Hi guys,
Like most people, I'm totally sick of reading phpbb Adsense advice threads from 2011. I'm starting this thread to get a refreshed 2017 answer on two fundamental questions that I think are confusing a lot of people:
What is the most recommended method through which to put Adsense on a phpbb 3.2 website?
Where exactly can ads be placed in phpbb while remaining loyal to Google's Terms of Service?
Those of us that have searched for advice regarding the above have likely come across the following three methods and the confused and very dated conversations that bubble around them:
1. Ashus's Adsense extension -
viewtopic.php?f=536&t=2318556&hilit=adsense
2. Stoker's Adsense & Ads for phpBB extension -
viewtopic.php?f=456&t=2356806
3. This random dude's tutorial on putting Adsense directly into phpbb style files:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k2EkRRohEM
Just a quick comment on each method:
My problem with number 1 is that it is an extension designed for 3.1, so this involves tailoring it for 3.2 and hoping everything goes OK, even in future when updating to new versions of phpbb. Thus, the method has an uncertainty to it, and that makes me (and I imagine others) nervous about using this extension. In this thread, for example,
viewtopic.php?f=556&t=2407796, you can see that even phpbb's official support team aren't sure if the extension is 3.2 compliant.
Number 2 (Stoker's) looks like a very solid extension, but two issues come up. For one, community and tech admins here in phpbb forums seem to avoid threads discussing Stoker's extension, which makes me uncertain about the its legitimacy and phpbb support team approval. Secondly, the extension is not designed exclusively for use with Adsense, so again we're back to the question of where exactly can ads be placed without upsetting Google's TOS.
Number 3 (YouTube guy) seems simple enough, and has the advantage of not requiring a third party extension on your forum, but posting ads to overall_header and overall_footer -- basically ads that appear on every page on your forum -- seems to be asking for trouble with regards to Google's Terms of Service, as argued by Lumpy here:
viewtopic.php?f=456&t=2356806&start=60#p14413866
These methods need to be balanced with what is stipulated by Google's TOS, so let's take a look at that.
Google's Ad Placement Policies at first appear surprisingly lax when it comes to placement within a platform like phpbb, but this is a bit misleading, as I'll explain. Have a review of the policies here:
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1346295
This document stipulates clearly that ads can appear behind login protected pages (i.e. ads can be shown to users after they've logged in to phpbb). Ads are not to be put on 'dynamic content', which, as I understand it, does not apply to the phpbb experience unless you've got a comment autoloader running. Ads can appear on non-Google search results pages. All good.
The game changing line as far as phpbb goes is this one:
'
Publishers are not permitted to place ads on any non-content based pages like thank you, error, log in, or exit pages.'
So basically you cannot put ads in a generic spot on the site where they are always visible (like at the very top, very bottom or in a sidebar) because when a user goes to register on your site, log in, log out, or experiences any kind of error page or page otherwise without content, the display of an ad puts the website outside the TOS. The first two methods suggested by the YouTube tutorial -- at the top or bottom of the page by editing overall_header / overall_footer -- can therefore be considered debunked.
It sounds to me like the only consistently safe place where Google Adsense ads can appear in phpbb is among the forum thread categories or within the conversation threads themselves, i.e. after the opening post. If your ads appear here, you are in the clear, and according to the YouTube tutorial above this can be done without extension by editing viewtopic_boy.html like this:
Very interested to hear what others think/recommend/have experienced.