Giving back some more ...

We have 30+ forums, all dedicated to different topics. I wanted to be able to sell targeted banner ads for each of those categories. phpAdsNew is great for serving ads, but I needed to make some quick changes to VB in order to facilitate targeting.

Its easy to just plop in a generic call to phpAdsNew in the "header" template - works easy enough - however, you have no control and no ability to dynamically target those ads to a given forum. Now you can. (If there is another way, someone please tell me).

This is a simple hack, which involves a quick change to "global.php".

In global.php, find:

Below that, add:

Let me give you an example. Let's say you have 2 forums:

• Outdoor Hiking
• Wild and Crazy Sex

Strange combination, I know - but bear with me. This hack will create a special variable called "$forum_ad_keywords", which will look like this (using the 2 examples above):

• Outdoor,Hiking
• Wild,Crazy,Sex

To use these in a template (i.e. header) to grab a target ad, you might try something like:

Note: the VBRandomX numbers are another hack. Just put this line in global.php to get some random #'s for the ad call:

Easy enough. Not a real great randomizer, but it works for my needs. You want it to do more, have at it.

At any rate, the ad code above would expand to something like:

Now all you need to do is use those keywords when creating accounts within phpAdsNew.

Voila - instant targeted ads.

A robust, scalable targeted ad/sponsorship system should really be a part of the next release - IMHO.

Cheers.

I already have ads targeting forums (by their names).

But the problem is just there: those names can get pretty long, and all keywords together for one single banner can make a pretty long line.

So my next step is to add an extra field, with something like forum_short_name
I've tried the forumnumber, but it doesn't work (because the number is a number and not text or something?! I don't know PHP/MySQL well enough)

But a hack like this one is very good :)

wow this looks fantastic, i'm using phpadsnew as well on my vB http://animeboards.com

but it does lack targetted ads... gonna try this out

Is there anyway you can make this so it pulls the actual title tag of the page? I'm using it to make a keyword search in my store.
Thanks!

this is a useful hack. thanks

this is a useful hack. thanks

thanks

what is the "n=" mean and why bother with the VbRandomX thing you have in this? Is the random thing just for cache busting or does it serve any other purpose?

I changed just a little...

// figure out the chosen style settings
// BSB - HACK - Need to populate foruminfo for targeted ads
//if(isset($forumid)) {
// $getforuminfo=$DB_site->query_first("SELECT title FROM forum WHERE forumid='$forumid'");
// $forum_ad_keywords=strtolower($getforuminfo[title]);

// Replace generic words
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" and ", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" the ", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" with ", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" or ", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace("/", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" & ", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" for ", " ", $forum_ad_keywords);

// Replace spaces with commas (for phpAdsNew OR keywords)
// $forum_ad_keywords = str_replace(" ", ",", $forum_ad_keywords);
//} else {
// $forum_ad_keywords = 'home';
// }

// END HACK

Just wondering how difficult would it be to incorporate phpAdsNew on a board that runs the vbPortal front end (as it has its own banner rotation system)?