NodeBB and ads - A never ending story

AOKP

@PitaJ regular visitors do so, but what with one time visitors?
In my use case it was absolutely the right decision and I would do it anytime again.
Even my users support me with that decision.
And no worries about my ad quality, I use AdX (yes I have "premium" access).

Nonetheless I got my own solution for that now. However, I still think that the old script and DFP sync rendering not working are somehow related.

The issue with DFP is related to something at the core and therefore should be properly investigated before it would be too much to get it working again and lets not even talk about small forums. The majority of webmasters still relies on classical banner advertisments.

Before answering a few questions, I would also like to tag @baris. The issue is not that the ads do not show up or anything like that. Actually I even got them reloading a way it suits the Google ToS.

The code which is not working is the so called synchronous rendering of ads, which is done with this function:

    googletag.pubads().enableSyncRendering();

In baris example it would look like this:

<script type='text/javascript'>
  googletag.cmd.push(function() {
    googletag.defineSlot('/80273159/nodebbtest', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-1451410127852-0').addService(googletag.pubads());
    googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
    googletag.pubads().enableSyncRendering();
    googletag.enableServices();
  });
</script>

This function does what it is named like. Synchronous ad rendering. For those who cannot imagine what it does:
Without this function whitespaces on the site will appear and then will be filled with the ads, causing the content to be pushed down.
On a desktop PC this is quite okay, but on a mobile device it is unacceptable.

With this function the site will load just nicely and no content or whatsover will be "pushed" down.

Unfortunately using the synchronous rendering results in the DOM structure to break, causing the forum to dissapear and just the ads to show up. It is basically like the page would only load the ads, but has no content.
None. Even my Google Account Manager looked into it. Nothing was triggered at all.
DFP of course.
Just select to render ads synchronously and place the code on the site. Basically as @baris suggested it down below.

yariplus

Do you have ajaxify disabled? There's no way to do that currently with ajaxify enabled, due to the ad script calling document.write()

AOKP

What exactly is not possible @yariplus? Realoding ads? If you mean that, I have to dissapoint you. They work just fine

Here a little how to for DFP users:
Open up public/src/ajaxify.js and go to line 161 ( function renderTemplate(url, tpl_url, data, callback) { ).
Below app.refreshTitle(data.title); add googletag.pubads().refresh(); .
This will work just fine and complies with Google ToS.

yariplus

I apologise I am not very familiar with DFP.

The problem you describe here: synchronous rendering results in the DOM structure to break, causing the forum to disappear and just the ads to show up. It is basically like the page would only load the ads, but has no content. is the result of a script calling document.write() after a page has loaded.

Since ajaxify asynchronously loads the widget data, I assume something in the widget script must be calling document.write().

AOKP

@yariplus with tags without sync rendering it works just fine though.

TheBronx

Don't know if the problem is the same, but a few years ago I did a custom ad network (because I didn't like DFP) to serve custom banners and Adsense ads. And I had a problem with document.write() too.

The problem was solved overriding the document.write function. Kinda tricky, but worked: before loading the adsense ad, the document.write function is replaced with a custom function that inserts the content into an element, instead of writing it to the dom directly. After inserting the content, the original document.write function is restored.
That is, a one time function replacement.

Here is some code:

var originalFunction = document.write;

overrideDocumentWriteFunction = function(container) {
	document.write = function(content) {
		container.innerHTML = content;
		document.write = originalFunction;
	};
};

And I used it like this:

var div = document.getElementById('adPlacement');
overrideDocumentWriteFunction(div);

var script = document.createElement('script');
script.type = 'text/javascript';
script.innerHTML = '{adsense script content}'
document.body.appendChild(script);

This way the document.write function was customized to ensure the Adsense script worked after the page was loaded.

I haven't tried DFP on NodeBB but maybe this helps.

julian

Ha, that's tricky Does it run afoul of their TOS?

yariplus

@julian I doubt it, since it should only be called once.

This is a neat trick, I don't think it would work as-is with DFP though, how would you determine what content goes into what container? Page order maybe?

AOKP

Thought it was working on the latest master. But nope...

PitaJ

@AOKP so is your only problem with sync rendering?

AOKP

@PitaJ yep. I can get ads to reload fine, the ads work as well. But without synchronous ad rendering the UX is somewhat fucked up.