phpAdsNew Banner Ads integration (advertisements, classified ads, Adsense, etc.)

OpenAds / phpAdsNew Integration 1.0.4 for vBulletin 3.[56].x
2006-06-08 by mip

Integrates the OpenAds / phpAdsNew ads system by introducing a new template tag <ad ... />.
You can even deliver your Adsense stuff via phpAdsNew using HTML banners.

The features of phpAdsNew combined with the power of vBulletin's templating system gives you the possibility to place ads for specific user groups, forums, and keywords.

PREREQUISITES:
This plugin requires a working installation (local or remote) of a recent version ofOpenAds / phpAdsNew (free software released under the GPL).
When using OpenAds, replace phpAdsNew in this documentation with OpenAds (phpAdsNew is just the predecessor of OpenAds).

INSTALLATION:
When having a previous version of this product installed, see section UPGRADE instead.

Install product "phpadsnew-1.0.4.xml".
Set phpAdsNew path in Server Settings and Optimization Options to point to either your local phpAdsNew installation or a remote server (using XML-RPC).
It is strongly recommended to set $phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true; in phpAdsNew config file, to prevent problems when phpAdsNew uses a database different from the one used by your vBulletin board.

When using XML-RPC, make sure to have lib-xmlrpc-class.inc.php and lib-xmlrpc.inc.php copied from phpAdsNew misc/samples/xmlrpc/php/ to your forum's includes/ directory (not necessary when using a local phpAdsNew installation).

Read the NOTES section below.

Click INSTALL in this thread to mark product as "installed" and receive notifications when a new version comes out.

UPGRADE:

• 1.0.3 --> 1.0.4
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
• 1.0.2 --> 1.0.3
  Upgrading is recommended, as this is a bugfix release.
  
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
     
  2. Recompile any templates where you experienced problems with the <ad .../> tag (notably those where this tag is used repeatedly on a line).
     
• 1.0.1 --> 1.0.2
  
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
     
  2. Set $phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true; in phpAdsNew config file.
     
• 1.0 --> 1.0.1
  There's basically no need to upgrade, as the changes don't affect a working installation, but I recommend to do so, to ease possible upgrades in the future.
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
  2. Alter the path to phpAdsNew in vBulletin Server Settings and Optimization Options to point to your phpAdsNew installation.
     As opposed to version 1.0 of this product, a local path is not relative to the DOCUMENT_ROOT.

USAGE:
Use the newly introduced <ad ... /> tag in your templates.
The syntax is similar to phpAdsNew's view_raw() function call - the tag understands what, clientid, target, source, and withtext as arguments.

Please make yourself familiar with phpAdsNew prior to using this product. You can't expect this product to work, if you didn't check if your phpAdsNew is delivering your banners cleanly.

Examples:

• Get banner using keywords:
  <ad what="foo|bar" />
• Get banner for guest usergroup (in this case, "ug1" must be set as a keyword in phpADsNew, see 2nd screenshot):
  <ad what="ug$bbuserinfo['usergroupid']" />
  (same technique can be applied to deliver forum-specific ads)
• Similar invocation using template conditionals:
  <if condition="$bbuserinfo['usergroupid']==1"><ad what="" /></if>

NOTES:

1. Always use the latest stable version of phpAdsNew.
   Old versions had bugs and some even had severe security issues - I'll give no support for installations with an outdated phpAdsNew.
   At the time of writing, latest version is 2.0.8.
2. Templates which make use of the ad-tag might need to get recompiled after product change.
3. Recommendations for heavy-duty servers: Move the plugin code to files; try to avoid using xml-rpc or cache xml-rpc requests (e.g. with memcache).
4. Have an eye on current phpAdsNew security issues
5. This product comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
6. Support is provided at will.
   Don't expect help if you haven't read instructions or phpAdsNew manual, if you're using non-standard vBulletin software or if your problem descriptions are useless.

PS:
This plugin is donationware - it helps you to make some money, so please be fair and honor my work with an adequate pecuniary donation.
Donate via Paypal

[StarShaper]

Works great! Thx, and greetings to all gulli members

[GrBear]

This rocks! Thank you for your contribution!

*clicks installed*

[Yorixz]

I'm very glad with this, just one question; is it possible to let phpAdsNew show adsense when theres no other banner available/can't connect to the db? It's possible to show an image but I guess there could be another option around aswell.

Thanks!

[klaush]

Thanks for this!

Installed....

Great job!

[dutchbb]

Originally Posted by The M.I.P.

In inc_features.php, there's no DB resource identifier used when accessing the database. In this case, PHP uses the last DB link which normally is vBulletin's database, but when using phpAdsNew integration, this might be the phpAdsNew database.

Solutions (untested, as I don't have access to Photopost):
Use a separate DB connection for the Photopost stuff as mentioned in the comments in inc_features.php.
Or add vBulletin's DB resource identifier to the mysql queries:

--- inc_features.php.orig	Mon Nov 21 11:54:09 2005
+++ inc_features.php	Mon Nov 21 11:56:21 2005
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@
     }     
     $grouparr = explode( ",", $mygroups );
     
-    $resultb = mysql_query("SELECT id,ugnoview FROM {$pp_db_prefix}categories");
+    $resultb = mysql_query("SELECT id,ugnoview FROM {$pp_db_prefix}categories", $db->link);
     $ViewPerm = array();
     while ( list( $catugid, $ugnoview ) = mysql_fetch_row($resultb) ) {
         $noview=0; $ViewPerm[$catugid] = 1;
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@
                         WHERE c.cattype = 'c' AND p.cat != 500 AND p.storecat = 0
                         ORDER BY RAND()";
 }
-$result = mysql_query($query);
+$result = mysql_query($query, $db->link);
 
 $counted = 0; $countcol = 0; $featured = "";

Thank you

I get this when I replace/add that code:

Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/xch1295/domains/mydomain.com/public_html/gallery/inc_features.php on line 51

Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/xch1295/domains/mydomain.com/public_html/gallery/inc_features.php on line 53

Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/xch1295/domains/mydomain.com/public_html/gallery/inc_features.php on line 114

Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/xch1295/domains/mydomain.com/public_html/gallery/inc_features.php on line 118

[Skyline_GT]

the if statment for usergroup doesn't work...

[Xstreamist]

OK.... I'm lost and pulling my hair out...
I installed phpAdsNew.. followed the admin manual to the tee for installation and the usermanual to the tee for set up... Installed the .xml which is posted here. Now I'm totally confused as to what to do...

I tried copying the invocation code to where I wanted the ads to appear, under my logo, and got sql errors. then tried just putting
<td align="center">
<ad what="zone:1" />
</td>

Where I want the banners to show and no go...

How do I use this? Am I supposed to copy the invocation code to a file somewhere? I don't see any instructions anywhere that say this.
I'm totally new to vBulleitin by the way but have been learning a lot in the past two weeks I have been using it. It's just this thing that's totally stumped me.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Xstreamist]

OK finally got this to show the banner... But... notice I didn't say bannerS... It won't rotate the banners.. it shows the same one all the time...
Anyone know how I could fix this?

Also, any idea how I get the banners to show up on every page?

[toxin]

I'm pulling my hair out over this..

I've been running PAN successfully for ages, integrated into 3.0.7, but a couple of days ago I upgraded to vB 3.5.1 and moved to a new server..

I know PAN is working because i can invoke the banners manually or through my own php scripts, but vB isn't having any of it.

There are no errors, no banners.. no nothing.. its all a bit strange.

This is part of my header template:

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="50%"><a href="/?$session[sessionurl]"><img src="$stylevar[titleimage]" border="0" alt="$vboptions[bbtitle]" /></a></td>
<td width="50%"><div align="center">xxx<ad what="zone:1" />yyy</div></td>
</tr>
</table>

so this should show a banner, with text "xxx" before and "yyy" after. But when I view source on the forum webpage, i see this:

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="50%"><a href="/?"><img src="/forums/images/misc/vbulletin3_logo_winter.gif" border="0" alt="Community Home Page" /></a></td>
<td width="50%"><div align="center">xxx
</tr>
</table>

notice that everything after xxx has vanished... ie, no banner and no "yyy"

Does anyone have any ideas of something that I can try, or where to start debugging?

[dutchbb]

Can you give some support on my question The M.I.P. ???

I'll be happy to donate if you can make it work for me. Not having java code in my forum sourcecode with the variable provided in this hack would be a good thing!