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]

just added

The file edits are in global.php (sorry )

Personally - I think the community would benefit by all the banner hack writers getting together and teaming up to build one. No sense in having 50 different banner hacks that are all slightly different enough to confuse the hell out of people.

The only reason I released this was because I needed one and I couldnt get the functionality I needed from existing hacks. All my hacks are stuff I use on my site because I have a need for them and cant find it somewhere else. Though I will totally support this - it would be nice if some decent coders and other banner writers want to team up and see what happens

nJoy

[Lizard King]

Is statistics avaible for anyone to see ? Also can we make this like only unregistered users or some usergroups can see the banners ?
Geek it looks like you did a very good job again.

[The Geek]

Thanks Lizard.

Yes you can make so only unregistered view. You would just need to add a new profile field (a use a radio button) and set a default. Then put that default in the usergroup section of your GAB settings. I guess I can also add a mechanism whereby it simplifies that process though - wouldnt be hard.

I am bustnig butt on this hack as I need to go live with a full advertising system on my site by the end of this week. That will include:
1- Users able to create their own ads by 'purchasing' from admin designed packages.
2- Users able to manage their own ads (upload new, view reports on frequency of hits, views, etc..)
3- Users able to purchase packages via paypal.

I may not get the full user management side done this week (doubt I will). But that is where I am going with it. I just need to make sure everything else is working well.

[reteep]

Sounds very cool.

But if I click on a banner I get:

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /*/vb/global.php on line 13

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /*/vb/global.php on line 14

PHP5 Problem?

[reteep]

Ok I added:

PHP Code:

// ################### PRE-CACHE TEMPLATES AND DATA ######################
// get special phrase groups
$phrasegroups = array();

// get special data templates from the datastore
$specialtemplates = array();

// pre-cache templates used by all actions
$globaltemplates = array();

// pre-cache templates used by specific actions
$actiontemplates = array(); 


in GAB_redirect.php
Now a new window is being opened but the site cannot be displayed. Although the array.merge error is gone..

[The Geek]

Try the new package (overwrite all files).. not sure if that will help as I cant reproduce it.

New package addresses:

fixed minor typo in README (didnt say which file to edit)
Put some info on how the banners are pulled in README
Added settings for which usergroups see ad
removed extra isactive setting
Fixed flash banners not appearing
Added new setting for #of ads in rotating banner
Flash ads now appear when editing ads
To update from 1.00 just overwrite GAB_admin.php, GAB_redirect and functions_gab.php

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by stormblast

Ok I added:

PHP Code:

// ################### PRE-CACHE TEMPLATES AND DATA ######################
// get special phrase groups
$phrasegroups = array();

// get special data templates from the datastore
$specialtemplates = array();

// pre-cache templates used by all actions
$globaltemplates = array();

// pre-cache templates used by specific actions
$actiontemplates = array(); 


in GAB_redirect.php
Now a new window is being opened but the site cannot be displayed. Although the array.merge error is gone..

Cool. I addded a couple of those arrays to GAB_redirect in the 1.01 package, but not action templates or globaltemplates.
Ill put those in 1.02 (though I dont think they are really needed).
Make sure that the URL in the ad is valid and that it doesnt start with http://
In 1.02 ill make it so it will have to have http:// to work though.

[reteep]

Works perfectly on PHP5 now, thanks! Very good work
I'll continue testing..

Originally Posted by The Geek

Personally - I think the community would benefit by all the banner hack writers getting together and teaming up to build one. No sense in having 50 different banner hacks that are all slightly different enough to confuse the hell out of people.

That's exactly why i suggest you to merge my own banner/sponsors hacks... you have my full permission, and my welcome on this... i may provide some support here and there, but as i quit the community in less than 2 months, i will not "support" the script by myself!

[reteep]

More Feedback:

Somewhere there's a bug in rage. I'm not sure if it's a problem of PHP5. As soon as I made the modifications to global.php the "Write a PM" Site is bogus.

On the top of the "Write a PM Page" it says:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /includes/functions_editor.php on line 443

And most phrases are empty. Additionaly the quick reply box is screwed, directly after the global.php changes. When reverting globa.php changes everything is fine..