Drupal - adding square ads to the body of articles - php

Question

I need to insert a google adsense square box in the middle of all articles on the site.
What is the best approach?
The site is in drupal, so I figures I can hook to the view node function. this way the ad won't be saved together with the article. does that make sense? If so, than the question is how do I ensure I won't have image on the other side of the ad (the ad is aligned to the left and should take 50% of the article width)?
should I be using a block? but how will I know to place the block in inside the block.
So in short, I really have no idea where to start to implement it... How is this thing implemented in all the news sites?

Answer 1

I'd approach it by implementing a custom input filter that would insert the AdSense code (or the AdSense module shortcode, if you want) into the processed text. Once you have that custom filter implemented, you'll have to enable it in the text format you're using for the content type.
For implementing a custom filter, take a look at filter_example here.

Answer 2

This solution is for Drupal 7. The solution which worked for me is that I used the adsense tags format and then used this format to show ads on the site. Note that this line doesnot need any js inclusion or script tags. You just need to enable the Adsense tags format(I mean shortcode). Actually I was getting Ads disabled for admin and for other users i was getting the empty ad with space occupied on page but nothing shown. After different tweaks and experiments I got the following code working for me
[adsense:336x280:XXXXXXXXXX]
2nd parameter is width x height
3rd parameter: XXXXXXXXXX denotes the google ad slot/id.
I hope this will help others.
Ata ul Mustafa

Answer 3

I need to insert a google adsense square box in the middle of all articles on the site. What is the best approach?
From my experience:
On some drupal sites I used simply node editor to put box with adsense into content. For websites with not many nodes its best solution because of:
1) Box perfect fits in rest of content - you can change it manually.
2) Total control of viewed boxes - images, flash, text adds etc.
Etc.
But for websites with many nodes, this solution looks like stupid suicide.
Better option will be change node.tpl file in your theme folder. But there is some trouble. In this file, you have $content variable, with contains all of content in this node. This situation gives you ability to put box up or down of this node. But no in the middle. Perhaps solution will be to divide $content into 2x variables which will contains a half of contents. But question is - how do to it? Or maybe while content from node is saved into database, then you can put some html code with adsense box? And search best position to put box by regular expressions? Or maybe change all of nodes by adding html box directly in database?
should I be using a block? but how will I know to place the block in
inside the block.
As I remember, you cannot put block inside another block.