Best Ad Management Script for Vbulletin?

[cmiller1014]

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!

[cmiller1014]

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?

[Michael Morris]

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.

[Andreas]

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

[cmiller1014]

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.

[cmiller1014]

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?

[Gio~Logist]

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

[cmiller1014]

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

[Michael Morris]

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

<if condition="$foruminfo[forumid]=='2'">Ad code for forum #2
<else /><if condition="$foruminfo[forumid]=='4'">Ad code for forum #4
<else /><if condition="THIS_SCRIPT=='index'">Ad code for the forum home page (forumhome)
<else /><if condition="THIS_SCRIPT=='vbadvanced'">Ad code for Vbadvanced pages
<else />Ad code for all other pages</if></if></if></if>

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

PHP Code:

define('THIS_SCRIPT', 'index'); 


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.

[cmiller1014]

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