Use Thesis Multimedia Box as Affiliate Ads Rotator

Thesis Theme has a nice little Multimedia box, that can be put to use for various purposes.  In this post, I will show you how it can be used as your Affiliate Ads rotator.

And that without writing any code in the Custom files!

1. Preparing Affiliate Images and Links

First, you will need to prepare your Affiliate Images and the corresponding links. Since we are setting up things on the sidebar, don’t go for Banner like Images (e.g., 468 x 60). Also, try to use 5 Affiliate Ads or less on the Multimedia box (otherwise, it gets too rotating!)

For illustration purposes, I am using Affiliate Images of dimensions 300 x 250 (Width is 300px and Height is 250px)

Once you have the Images and the Affiliate Links ready, move on to the next step

2. Uploading Affiliate Images

You should have a FTP Software (like Filezilla) and FTP Access to your WordPress Installation to complete this step.

• Navigate to /wp-content/themes/ /custom/rotator folder
• Delete all the existing Images named as sample-1.jpg etc.
• Upload all the Affiliate Images you prepared to this folder

Done!

3. Setting up the Sidebar and Affiliate Links

Now it’s time to get into WP Admin => Thesis Administration Area. Get into the “Design Options” section of your Thesis Installation!

Expand the section labeled “Site Layout” to choose the Sidebar Width:

• If you use “2 Columns”, then the Width of Sidebar 1 must be 300px
• If you use “3 Columns”, then the Combined Width of Sidebar 1 and Sidebar 2 must be 300px
• In short, the Combined Width of Sidebars must equal the Width of your Affiliate Images

Expand the section labeled “Multimedia Box” and choose the following options:

• Rotating Images under the Default Settings
• Enter the “Alt Text” for each Image that appears (all images you uploaded should appear here)
• Enter the Affiliate Link corresponding to each Image using “add link”
• Save your “Design Options”

4. Nothing more!

Just reload the Home page of your Blog and you should start seeing the Rotating Affiliate Images. On clicking each Image, the user will now be taken to the Target Affiliate Link.

And, remember we never wrote a single line of code in any of the files!

Here is a sample from our Test Page:

It is recommended to use a masked Affiliate Link, which we will talk about in the next post.

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