AdRotate Pro 6 is on the horizon
| 3 min read
Over the past few months I've been working on AdRotate Pro 6. It's been pretty much 6 years since AdRotate Pro 5.0 released. Which released in early 2019. Going from 4 to 5 also took a few years.
That doesn't mean nothing has changed in the last few years. Lots has changed. But nothing all that major, just smaller updates; A new layout here and there, tons of tweaking and fine-tuning, sure. Feature overhauls, yeah! Lots of that. But no major rewrites or modernizations in one update.
AdRotate Pro 6 will overhaul the whole output side of the plugin. I'm finally adding Javascript ads. And we'll be using the WP-Rest API for that, with pure Javascript. No Node.js, jQuery or any of that. Just straight-forward Javascript.
Initial testing is looking good, but if you're interested in helping testing - Open a ticket. You'll need a AdRotate Pro license to participate though. For now all improvements are for AdRotate Pro only!
Current beta versions are not compatible with AdRotate Pro 5. And a rollback to an older version is unlikely to work. So if you do want to help, make sure you have a test website ready.
With the addition of Javascript ads a lot of smaller features can be re-purposed or even removed. There won't be a need for AdBlock Disguise for example, that's now built-in, enabled per default. No more reliance on fragmented caching. And the option to enable Repeat Impression counting for Dynamic groups is gone too, this will be enabled, all the time, and built in. With a greater reliance on the Impression Timer.
A couple of smaller features for ad sizing, group alignment and such will be repurposed to fit the more modern Grid Groups and Dynamic Groups. Grid groups will use a CSS Grid, instead of a pile of CSS trickery with Divs. This replaces the older Block Groups. Wallpaper ads will be removed as well, you can still use those. But the dedicated group mode will be removed. Just add them manually in the footer if you want those. And lots and lots of smaller changes. Check out the release notes when the update becomes available to see the full list of changes and improvements.
Release date? What? No - No date is set. I've been working on this for the last 3-4 months. Thinking about it for the last 3 years - Just to get the right idea for what to do next. But if things keep doing OK-ish, a release date before Christmas should be possible.
Maybe, probably...