Best Ad Management Script for Vbulletin?
 

We havent used vbulletin in a couple years and we recently purchased a 3.0 license for a new project. In the past we always used phpadsnew but since we have been out of it for so long we wanted to see what the best solution is at this time. Here is a breakdown of our needs and current situation:

We will be installing the vbadvanced hack so that we can have a homepage.

We need to be able to implement all different size banners, in many different locations

We need good statistics & tracking

We need the ability to place an ad in only a certain forum

We need the ability to have a "sponsor" for a forum where that sponsors ad will appear on the forum homepage with that forum, as well as the forum display page.

We need to be able to use both regular ads and html ads (code form external affiliate programs)

That is about the extent of it. If the answer is still phpadsnew, please let us know what is needed to integrate it with vb 3. I honestly dont even remember what we had to do to make it work with 2.x

Thanks in advance!

Oh and we also need the ability to disable all ads if a user is in a certain paid usergroup. Would this be easily possible with any ad serving solution?

phpadsnew2 - lot's of improvements over 1.0.0 and with the proper combination of zones and template conditionals on vbulletin's end you can accomplish everything you listed.

I'd also say phpAdsNew 2.
I use this on my board and am totally satisfied.

Sounds like a winner to me guys. Thank you for aiming me in the right direction.

I'll probably be back with more questions once I get it up and running and spend some time playing with it.

Ok guys..... I just looked over things and I already have phpadsnew 2 installed and a few ads added to the software. I set the site up in May and im just now getting back around to finishing it up.

So here is the big question.... with vbulletin 3.0.3, what is the best way to add an ad to the header, and one in the footer, and then how would I add one in a specific forum?

i believe the arrow ads is out for vb3, might wanna chek on that

Bump... can someone explain to me how to get an ad to show up in various places (ie homepage, forumhome, foum display, etc)

Thanks in advance

PHPAdsnew2 allows you to create zones which in turn have specific ad ranges. Those zones also have specific invocation codes. You can use vbulletin conditionals to determine which invocation code is included into the page.

For example

I'm not too sure about that last one - been awhile since I've used vbadvanced homepage (We use vbadvanced CMPS). You can figure out the conditional by opening up the file in a text editor and looking for the code that reads

But instead of index it will say something else. You can also use this to determine the code you want to use on things that don't have forums associated with them like the usercp, who's online screen and private messaging.

Sorry to be ignorant, but which file do I need to define this in? Also we plan to use Vbadvanced CMPS as well. If I want it to appear in forumhome do I need to actually open the php script or can it be defined in a template someplace? Also, I vaguely remember having to put something in the php parse section in the control panel with 2.x with php_start() or something like that. Does this still apply?

Could you post the exact code you use to get those ads on your vbadvanced homepage and other pages at the top? Also let me know exactly where you place the code.

Thanks in advance! It has been a while since I have messed with this stuff.

Thanks

Those are template conditionals. You put them in the template where the ad will appear along with the rest of the HTML. If you're ads going to be in the header, then it all goes in the $header template.

The name of the CPMS index is

adv_index

So the conditional is

Our code won't work for you - if you use it you'll call up our ads :)

phpadsnew2 generates the ad code itself. Go to Publisher's & Zones and select "Generate Invocation Code" and use the "Remote invocation by javascript" - that's easier than trying to splice and php from phpadsnew into vbulletin.

Thanks Michael.

Just to clarify, my code will always go in the template for whichever page I want it to appear on, right?

$header is global - meaning it's called on all pages. If you want 4 zones for four different pages you'll put the invocation codes for ALL of them in the header. Each one should be surrounded by the appropriate conditional tags. Hence

<if>Ad 1
<else /><if>Ad 2
<else /><if>Ad 3
<else />Ad 4
</if></if></if>

Ok I got that part..... but now how does vbulletin know where to put the ad on the page? For example, if I want a little ad on the forum home page to show a "sponsor" for a specific category, I would somehow need to call that ad right next to the category name. So from what you have said I understand I need to put the conditions in the header template, but now what other code needs to be put (and where) to get the small ads to show up.

Thanks again

You put the code in the spot you want it to show up in. If you open a template, say forumhome, you're looking at an outline of the page before the values of any variables are plugged in. You put all that code at the location you want it. You may need to use tables for some additional formatting, depending on what you're looking for.

Hi again,

Thanks for all your help, ive got one more question.

We ditched the vbadvanced page and dont need to worry about what ads are on what pages. We just need to be able to call 2 468x60 banners, and one or two small side banners for each page. Right now we are only able to call 1 large banner at the top.

Here is how we are doing it:

In the php_include section in styles we have:

Then on in the header template where we have the banner showing we have:

This works great to call a random 468 banner at the top, but we want to call one more at the bottom, and then one of the small size ones on the side.

Thanks in advance!

Hey guys,

I decided to install phpadsnew on a different domain so that I can setup zones and have advertising across all of my sites. What would be the best way to call the ads into vbulletin now that I have it setup like this? Can you give me an example?