Originally posted by harleyb
Anyway, your guidance helped me get it right and I thank you. But there is a little information missing that I feel may confuse some webmasters, so I would like to give it my own step-by-step to prevent a series of questions to follow.
- Create an account on your forums for the Adsense spider that has access to all the pages you want to serve ads on. Test the account by logging in manually and ensuring that it's good to go.
- Visit http://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/md5.php and enter the password you chose to get the MD5 Hash equivalent.
- Go to http://www.google.com/adsense/list-auth and press the + Add a login link.
- In the Restricted Directory or URL: box, enter the URL to your forum home page (http://yoursite.com/forum/).
- In the Authentication URL: box, enter http://yoursite.com/forum/login.php?do=login (change the URL to reflect your own domain name and forums folder).
- From the Authentication Method: drop-down, select POST.
- In the Parameters: section, enter the following data in the Attribute and Value boxes (you will have to add 2 additional parameters to the 2 default ones by clicking the "add another parameter" link):
- Attribute: vb_login_username Value: <the username you chose>
- Attribute: do Value: login
- Attribute: vb_login_md5password Value: <the MD5 Hash of the password>
- Attribute: vb_login_md5password_utf Value: <the MD5 Hash of the password>
- Click the Test My Authentication URL link to ensure it's working.
Thank you again, harleyb. I really appreciate the information that now makes it possible for me to add my private forums as an additional revenue source.
Jim
NOTE: after further testing, I find this does NOT work. The testing on the Google Adsense Site Authorization page works, but the spider does not actually login to the forum when it visits. Please watch for further developments to this issue here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=293075