Zero Ad Network

FAQ

How do I test without buying a membership?

1. In Websites & creators, open your website and select Test in your browser. The Zero Ad Network extension must be installed.
2. Keep Freedom turned on in the extension, then open or reload your website.
3. Check pages with ads, banners and popups. They should be clean.
4. Open included paid content. It should open. Unselected, private, draft and password-protected content should stay protected.
5. Select Turn Freedom off in the extension, and reload. You should see your normal website.

Test visits earn nothing. A website membership you already have can still grant access on its own.

Then repeat with warm page caches. Load an ordinary page first, test the subscriber visit, then return to the ordinary page. Subscriber pages must never be shown to other visitors.

My website isn’t detected. What should I check?

• The plugin is enabled, and the Publisher ID is correct.
• Your public pages include Better-Web-Publisher, as a response header or meta tag.
• Old cached pages are cleared.

Websites also appear on their own after a subscriber visits and their activity is uploaded and processed. This isn’t instant.

Subscribers still see ads or a paywall. What should I check?

1. Reload the page. The first visit to a newly discovered website may not carry a token.
2. Check that Better-Web-Token reaches WordPress. A page cache or CDN is the usual cause.
3. Check that your public hostname matches your WordPress Address and Site Address.
4. Check the compatibility reference for the affected plugin.

A successful Publisher ID check doesn’t test ad removal or paid-content access.

Does verification contact Zero Ad Network on every page load?

No. The plugin checks signed membership tokens locally, using the bundled PHP SDK and Sodium. A token made for another hostname never grants access.

Under Performance & Caching, Enable APCu Caching reuses verification results between requests when APCu is available. Without APCu, results last for the current request only. Turning the setting off turns off verification caching. Cache TTL (seconds) sets how long results are kept.

This is separate from page caching. Token requests must still skip your page cache.

Does it block every tracker or replace my consent setup?

No. It targets specific ad, consent and marketing plugins, and matching scripts. It isn’t a general tracking blocker, and doesn’t manage consent for your whole website.

Some integrations make consent-status filters return “accepted”. Check the subscriber page’s actual scripts and network requests, especially where custom code relies on those filters. Configure unsupported tracking and custom placements yourself.

External service and privacy

This plugin connects to Zero Ad Network. The service manages memberships, issues signed membership credentials, processes attention reports and calculates publisher earnings. You need a publisher account, but not a paid membership. Visitors use their own membership and browser extension.

What the plugin does:

• It makes no outbound requests for verification or telemetry.
• When enabled, it publishes your Publisher ID in a response header or meta tag, for the extension to find.
• It stores its settings, your included-content selections and the welcome-notice dismissal in WordPress. Optional APCu caching stores verification results on your server.

What the extension does, separately:

• It reports account-linked activity to Zero Ad Network: Publisher ID, hostname, measured time, views and, for creator pages, page URLs. This reporting is not anonymous.

Subscriber tokens contain no account ID, name or email. Repeated use can be correlated on the same hostname while a token is valid.

Read the service’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before taking part.

Where can I find setup help?

The WordPress integration guide covers setup, cache configuration, compatibility, custom content access and troubleshooting.