How-to Make WordPress iNove Theme Adsense Friendly

When I initially selected my WordPress theme,  I did not really plan on using Adsense, so I just chose one which looked nice to me and fulfilled some other requirements. I finally went with iNove theme.

However, after 3 or 4 months, I decided to give a go at Google Adsense and installed Advertising Manager plugin.

I created a new Ad unit with a 300×250 resolution to put in the side bar, it was slightly cut on the right but was still looking OK. Later, I wanted to add a leaderboard ad (728×90) on top of the page to hopefully increase the CTR. However, that one was cut even more, although it looked OK in Chrome OS and Firefox, it looked awful in Internet Explorer. So I decided to adjust the size of the main section and the sidebar for iNove theme.

Here are the steps to follow to resize the iNove theme as in this blog:

1. Rename and re-size some theme pictures namely:
   • header.jpg -> header2.jpg (1105×90)
   • footer.jpg -> footer2.jpg (1105×88)
   • sidesep.gif-> sidesep2.gif (333×1)
2. Upload those 3 new files to wp-content/themes/inove/img via FTP
3. Go to WordPress Dashboard, select Editor in the Appearance section and open the file style.php
4. In style.php, look for header.jpg, footer.jpg, sidesep.gif and replace them respectively with header2.jpg, footer2.jpg and sidesep2.jpg.
   

   #header {
   background:url(img/header2.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
   height:90px;
   border-bottom:1px solid #A6A6A6;
   overflow:hidden;
   }

5. Now change the total width to 1105
   

   #container {
   margin:0 auto;
   width:1105px;
   }

6. Change to main section width to 743
   

   /* main START */
   #main {
   background:#FFF url(img/main_shadow.gif) top repeat-x;
   width:743px;
   padding:13px 15px 15px;
   float:left;
   overflow:hidden;
   }

7. Change the sidebar width to 332
   

   /* sidebar START */
   #sidebar {
   background:#F7F7F7 url(img/sidebar_shadow.gif) top repeat-x;
   width:332px;
   float:right;
   font-size:95%;
   line-height:145%;
   overflow:hidden;
   padding-top:8px;
   }

8. Change the comments text box width to 739
   

   #comment {
   width:739px;
   }

9. Click on Update File and check if your blog has been widen.

To add a Leader Board Ad unit at the top of the main section, simply to go Appearance->Current Theme Options, paste your Adsense code into the Notice text box, tick “This notice bar will display at the top of posts on homepage.” and click Save Changes.

For the sidebar Ad unit, I used Advertising Manager Widget to add it at the top of the North Sidebar.

That’s it !

There is one known issue that I could not fix, if you have an idea about let me know in the comments section:

The iNove theme has a vertical bar to separate the main section (on the left) and the sidebar (on the right), after the changes above this vertical bar is gone as you can see in this blog.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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