<head>
<title>Your Page Title<title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="path to stylesheet.css" >
</head>

or it can be imported into the page in the header element, as in:

<head>
<title>Your Page Title<title>
<style type="text/css">@import url(path to stylesheet.css)</style>
</head>

The external CSS stylesheet can also reference other external stylesheets by simply using @import "path to stylesheet.css". The styles from the imported stylesheet will be inserted where the @import "path to stylesheet.css" line is located. This is important to remember as subsequent styles that use the same selector name or the same class name will override previously declared styles.

The major advantage of having an external .css stylesheet lies in the fact that you only need to make changes to the external CSS stylesheet when you change your web site design and those changes will be implemented on all pages that reference the external stylesheet. This improves web site maintenance and flexibility, while reducing html file size and reducing bandwith usage.

Inline Styles

Finally, inline styles are placed directly in the element that you want to style using the CSS syntax property: value. For example, <div style="background-color: red;"< will give the div a red background color. This defeats the purpose of CSS and makes the maintenance of a web site more complicated.