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Ads Manager lets you place image ads, Google AdSense units, Facebook Pixel code, or any custom HTML/JS snippet at fixed positions across your directory — on listing pages, category pages, location pages, search pages, the dashboard, and more — without editing a template file.
Enabling the extension #
At first, download Directorist Ads Manager from your User Dashboard & Activate. Then Enable it from Directorist setting.
Path: WP Admin Dashboard → Directorist → Settings → Extensions → Extensions General
[SCREENSHOT: Settings → Extensions → Extensions General tab, showing the “Enable Ads Manager” toggle.]
Ads Manager ships as a separate plugin that plugs into Directorist. Once it’s installed and activated like any WordPress plugin, it adds one toggle to Directorist’s Extensions settings:
- Enable Ads Manager — on by default. Turning this off completely removes the Ads menu, the ad shortcode, and the ad-placement logic from the site; it does not delete any ads you’ve already created.
Creating an ad #
Path: WP Admin Dashboard → Directorist → Ads → Add New Ad
[SCREENSHOT: The “Add New Ad” screen showing the title field and the three metaboxes: Type of Ad, Select Pages & Placement, Additional Settings.]
Every ad is its own entry in the Ads list (similar to a post), with a title field (for your own reference — visitors never see it) and three sections underneath.
1. Type of Ad #
[SCREENSHOT: The “Type of Ad” metabox, showing the four ad-type icons — Image, Google Adsense, Facebook Pixel, Custom HTML/JS — with one selected.]
Pick one of four ad types:
- Image — upload an image, then set a Target URL (where clicking the ad sends visitors), an optional rel Attribute (Sponsored, UGC, Do Follow, or No Follow — useful for disclosing paid placements to search engines), and whether the link Opens in the same tab or a new tab.
- Google Adsense — paste your AdSense ad unit code into the code box; it renders as-is wherever you place the ad.
- Facebook Pixel — paste your Pixel/tracking snippet the same way.
- Custom HTML/JS — paste any HTML, CSS, or JavaScript snippet (banner code from an ad network, a promo block, an embed, etc.), plus its own Target URL, rel attribute, and open-in-tab setting.
Only the fields relevant to the selected type appear — choosing Image hides the raw code box, and vice versa.
2. Select Pages & Placement #
[SCREENSHOT: The “Select Pages & Placement” metabox, showing the page checkboxes and the placement-position checkboxes that appear underneath a selected page.]
First, tick which page(s) this ad should appear on:
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| All Listing | The archive/grid of all listings |
| Single Listing | An individual listing’s detail page |
| All Category | The archive page for a category |
| Single Category | An individual category’s listing page |
| All Location | The archive page for a location |
| Single Location | An individual location’s listing page |
| Add Listing | The front-end listing submission form |
| Dashboard | The logged-in user’s dashboard |
| Author Profile | A listing author’s public profile page |
| Search Home | The main search/landing page |
| Search Result | The search results page |
Each page you check reveals its own set of placement checkboxes — the exact positions differ by page since not every page has the same layout. For example:
- All Listing: Before Header, Before Filter, After Filter, Before Pagination, After Pagination, After Footer
- Single Listing: Before Header, After Title, After Footer
- All/Single Category and All/Single Location: Before Header, Before Loop (or Before Filter on the single pages), After Filter, After Loop, After Footer
- Add Listing: Before Header, Before “Add New” Title, After Save/Preview Button, After Footer
- Dashboard: Before Header, Before Pagination, After Footer
- Author Profile: Before Header, Before Author Image, After Author Image, After Author About, Before Loop, After Footer
- Search Home: Before Header, Before Search Bar, After Search Bar, After Footer
- Search Result: Before Header, Before Filter, After Filter, After Loop, After Footer
You can check more than one placement per page — the same ad will render at every position you select.
[SCREENSHOT: The Before Header / After Footer ad size fields (Width / Height in px) shown after a “Before Header” or “After Footer” placement is checked.]
For Before Header and After Footer placements, you can also set a fixed Width and Height (in px) so the ad reserves consistent space regardless of content.
Note: the metabox also includes size and repeat controls labeled “As Card” and “Full Row” (for showing an ad styled like a listing card, or spanning a full row, inside a listing grid). In the installed version (2.2) these two placement types aren’t available as checkable positions on any page yet — the sizing fields are present in the interface, but there’s no way to actually select “as card” or “full row” as a placement. Treat the position checkboxes listed above as the ones that currently work.
3. Additional Settings #
- Only For Logged In Users — Yes/No. When set to Yes, logged-out visitors simply won’t see the ad at all.
- Ad Expiry — set the ad to expire after a number of Days, after a specific Hour of the day, or mark it Never Expires. Day-based expiry counts from the ad’s publish date.
- After expiration — choose what happens once the ad expires:
- Leave The Ad As It Is — the placement is simply left empty (nothing renders).
- Show Contact For Ad Image — upload a fallback image (e.g., “This ad space is available — contact us”) to display instead once the original ad expires.
Click Publish (or Update) to save the ad. It will now appear automatically at every page/placement combination you selected, as long as it hasn’t expired and the visibility rule (logged-in-only) is satisfied.
Displaying ads outside the built-in placements #
Beyond the automatic page placements above, there are two more ways to insert a specific ad anywhere else on the site:
Shortcode #
[directorist_ads_manager id="123"]
Replace 123 with the ad’s post ID (visible in the Ads list, or in the URL when editing the ad). Drop this shortcode into any page, post, or widget area that accepts shortcodes to render that specific ad there — it respects the same expiry and logged-in-only rules configured on the ad itself.
Widget #
Path: WP Admin Dashboard → Appearance → Widgets → Directorist – Ads Manager
Drag the Directorist – Ads Manager widget into any widget-ready area (typically a sidebar), then choose which ad to display from the dropdown. This is the simplest option for ads that only need to appear in a sidebar rather than inline in the directory pages themselves.
