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

[eXtremeTim]

how about the ability to handle ads like google adsense?

[Rich]

Hello,
Without a doubt, I will be using this system. Lets see, I have the Article System, the Autolinks System, and Now the Banner Advertising.

The Geek hits a hatrick!
*Rich hits install!

[Watson]

dont really wanna install this in the b3ta, cause I am uselss at coding, and prolly wont be much help, but I am defo keeping my eye on this topic

[The Geek]

Doug - you will have to manually remove your extra admincp options. (Hey - look on the bright side - you dont have to stumple around looking for the settings!)

cosmic - In this version your ads can not be prefixed with http://

m0de - hmmm. Edit the GAB_admin.php page and look for <? after the javascript and change to <?php to see if that helps.
The package problem is a known issue - it isnt implimented yet.

Extremetim - It will most likely make the final

Thanks guys - Ill be picking this back up in a couple of days to complete it. If you are not offay with coding - I would wait a few for a final release.

THanks

[uReside.com]

Whats the ETA on a final release? (subscribing)

[007]

Hopefully any day now! This is going to be the best banner hack so far. I can't wait!

[uReside.com]

yea, its everything i need, but i dont trust myself to install it, plus i want users to be able to advertise on their own on my site aswell, full automated.

[Lionel]

If you have diificulties displaying it with advancedCMS, try putting
GAB_ad1
Gab_ad2
in the portal global output section

How do you make it rotate more than 2 banners? I have 5 of them, it is pulling them all, but rotating only 2 at the time.

[The Geek]

Final should be within the next week - however this will not include the user integration side of things (see my post here and here for details of what I am now doing).

In a nutshell - a lot of the work has already been done - but I am going to decouple this from the user integration side of things to make it stand alone then release a package that snaps GAB and GAL together into a 'package' system where users can buy combinations of banners and/or ads and track their stats.

Once I get GAL 4 done Ill complete GAB rather quickly. THen I should be able to complete the snap together pretty fast too.

[Watson]

I will need to uninstall the hack I already use for banners from me site

[m0nde]

Originally Posted by The Geek

m0de - hmmm. Edit the GAB_admin.php page and look for <? after the javascript and change to <?php to see if that helps.
The package problem is a known issue - it isnt implimented yet.

Aww, that didn't fix it, no worries!

One question though:
Geek, man... is this an issue that I'm just having? And if so, why?
Everyone else seems to be running fine!
Is it because they started with your initial beta and then modified it? I started with your 2.01 version.

I love your installers because they keep the modifications and errors to a minimum. That's why I've homed in on GAB.

I'll wait 'til you're finished and not bother you about this.

- Sid

[Lionel]

Geek I don't think you saw my question: How do you make it rotate more than 2 banners? I have 5 of them, it is pulling them all, but rotating only 2 at the time.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Lionel

Geek I don't think you saw my question: How do you make it rotate more than 2 banners? I have 5 of them, it is pulling them all, but rotating only 2 at the time.

you should be able to set 'no of ads:' to 2 and number of banners in rotating'... to 2 - however I am not sure if its doing it as I jsut tr'ied it on a test version.

[Lionel]

It's not doing it.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Lionel

It's not doing it.

ya - verified. Ill sort it