Geek Advertising Banner system RC1
 

HowdA All.

From the makers of Hydrogen comes the latest mack - GAB (Geek Advertising Banners).

This has come about by needing an advertising system that no other hack seemed to totally fulfill. Personally - I really didnt want to burden myself with supporting another hack - but I felt it was significantly better than other hack systems out there so I thought many would be able to benefit from it.

Whats so freaking cool about it?

1- use flash, normal, text based (google adsense) or rotating banners
2- Decide which scripts run the banners
3- Define which forums run the banners
4- define which usergroups can turn off the banners
5- Make ads stop at x amount of hits
6- Make ads stop at x amount of views
7- Make ads start/stop at certain times
8- track views and/or hits
9- Wipes your bum

Why am I releasing this now? It seems to be hip and trendy to release Banner hacks. In all reality - this has been a very long work in progress that is finally rounding the finsihing stages. The current RC pacakge is considered complete except for the show stats segment (its recording stats, but you cant browse them easily yet).

LIke with any hack (especially a Beta) back up you DB and files needing change (global.php,admincp/index.php).

Known issues:

• Flash ads can not appear on same page as a rotating banner ad.
• After installing for the first time, you will most likely need to edit a phrase (any phrase) and click save to rebuild phrases
• Flash banners hide drop down menus!!! Be careful where you put them or dont use them!

Basic install instructions:

• Upload all files to relevant locations
• chmod the gab and gish folders to 777 (or change the owner of the folders to whatever account your PHP process runs under).
• Run the gab_install.php file in your admincp folder.
• Follow the steps.
• On the file changes - pay close attention to see if certain changes couldnt be made. If any changes could not be made, you need to manually make those changes.
• When complete, move changed files from gish/gab/rc1.0 to their respective locations
• Ad a new cron job to run daily (file: GAB_cron_daily.php)
• Edit each gab category to include the forums you want the ads to appear in.
• Ad $GAB_ads[x] to your templates where ever you want ads to appear (x represents the ad number depending on how many ads are set to run on that script. $GAB_ads[0] is the first ad block, $GAB_ads[1] would be the second, etc...)
• Read The Freaking README!!!!!!!

Quick Upgrade instructions

For users of GAB Beta 2, uninstall it and then install this version. In all reality, you could just revert the file changes and delete the GAB_ tables from yur DB (heck, you dont even need to do that).

To upgrade from RC1.5 to RC1.6, just replace existing files with the latest from the downloaded package and run the template portion of the installer (you can skip the rest of the install steps). You may have to revert your GUSH_main and GUSH_ad_row

Donations

I have never asked for donations for any of the macks I have done - however since I have spent well over 60 hours coding this - I thought I would stick my neck out there. If you like my mack, it brings you some money and you want to keep my fridge stocked with beer and Cheetos, then feel free to drop some cash in my paypal account: geek@thenailgeek.com
If youre having difficulty keeping beer in the fridge yourself - fill yours before you fill mine.
If you think the mack sucks, or youre just a tight git then please dont bother :)

nJoy

Discsussions for RC1 start here-:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...p=727952&pp=15

Info on setting up ads.

Its become apparent that the readme isnt clear enough on how to create ad blocks, so until I update it - here is some extra info :)

Ad blocks are blocks that contain 1 or more ads (either images side by side, rotating, or static.) Essentailly an ad block is whatever comes out in the Standard Wrapper (the block that says 'Please visit our sponsor' at the top).

You define the ad blocks in the Scripts section.

Unless you want different configurations on different pages, use the Master script to define your ad blocks.

Edit the Master script by clicking on its link in the admincp.
There you will see 1 ad block (installed by default).
If you want additional ads, click the 'add new' button whilst editing the script and another ad block will appear for configuring.

In your templates, each ad block will appear as $GAB_ads[x] where x=the ad block (starting at 0). In other words, the first block in the page appears as $GAB_ads[0], the second $GAB_ads[1], etc...

Its pretty simple really ;)

geez everyone has a banner system>_>

Yeah, but do any of the others wipe your bum? Didn't think so!

No, in all seriousness.. if I were to ever implement a banner system, I'd go with Geek's. He offers such good support on his hacks it's hard not to turn them down. Even if you have no use for them.

/me give complete support to Geek on this one... he can even take everything from my other hacks and integrate to his needs... as i'm not giving more support after my own license is ended...

good luck on this one, it's promissing!

Looking forward to this one.. screenshots? :p

Finally, my vB wipes my BUM (with the help of a hck) Now I can die a hapy man.

Looking forward to the finished masterpiece.

reading the install file u forgot to say what is the first file to edit ?

I believe you need to edit global.php

Any screenshots of the admin panels?? Please!! :)

just added ;)

The file edits are in global.php (sorry ;) )

Personally - I think the community would benefit by all the banner hack writers getting together and teaming up to build one. No sense in having 50 different banner hacks that are all slightly different enough to confuse the hell out of people.

The only reason I released this was because I needed one and I couldnt get the functionality I needed from existing hacks. All my hacks are stuff I use on my site because I have a need for them and cant find it somewhere else. Though I will totally support this - it would be nice if some decent coders and other banner writers want to team up and see what happens ;)

nJoy

Is statistics avaible for anyone to see ? Also can we make this like only unregistered users or some usergroups can see the banners ?
Geek it looks like you did a very good job again.

Thanks Lizard.

Yes you can make so only unregistered view. You would just need to add a new profile field (a use a radio button) and set a default. Then put that default in the usergroup section of your GAB settings. I guess I can also add a mechanism whereby it simplifies that process though - wouldnt be hard.

I am bustnig butt on this hack as I need to go live with a full advertising system on my site by the end of this week. That will include:
1- Users able to create their own ads by 'purchasing' from admin designed packages.
2- Users able to manage their own ads (upload new, view reports on frequency of hits, views, etc..)
3- Users able to purchase packages via paypal.

I may not get the full user management side done this week (doubt I will). But that is where I am going with it. I just need to make sure everything else is working well.

Sounds very cool.

But if I click on a banner I get:

PHP5 Problem?

Ok I added:

in GAB_redirect.php
Now a new window is being opened but the site cannot be displayed. Although the array.merge error is gone..

Try the new package (overwrite all files).. not sure if that will help as I cant reproduce it.

New package addresses:

fixed minor typo in README (didnt say which file to edit)
Put some info on how the banners are pulled in README
Added settings for which usergroups see ad
removed extra isactive setting
Fixed flash banners not appearing
Added new setting for #of ads in rotating banner
Flash ads now appear when editing ads
To update from 1.00 just overwrite GAB_admin.php, GAB_redirect and functions_gab.php

Cool. I addded a couple of those arrays to GAB_redirect in the 1.01 package, but not action templates or globaltemplates.
Ill put those in 1.02 (though I dont think they are really needed).
Make sure that the URL in the ad is valid and that it doesnt start with http://
In 1.02 ill make it so it will have to have http:// to work though.

Works perfectly on PHP5 now, thanks! Very good work :)
I'll continue testing..

That's exactly why i suggest you to merge my own banner/sponsors hacks... you have my full permission, and my welcome on this... i may provide some support here and there, but as i quit the community in less than 2 months, i will not "support" the script by myself!

More Feedback:

Somewhere there's a bug in rage. I'm not sure if it's a problem of PHP5. As soon as I made the modifications to global.php the "Write a PM" Site is bogus.

On the top of the "Write a PM Page" it says:
And most phrases are empty. Additionaly the quick reply box is screwed, directly after the global.php changes. When reverting globa.php changes everything is fine..

problem with your modification of phrasecalls, make it like this one and everything will be ok:
put this on top of global.php...

wow - thats a trip!

Cant reproduce. What page do you get that error on (i.e. private.php?do=newpm)? Im running PHP4x and I didnt get the error before - looks like PHP5 is more serious about these things. However, I am not sure what would cause an emptying of the bbcode cache?

Cheers Nexialys. So you are suggesting to put that above the global.php modifiaction?

BTW - kind offer re: your hacks. Ill take a closer look at them and see what we can do. Its a real shame you are oging to bail in a few months. Your a bit handy round these parts ;)

the fix i suggest on top of global.php is for any hack... i found it easier to deal with this once and for all... when you have this installed, you can forget the missing arrays..

btw, thanks for the comment... i may be useful, but i'm more useful here at home, a baby will come in a week or two, and i'm the one in charge... ;)

Im installing now... when I click on any of the GAB buttons on the admin page I get a blank screen..

Im at this step:

"GO TO YOUR GAB SETTINGS IN YOUR ADMINCP

-----------------------------------------
Create the following tempaltes:
-----------------------------------------
name: GAB_ad
-----------------------------------------
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" class="tborder" colspan="2" width="100%">
<tr>
<td align="ce"

I cant create the templates because im just getting blank screens, please help

thanks

Have you uploaded all files to the correct locations and correctly modified your global.php file?
Are all pages (excluding GAB) coming up blank?

Its only the gab stuff coming up blank...

I checked the files and I think i did it right.

do the gab folder and gab_redirect.php get uploaded to the main forum folder? I did that also

yes, they do.

Make sure that there are no spaces at the end of the GAB_admin.php file (after the last ?> )

dont see any spaces

In the attached image you can see what im talkin about. If i move the mouse over the buttons i can see the link in the lower left corner of browser... i click it, the screen goes white and it says done...

You wont see any spaces as they are invisible :)

Just edit the GAB_admin.php and try to highlight anything after ?>

Chances are that you will grab some space. Delete it. This is most likely the culprit and rare occurence when uploading php files.

there is nothing after it

Try redownloading the package and re-upload the GAB_admin.php

redownloading and using the new file did not work, any other ideas?

got me mate. That does the trick 99% of the time with file uploads.
Can you browse to the page direct? http://www.YOURSITE.com/forum/admincp/GAB_admin.php

If the page is blank doesn't that mean the templates weren't installed correctly?

Usually - but no templates are used in an admnicp panel. At least none that this hack uses.

When I do that I get a white screen... no errors

It does ask me for login/password before it goes white

? this is getting stranger by the minute ?

All of your other admincp page are cool?

yup... everything else on the entire forum... regular and admin is fine