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

[The Geek]

There will be some GAL integration in the next BETA release and more GAL integration for the final version.

The real difficulty is applying the same rules to GAL's (ie clickthru, view, and time expirations). I am hoping to come up with a clever way of doing it - however I see that side of things more as another version of GAL than I do of GAB.

GAB GAL GAS - geez. My brain is going numb.

Not sure about your settings saving problem. I know it isnt happening in the next realease so I can only assume that I have fixed it

[007]

Just checking in to see how soon the PayPal integration will be sorted!

Looking like this will be the best banner hack for VB3 when it goes out of BETA.

[LEAD_WEIGHT]

Originally Posted by 007

Just checking in to see how soon the PayPal integration will be sorted!

Looking like this will be the best banner hack for VB3 when it goes out of BETA.

I hope more than Paypal can be used and I was wondering that this does work with CMP in that it can be place in the header.

[Tigur]

Ok im on the latest version of VB3
I just did fresh install on the banner hack. I got the line 518 error, fixed that with the above that was suggested to cyberdream , then told me i had it on 2 other lines, did the same fix. Then i got 3 duplicates in my admincp of the GAB. The add banner thing was not there. had to click a line. Now when i went to upload a banner i got this
Warning: copy(./gab/pagbanner.gif): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /admincp/GAB_admin.php on line 716

What I am also getting database errors when i click on "packages" error:
mysql error: Table 'mydatabasename.GAB_packages' doesn't exist

[Lionel]

Ignore the package error now. That was put in place for later.

[gldtn]

Originally Posted by Tigur

Ok im on the latest version of VB3
I just did fresh install on the banner hack. I got the line 518 error, fixed that with the above that was suggested to cyberdream , then told me i had it on 2 other lines, did the same fix. Then i got 3 duplicates in my admincp of the GAB. The add banner thing was not there. had to click a line. Now when i went to upload a banner i got this
Warning: copy(./gab/pagbanner.gif): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /admincp/GAB_admin.php on line 716

What I am also getting database errors when i click on "packages" error:
mysql error: Table 'mydatabasename.GAB_packages' doesn't exist

make sure the directory /gab/ permissions is to 777

[Tigur]

ya i figured the package error was for later. Though the gab dir was set to chmod 777 yet it kept doing it. Well let me try to re download it a 3rd time and try it again

[Tigur]

sorry never mind!! i got it to upload. Its giving me that phrase error but I'll just do the fix in one of the previous posts. Now to figure out why its not showing up on my forum.

***edit***
Ok no point doing a 3rd post when i can just edit. I did everything works fine uploads fine. Now its just my banners that arn't showing up on the main page. i put that $gab_ad1 in the header template. Is that correct?? I don't know im kind of at a loss here. I guess i shouldn't put beta hacks on a live website, and should test it out on a test forum. But I learnt my lesson :surprised: but i need to get this working as i got advertisers wanting to give me money and want their banners up already. Any help please?

PS yes i did read all the forum posts and still can't figure why its not doing it right. I wish I knew PHP well enough that i can just read, find where my problem is, and fix it.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Tigur

sorry never mind!! i got it to upload. Its giving me that phrase error but I'll just do the fix in one of the previous posts. Now to figure out why its not showing up on my forum.


***edit***
Ok no point doing a 3rd post when i can just edit. I did everything works fine uploads fine. Now its just my banners that arn't showing up on the main page. i put that $gab_ad1 in the header template. Is that correct?? I don't know im kind of at a loss here. I guess i shouldn't put beta hacks on a live website, and should test it out on a test forum. But I learnt my lesson :surprised: but i need to get this working as i got advertisers wanting to give me money and want their banners up already. Any help please?

PS yes i did read all the forum posts and still can't figure why its not doing it right. I wish I knew PHP well enough that i can just read, find where my problem is, and fix it.

Hve you run the 'test'?
I think GAB_ad1 is case sensitive too.

007 - things are coming along pretty well for the next release. I too am desperate to get it finished as I have people waiting to advertise. Over the next week I should get to the next BETA which should have all functionality aside from statistics (that will be for final beta).

lead - right now only paypal is planned as that is all I have. Saying that - I seriously doubt it would be hard to do any other method.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by LEAD_WEIGHT

I hope more than Paypal can be used and I was wondering that this does work with CMP in that it can be place in the header.

lead - Not sure what you mean. I have mine sitting in vba_index. Is that what you are talking about?