Major Additions - [DBTech] DragonByte Forum Ads v2 (vB4)

What is DragonByte Forum Ads?
DragonByte Forum Ads is an advanced advertising solution that allows you to easily show visitors you have advertisements available, offer multiple ad campaign options including banners, keywords and more and maximise the revenue potential of your community. Full PayPal integration and automated features such as deactivating expired ad campaigns allows you to make money without expending extra effort.

Fully integrated with vBulletin's "Advertising" page, this mod allows you to make use of vBulletin's powerful advertisement criteria, without having to manually accept payments & manually add the ad code.

DragonByte Forum Ads allows you to offer your ad space on the forums at a price, letting potential advertisers submit their advertisements for consideration before they are asked to pay.

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If you like this mod please hit the button to the right ---->

Please remember to click the, button to the right if you installed the mod ---->

What does 'Marking As Installed' do ?

* It helps you to stay on top of updates - members who have installed modifications will be notified by us whenever new updates are available.

* For security issues - vbulletin.org will contact all members who have installed a modification whenever a security issue is brought to their attention.

* Marking a modification as installed also helps us know how many people are using our work, giving us extra incentive to provide more features and new modifications.

We appreciate the support!
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Other addons available @ www.DragonByte-Tech.com/forum


Major Features

Automatic Campaign Handling
When an advertisement campaign is paid for, it's automatically activated. Once its purchased impressions, clicks or days are used up, it's automatically deactivated.

PayPal integration
Supports PayPal for fast and easy transactions, even from credit card users (without the responsibility of storing & processing credit card data).

Powerful Admin Controls
Administrators have complete control over advertisement campaigns, requiring moderation for all campaigns before they are paid for to ensure you agree with all the content being displayed.

Over A Dozen Banner Locations
Archive - Above Content 1, Above Content 2, Below Content
Forum Home - After Forums, Below "What's Going On"
Forum Display - Below Threadlist
Thread Display - First Post Content, Last Post Content
Global - Header 1, Header 2, Below Navbar, Above Footer
Blog Sidebar - Sidebar 1, Sidebar 2, Sidebar 3
Blog Entry - Before Entry, After Entry
Blog List - First Entry

Powerful Keyword System
You can sell keyword replacements, allowing people to convert certain words into links to their sites. This can be especially useful if you're running a site discussing real products, allowing the product owners to quickly convert discussions into potential sales.


Complete Feature List

Lite

Payment Processors

• Supports PayPal
• Configure the description to display to your users when they checkout
• Configure your Merchant ID (such as PayPal email address)
• "Sandbox" Mode toggleable via vBulletin Options, for testing purposes

Banner Spaces

• Integrate with one of vBulletin's built-in advertising locations
• Configure the dimensions of the banner shown within this space
• Choose how many rotations are available for this banner space
• Set multiple banner spaces to the same advertising location to show the banners side-by-side
• Configurable placeholder image
• Placeholders and sold ads have anti-adblock code

Prices

• Choose price type (keyword or banner space)
• Choose the price per X impressions, clicks or days
• Configure multiple price points for the same banner space or for keywords to encourage bigger purchases
• Choose what banner space the price point belongs to
• Configurable display order for display in the front-end shop

Sold Keywords

• Add new keyword advertisement manually - give advertisement space as a gift!
• Search sold keywords by active/expired, username, sold date (range), or specific keyword
• Search results display a paginated list of keywords
• Edit / Update / delete the keywords
• Quickly view the transaction for the keyword, if any
• Support for date-expiring ads even if they are also Clicks/Impressions limited

Sold Banners

• Add new banner advertisement manually - give advertisement space as a gift!
• Search sold banners by active/expired, username or sold date (range)
• Search results display a paginated list of banners
• Edit / Update / delete the banners
• Quickly view the transaction for the banner, if any
• Support for date-expiring ads even if they are also Clicks/Impressions limited

Transactions

• Search transactions by All, Valid (completed or reversed) Completed, Reversed, Pending or Refunded status, user name, amount spent, date range, ip address
• Search results display a paginated list of transactions
• View transaction info including a complete list of information received from the payment processor
• Quickly view all transactions for the selected user

Maintenance

• Repair integration with vBulletin advertisements
• Rebuild keyword database for statistical purposes

Packages

• Group multiple banner space / keyword configurations together in a handy package
• Set a new price for the combined Package
• Allows user to configure each package item individually
• Visually attractive front-end display while buying

Custom Amounts

• Ability to set a base price for 1 Click or 1 Impression
• Allows users to choose how many Clicks or Impressions they wish to purchase
• User configures and purchases like normal
• Offers great flexibility in buying advertising

Purchase / Configure Pages

• The Purchase page has been revamped, with a new tabbed interface!
• Under the Banner Spaces tab there's now a visual indicator for where each banner will be shown
• Clicking an ad space on the visual indicator shows only pricing options for that banner space
• Sold out banner spaces display "SOLD OUT" in red
• Each pricing option for the same banner space is grouped under the same header

Statistics

• Clicks & Impressions has a dedicated Statistics page per-banner / per-keyword
• Summary of clicks or impressions stats above the Search form in the Customer area
• Displays total clicks or impressions, unique IP addresses, date of first click or impression, date of last click or impression
• Ability to click a button to receive an email report of the statistics
• Displays the country of origin for users who clicked / viewed each content type
• Fully browsable with pagination

StyleVars

• "Checkmark" image in the Packages / Discounts display
• Border around the ads & placeholders
• Padding around the ads & placeholders
• Background of the ads & placeholders
• "Please Don't Use An Ad-blocker" image
• "Your Ad Here" placeholder image

User / Usergroup Options

• Usergroup permission: automatically approve keywords
• Usergroup permission: automatically approve banners
• Usergroup permission: automatically approve bids
• User flag: automatically approve keywords
• User flag: automatically approve banners
• User flag: automatically approve bids

Pro

Multiple Currencies

• Show prices in multiple currencies
• Set a tax rate for purchases in currencies other than your home currency
• Configurable exchange rate
• Choose a "Primary Currency" that your prices will be based on

Price Bidding

• Ability to make a price point up for bidding
• Allows users to enter a bid and submit it for acceptance
• Admin can accept or reject the bid from a link in an email
• User receives email when their bid has been accepted or rejected
• Rest of purchase process proceeds as normal

Discounts

• Group multiple package / banner space / keyword configurations together and provide a discount
• Discount can be flat rate or % of the total price
• Allows user to configure each package item individually
• Visually attractive front-end display while buying

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This mod displays a copyright notification in the footer of all pages, which includes:

• 1 Link to DragonByte Technologies homepage
• 1 Link to Product Description page of this modification

[datoneer]

I have some style issues on my forum is there any way to fix it?

http://prntscr.com/17082z

Can you add an option to remove any of these advertising locations?

Archive, Thread, Board, Forum etc. because i'm not offering ad space on all these parts of forum

[skol]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

Uploaded a fixed file in the zip, thanks

You managed to receive that error before installing it? That's pretty impressive, I'd think you'd receive a DB error about a missing phrasegroup dbtech_forumads before you ever got to that page if you hadn't installed the mod yet


Fillip

The previous post was deleted,that comment was pointing to his comments..But if you want to clutch at straws,then yes your correct the install went through with no error..Unfortunately I couldn't test your product after it was installed..Hope that sounds better..

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by datoneer

I have some style issues on my forum is there any way to fix it?

http://prntscr.com/17082z

Can you add an option to remove any of these advertising locations?

Archive, Thread, Board, Forum etc. because i'm not offering ad space on all these parts of forum

Unfortunately we cannot support skins that are that narrow. Your skin has just over 1000 pixels of usable space, whereas the minimum resolution found in most browsers today is over 1300 pixels (the screens in cheap laptops are 1366x768 I believe, with smartphones and desktops leading the charge by offering 1920x1080).

There's currently no way to hide the images for areas where you don't offer advertising - those are all the native locations vBulletin supports ads.


Fillip

[datoneer]

Ok thank you

[skol]

DragonByte Forum Ads allows you to offer your ad space on the forums at a price, letting potential advertisers submit their advertisements for consideration before they are asked to pay.

Thanks for the mod,I can see great potential for this...Question? When they upload an ad for consideration were is that file actually saved? How do you point your ad location to that image? Is it automatically done,and are we talking static images or can they upload .swf...I tried a flash file but I couldn't find were it had uploaded to,it wasn't in the banner folder..

Thanks..

[lazytown]

Seems like a great mod so far! I have a few questions.

1) How does it handle sites that also use google adsense? Is it able to use adsense as the alternative if purchased ad-space isn't filled? Is there a threshhold you can set that the ad CPM must reach before they are allowed to replace adsense ads?

2) How does the keyword targeting work? Does it replace every single word that occurs throughout the entire site, or can you specify a percentage of chance a keyword is replaced or # of keyword impressions or specific forum sections? I don't like the idea of replacing every occurrence of a word. It might seem like link spam to google. Does it have the option to use an intermediary link redirect?

3) Is there any way to charge per ad/keyword clicked?

4) Are we able to disable certain ad spots? I don't mind if it shows them all, but I only want to offer certain spots.

5) It would also be awesome if we could offer custom ad spots (with code that could be manually inserted into the templates).. For example, if we wanted small box or skyscraper ads on the right side of the forum. They don't have to have an image, perhaps just a description created by the admin.

Thank You!

[lazytown]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

Unfortunately we cannot support skins that are that narrow. Your skin has just over 1000 pixels of usable space, whereas the minimum resolution found in most browsers today is over 1300 pixels (the screens in cheap laptops are 1366x768 I believe, with smartphones and desktops leading the charge by offering 1920x1080).

There's currently no way to hide the images for areas where you don't offer advertising - those are all the native locations vBulletin supports ads.


Fillip

The browser size issue sounds like a problem. According to Google, nearly 50% of browsers still are below 1250. See http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ . While the largest percentage of users may be at 1366, A) that doesn't mean the actual window size is that large, and B) 49% could still be well below that amount. I would target at least 75% of all users.

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by skol

Thanks for the mod,I can see great potential for this...Question? When they upload an ad for consideration were is that file actually saved?

/dbtech/forumads/images/banners

Originally Posted by skol

How do you point your ad location to that image? Is it automatically done

It is indeed automatic

Originally Posted by skol

are we talking static images or can they upload .swf...

Flash files are not supported at this time.

Originally Posted by vissa

1) How does it handle sites that also use google adsense? Is it able to use adsense as the alternative if purchased ad-space isn't filled? Is there a threshhold you can set that the ad CPM must reach before they are allowed to replace adsense ads?

This mod does not feature adsense integration for placeholders at this time. If you post that @ our site, we'll take it into consideration

Originally Posted by vissa

2) How does the keyword targeting work? Does it replace every single word that occurs throughout the entire site, or can you specify a percentage of chance a keyword is replaced or # of keyword impressions or specific forum sections?

It replaces every instance of a word in a post - that counts as one impression.

It only replaces keywords in posts.

Originally Posted by vissa

Does it have the option to use an intermediary link redirect?

It does use a redirect, in order to support tracking clicks.

Originally Posted by vissa

3) Is there any way to charge per ad/keyword clicked?

Not retroactively, but as per the OP you can sell ads that are sold per 1 click/impression/day and advertisers can choose how many of the chosen metric they wish to buy in advance.

Originally Posted by vissa

4) Are we able to disable certain ad spots? I don't mind if it shows them all, but I only want to offer certain spots.

Don't create banner spaces for those ad spots

Originally Posted by vissa

5) It would also be awesome if we could offer custom ad spots (with code that could be manually inserted into the templates).. For example, if we wanted small box or skyscraper ads on the right side of the forum. They don't have to have an image, perhaps just a description created by the admin.

You can do this by creating a new ad_locations_vissacustomads.xml XML file in /includes/xml.

If you open ad_locations_vbulletin.xml you'll see the format. Once you rebuild vBulletin's ad locations, and run Forum Ads' maintenance task to rebuild ad integration, you will have the option of a new banner space location.

You can then place the {vb:raw ad_location.whateveryounamedit} in a template.

Originally Posted by vissa

The browser size issue sounds like a problem. According to Google, nearly 50% of browsers still are below 1250. See http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ . While the largest percentage of users may be at 1366, A) that doesn't mean the actual window size is that large, and B) 49% could still be well below that amount. I would target at least 75% of all users.

That site seems like it's not being updated any more in favour of Google Analytics on a per-site basis.

The statistics from W3Schools seem to counter your claim: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp & http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/br...ion_higher.asp for a breakdown of what "Higher" means.

So by targeting 1366px width, we are actually targeting over 90% of all users

We tend to design our products for the majority, and it's clear that the overwhelming majority have a higher screen resolution. Sure, this may not fit every single individual forum, but we can still say it covers the majority

A community catering to teaching the elderly about computing and the internet will probably have a higher percentage of IE users running older versions of Windows.
Does that mean we support IE6 on WinXP? Not by any stretch.

A community regarding hardware overclocking will probably have a higher percentage of Chrome or Firefox users running the newest version of Windows. Does that mean we don't support IE? Not by any stretch.

Update: Our Managing Director has informed me that for the future I should make the table of images fluid so that it can shrink to 1 image per line if the window is too narrow (and expand to 3+ images per line if the window is "too wide"), so look for that in a future update


Fillip

[lazytown]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

.... The statistics from W3Schools seem to counter your claim: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp & http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/br...ion_higher.asp for a breakdown of what "Higher" means.

So by targeting 1366px width, we are actually targeting over 90% of all users

We tend to design our products for the majority, and it's clear that the overwhelming majority have a higher screen resolution. Sure, this may not fit every single individual forum, but we can still say it covers the majority

A community catering to teaching the elderly about computing and the internet will probably have a higher percentage of IE users running older versions of Windows.
Does that mean we support IE6 on WinXP? Not by any stretch.

A community regarding hardware overclocking will probably have a higher percentage of Chrome or Firefox users running the newest version of Windows. Does that mean we don't support IE? Not by any stretch.

Update: Our Managing Director has informed me that for the future I should make the table of images fluid so that it can shrink to 1 image per line if the window is too narrow (and expand to 3+ images per line if the window is "too wide"), so look for that in a future update

Thank you very much for your answers.. Regarding browser size. W3schools site says at the very top

W3Schools.com is for people with an interest for web technologies. This fact indicates that the numbers below might not be 100% true for the average internet users. The average internet-user might have a lower screen resolution.

I do believe W3schools data is very skewed, as they themselves say is possible. I even found a forum discussion on their site stating it is skewed and doesn't include mobile browsers. 90% of browser sizes (which is not the same as screen size) are not over 1300px wide.. Especially considering the massive growth in mobile browsers, which have actually brought in a revival of lots of smaller and strange screen sizes (very tall and narrow).

Here's some useful contrary links regarding regarding browser viewport (again, different from screen size), and why it's bad to design based on reported screen size.

• Web Browser Window Size Matters More than Monitor Resolution
• Screens are getting bigger, but not the browser viewport
• Browser screen resolution stats rile devs

Update: Glad to hear you will be making the design fluid to fit varying widths.. I think it's a good decision.

[lazytown]

Oh, and see the following stats for the past 3 months (US only), which shows the #1 most used size in the US is still 1024x768 as of May 2013.

Desktop Screen Resolution (USA, last 3 months -- does NOT include mobile browsers)
http://gs.statcounter.com/#resolutio...303-201305-bar
(takes a while to compute stats and load)
For desktops, screen resolution does not equal browsers size. Very large screen widths (like 2000+) are probably dual monitors, and people with very wide screens do not usually open their browser full-screen.

You can probably find totally different stats on other websites.. It all depends on the type of website and the parameters (desktop, mobile, country, etc).