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

[geezzaa]

i got admincp back, was my fault
Off to play with it now, be back shortly

[venomx]

Originally Posted by The Geek

oooo. I really dig that idea.

I was thinking people wanted to be able to sell ads for x amount of points. Didnt think of giving them points for clickthrus.

If you add that please set it on a per ad or either on/off because some places would not like us oaying members to click the banners.

I too was just thinking about the X impressions for X points.

[cyberdream]

Originally Posted by The Geek

lionel - made mention of this a few posts back. Dont worry about the packages for right now - it is for a portion of the system that isnt complete in this version. The phrase issue was mentioned too.
The js does seem to blank admincp's in rare instances - this is fixed in the next release.
Have you run a test? Does it produce anything.

If you guys really having problems with $GAB_ad1 showing would like to send me admincp/ftp details - I will figure out what is happening. It seems to be working on most systems.

Cyberdream - go into admincp, expand the languages & phrases, click phrase manager, change Phrase Type to Control Panel Global, click Add new phrase, enter GAB_add_ad in the varname and 'New Ad' in the text. Then save.

I think I would delete your global.php copy and paste. I think you may get chomped for pasting vb code publicly

Sorry TheGeek. what did you mean by this:

Originally Posted by The Geek

I think I would delete your global.php copy and paste. I think you may get chomped for pasting vb code publicly

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by cyberdream

Sorry TheGeek. what did you mean by this:

It was in reference to another user that pasted a copy of their global.php for troubleshooting

[Reeve of shinra]

How does this stack up to say phpadnews which I hear is a pain to set up but is what I hear most often recommended? Also how well does this intergrate with say vbadvanced cmps, gallery and links and other vb-add on scripts?

Btw: You've put out some great hacks. Keep up the good work and thank you for sharing!

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

How does this stack up to say phpadnews which I hear is a pain to set up but is what I hear most often recommended? Also how well does this intergrate with say vbadvanced cmps, gallery and links and other vb-add on scripts?

Btw: You've put out some great hacks. Keep up the good work and thank you for sharing!

dont know - never used phpadnews

Its designed to use on any page that uses global.php though you still have to cut it some slack - its still early beta

Thanks!

[H2k_Coder]

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..

why u dont add options ads in the thread this will be nice also

[The Geek]

not sure what options ads are

Are you putting http infront of the url? If so-dont. This current version doesnt like it

[Reeve of shinra]

Its designed to use on any page that uses global.php though you still have to cut it some slack - its still early beta

Okay I guess if I have to

[geezzaa]

Finished playing
Install clicked

[geezzaa]

Geek , Is the file name advertising.php correct. If i click on the link under the banner it links to advertise.php and i get a page not found ,
Advertise.php isnt in my directory

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by geezzaa

Geek , Is the file name advertising.php correct. If i click on the link under the banner it links to advertise.php and i get a page not found ,
Advertise.php isnt in my directory

its supposed to be advertising.php but since that page wasnt even partially done - I wasnt going to worry about it (I suggested not to bother uploading it).
This has been fixed in the next release

[geezzaa]

Thanks mate, I am looking forward to the next release

[JTyson]

Nice work, I had to remove the javascript from Gab_admin to get rid of the blank pages, looking forward to future updates

[gldtn]

<i>Removed - please do not advertise your services on this forum</i>