ThePrudentNinja

I somehow missed that. A suggestion, the settings page should probably be redone a bit to make it less confusing and messy. Unchecking that did the trick though. Thank you.

There is no cache plugin and I have already cleared the cache and even tried loading the site in incognito mode.

https://centralncnews.com/

Not sure if they would cause any issues but here are some plugins I have that may need to be looked into.

IP Geo Block
W3 Total Cache
All In One WP Security

I have had some prior issues with multisite (switched back to regular for various reasons) with the IP Geo Block plugin. Might want to see if it could be causing issues with your plugin.

Alright, I found a workaround (maybe it can shed some light on the issue?).

If I hold ctrl then click a tab, a new tab (in Firefox) opens and gets sent back to the connect to piwik tab but the original browser tab shows the tab I clicked on. This has allowed me to set up the plugin.

After some closer observations, the Connect to piwik tab on the settings page for this plugin doesn’t refresh. However if I try to click any other tab it immediately takes me back to the connect to piwik tab. It’s already connected or so it says. However I can’t change any settings as it refuses to let me stay on any tab except the connect to piwik tab.

There is surely something with the W3 Total Cache. I can now replicate the issue each time I activate it and the issue goes away each time I deactivate it. I changed the “Response code” to “503 Service Unavailable” but the error is still 403. I will leave everything as is for now since the affected site is not “public” yet.

It seems to have been fixed. I’m still not sure “what” was causing it but it was related to this plugin since when disabled there was no 403.

It may be a conflict with the W3 Total Cache plugin, I had it “network enabled” for all the sites on the multisite for ease and I disabled it and a few minutes later it seemed to fix itself. The IP Geo Block settings are still as they were when it didn’t work right. The only known change between working and not working is the “network disabling” of the W3 Total Cache plugin. However after enabling it again network wide, I can’t reproduce the 403 problem.

If you need more information, please let me know. Thank you.

EDIT: I created a new site in the multisite with the W3 Total Cache plugin “network activated” and the same 403 issue showed again. I disabled the W3 Total Cache network wide and the problem cleared up. It looks to me like a conflict between W3 Total Cache and IP Geo Block.

Thank you for your reply, but it is already set as such and the problem is there.

My point was not to let supporters edit posts. Only read (like Subscribers). I just used a role editor to edit the Contributor role so that those in that role (renamed to Supporter) can read just like subscribers and nothing more. The only difference between the two in my setup is one doesn’t see ads.

The original issue I had concerning all this is with a role editor, I created a new role (a clone of Subscriber but renamed) and tried to set it in Advanced Ads to not show ads to that newly created role. However it didn’t show up.

So, I used the role editor to edit the Contributor role (since I’m not using it and have no plans to use it) so that it is exactly the same as the Subscriber when it comes to permissions (can only read) but Advanced Ads can let it be set. As I said though I still haven’t tested this. To test this I would need to create a new user and give it the role and see if it shows ads.

“Since others might be interested in the solution too, you can send me the capability a user must have in order to not see ads and I will post the code here.”

Not sure I understand what you are asking. I explained my idea in my previous reply and thought such request was covered in it, unless you are talking about something else.

Basically the only difference between the Subscriber and Supporter is the Supporter doesn’t see ads while the subscriber does. Each have the same set of permissions. With my blog specifically, I have no plans of letting anyone else have any role higher than Subscriber so for me specifically I only need the Admin, Subscriber, and the new Supporter role. For others, not sure. I suspect others would want a choice of who can and cannot see ads based on their roles and probably need the ability to create a new role that is a clone of Subscriber but without the ads. I’m not familiar with the whole plugin system or how plugins work. I just have ideas.

Ad ad plugin or a set of plugins that can work together, that can allow ads to be shown by default while hiding for users who have contributed to the blog I think is a good idea. If it can be automated, even better. I know people don’t like ads but they are a necessary “evil” of websites typically. Running websites cost money and that money has to come from somewhere. The owner of the website may foot the bill for a year or so but sooner or later they will get tired of it. To keep the site alive, it has to pay for itself. If a site becomes really popular, it becomes even more important. This is why I suggested if an automated solution be used to allow the blog owner to setup a page explaining the ads and the contributions. Many probably just don’t think about WHY ads are there.

The workaround I ended up with is I installed a role editor plugin and changed the “Contributor” role. I cloned the permissions of subscriber into the Contributor role then renamed it “Supporter”. I then pointed the Advanced Ads setting to “Contributor”. I haven’t had a chance to test it but not in too big of a hurry since my blog is still pretty new.

I think a decent setup is to show ads to all except those of certain roles (like admin and the new supporter role). Hiding ads from bots is also a good idea. Helps prevent fake views.

The purpose of my wanting the above setup is simply to show ads by default (need to pay the bills and ads can help) but allow hiding of ads to users who financially support the blog (why should they see ads when they have given the blog money?). My idea was to eventually offer a donation button of some sort and anyone who donates and notes their user name will get X amount of ad-free time. Say for example they donate $10. That could get them six months of ad-free site access. $20 could get them a year. So on and so forth. Of course I was planning to manually change their user role from Subscriber to Supporter but if there was an automatic method of doing such, it would be great. Of course I assume such features in an ad plugin would be paid features (hopefully not too much lol). If such paid features were to be created, it would be great to integrate with Paypal and other online payment processors so a page could be setup by the blog admin and include a button the Subscriber could click and donate and depending on how much they donate, they get X amount of time as a Supporter with ad-free access to the site. When their time is up, they get switched back to Subscriber.

That’s about it for my ideas for this plugin at this time.

After a bunch of checks and double checks, I found the problem and feel a little foolish about it as I should have known. I’m posting here what happened and the solution in case someone else has this “problem”.

In the Advanced Ads settings, I had checked “Disable ads on non-singular pages” because I didn’t want my post banner ads (each post has a small banner at the top of each post) cluttering up the front page. However I didn’t realize this setting also prevents Advanced Ad widgets from displaying on the front page even if in the sidebar. When visiting a post page, the widget shows the ad.

So, my feature suggestion is to have separate settings for widgets or a setting that the blog owner can toggle to show ad widgets even on non-singular pages while disabling ads on non-singular pages.

I made the mistake of just viewing the front page to test the widget. I never checked a post page until today when my theme was updated (I checked to make sure everything was right and spotted the test ad in the ad widget showing).

I just added a plain text ad to advanced ads and put it to display in the advanced ads widget (above the current area with the hardcoded adsense ad which will display once approved for the site). All the test ad says is “adte”. It still will not show.

The side bar to the right should be from the top down: the “adte” text “ad” in the advanced ads widget, adsense hardcoded into an html widget, then the search form.

I just can’t seem to get the advanced ads widget to work. I even tried using my post ads (which do work) in the sidebar just to test and they still don’t show in the sidebar. Either I’m overlooking some important configuration for the widget/ad or the widget isn’t working as it should.

A side note, although a little tedious, advanced ads has thus far been a rather good plugin except for this widget problem. Thank you.