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

[steadicamop]

Now I get this when I click on the advert :

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: sheader() in /homepages/13/d103069509/htdocs/advertising.php on line 106

Any ideas?

[redspider]

I try this one did not work for me and I unistall to try to start again but now I can delete the template create by gab .
TIA for any help

[The Geek]

Jason... Looks like a couple of artifacts trying to get the prototype stats viewer out.

I would update the package but Im on holiday

However, edit advertising.php and search for sheader then change to header. Also in the same file, search for echo("turnd"); and delete it (not the line mind you, just the echo statement)

Eventually, members will be able to purchase their own GABS and GALS... this will be done with an extra snap on called GUSH. Right now though, my focus is to get all open projects closed and then upgraded before moving on with that.

Redspider... Im not sure what you mean. Are you trying to delete the gab templates? Try the uninstall steps of the installer.

[redspider]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Redspider... Im not sure what you mean. Are you trying to delete the gab templates? Try the uninstall steps of the installer.

yes I trying to delete the gab templates to start all over and I use the installer but dont work the template still there and i cant make this mod work for some reason .
if you got time to come and check let me know and I pm you domain and a password so you can see it.

[The Geek]

red- im on vacation so I cant really help too much. Can you explain what the trouble is? 99.9% of the time... its a simple configuration error. Can you go to your admincp, click settings and then debug? If so, can you post me the info? Ill be able to sort you out then.

(you dont need to delete the templates to re-install).

[SportBikeAddict]

Originally Posted by The Geek

The only thing I noticed at a quick glance is that you only have 1 $GAB_ads in your templates but 2 blocks defined in your Master script which means you need $GAB_ad[1] somewhere to display your other ad block. Stick $GAB_ads[1] somewhere and you will see the second ad block.


Off the top of my head, the banner CHMOD shouldnt be a problem. What happens if you dont chmod it and what are you changing it to?

HTH?s

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. Basically, I want the text ad to rotate in with various image/flash banners -- is this possible?

Also, the CHMOD issue causes the banner to throw an "access restricted at server level/config" error, which results in a broken image when viewing the image inline in the page. When accessing the image/banner directly, you get the "access restricted" error. I am manually changing the permissions on the file to 644.

[The Geek]

Ah - currently no. I thought about it bust passed as I didnt think many would really request it but you are now the second person to do so. Ill look at putting that in a future release.

Offhand, it sounds like the chmod problem is possibly a safe mode problem. Ill look at putting in the option to just put in the URL however you will still need to FTP files into place.

[Hanif]

Geek dude hope your enjoying Spain...

went from version 1.3 to v1.6 and got the following error:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class gab_base in /home/www/mulimpro/forums/includes/gab_class_core.php on line 4

Couldn't figure a way out so uninstalled the packge...any ideas???

Ta,

Hanif

[The Geek]

My guess is that your file edits were done twice... double check the global.php file changes.

HTH?s (im going down to the pool )

[Underlab]

Originally Posted by The Geek

underlab - is the entire page empty? Including the navigation? if so ... then it was a bad upload from the edit. Revert to the backup of admincp/index and make the changes manually.

HTH?'s

Hey Geek, sorry. I got tied up with some other issues and didnt have time to resolve my banner issue. From within my adminCP I am able to see my navigation but where presumably the system would be I just get an all white page. Like there is nothing there. If I was to go to the GAB_index.php page, I would just get a complete WHITE screen.

There are only 3 files to edit and I edited them manually several times with the same results. Has there been a better solution to this problem, I would really like to have this on my site. I think you have some cool scripts and this would be my 3rd from you.