phpAdsNew Banner Ads integration (advertisements, classified ads, Adsense, etc.)

OpenAds / phpAdsNew Integration 1.0.4 for vBulletin 3.[56].x
2006-06-08 by mip

Integrates the OpenAds / phpAdsNew ads system by introducing a new template tag <ad ... />.
You can even deliver your Adsense stuff via phpAdsNew using HTML banners.

The features of phpAdsNew combined with the power of vBulletin's templating system gives you the possibility to place ads for specific user groups, forums, and keywords.

PREREQUISITES:
This plugin requires a working installation (local or remote) of a recent version ofOpenAds / phpAdsNew (free software released under the GPL).
When using OpenAds, replace phpAdsNew in this documentation with OpenAds (phpAdsNew is just the predecessor of OpenAds).

INSTALLATION:
When having a previous version of this product installed, see section UPGRADE instead.

Install product "phpadsnew-1.0.4.xml".
Set phpAdsNew path in Server Settings and Optimization Options to point to either your local phpAdsNew installation or a remote server (using XML-RPC).
It is strongly recommended to set $phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true; in phpAdsNew config file, to prevent problems when phpAdsNew uses a database different from the one used by your vBulletin board.

When using XML-RPC, make sure to have lib-xmlrpc-class.inc.php and lib-xmlrpc.inc.php copied from phpAdsNew misc/samples/xmlrpc/php/ to your forum's includes/ directory (not necessary when using a local phpAdsNew installation).

Read the NOTES section below.

Click INSTALL in this thread to mark product as "installed" and receive notifications when a new version comes out.

UPGRADE:

• 1.0.3 --> 1.0.4
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
• 1.0.2 --> 1.0.3
  Upgrading is recommended, as this is a bugfix release.
  
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
     
  2. Recompile any templates where you experienced problems with the <ad .../> tag (notably those where this tag is used repeatedly on a line).
     
• 1.0.1 --> 1.0.2
  
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
     
  2. Set $phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true; in phpAdsNew config file.
     
• 1.0 --> 1.0.1
  There's basically no need to upgrade, as the changes don't affect a working installation, but I recommend to do so, to ease possible upgrades in the future.
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
  2. Alter the path to phpAdsNew in vBulletin Server Settings and Optimization Options to point to your phpAdsNew installation.
     As opposed to version 1.0 of this product, a local path is not relative to the DOCUMENT_ROOT.

USAGE:
Use the newly introduced <ad ... /> tag in your templates.
The syntax is similar to phpAdsNew's view_raw() function call - the tag understands what, clientid, target, source, and withtext as arguments.

Please make yourself familiar with phpAdsNew prior to using this product. You can't expect this product to work, if you didn't check if your phpAdsNew is delivering your banners cleanly.

Examples:

• Get banner using keywords:
  <ad what="foo|bar" />
• Get banner for guest usergroup (in this case, "ug1" must be set as a keyword in phpADsNew, see 2nd screenshot):
  <ad what="ug$bbuserinfo['usergroupid']" />
  (same technique can be applied to deliver forum-specific ads)
• Similar invocation using template conditionals:
  <if condition="$bbuserinfo['usergroupid']==1"><ad what="" /></if>

NOTES:

1. Always use the latest stable version of phpAdsNew.
   Old versions had bugs and some even had severe security issues - I'll give no support for installations with an outdated phpAdsNew.
   At the time of writing, latest version is 2.0.8.
2. Templates which make use of the ad-tag might need to get recompiled after product change.
3. Recommendations for heavy-duty servers: Move the plugin code to files; try to avoid using xml-rpc or cache xml-rpc requests (e.g. with memcache).
4. Have an eye on current phpAdsNew security issues
5. This product comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
6. Support is provided at will.
   Don't expect help if you haven't read instructions or phpAdsNew manual, if you're using non-standard vBulletin software or if your problem descriptions are useless.

PS:
This plugin is donationware - it helps you to make some money, so please be fair and honor my work with an adequate pecuniary donation.
Donate via Paypal

[Hialls]

Very nice!

[kahmeal]

Originally Posted by Rukas

Have you managed to fix it yet?

Nope, still getting the same error

[Rukas]

Originally Posted by kahmeal

Nope, still getting the same error

Totally delete the friends plugin and reinstall it from scratch, it fixed the problem for me.

[Trana]

I have phpadsnew running on 2.0.7. I installed this xml hack, made the changes in the Server Optimization console:

http://mysite/banner/ (this is what I am using for the location)

And now whenever I try and add the <ad> tag, I get this error message:

xmlrpcval: not a scalar type ()
Fatal error: Call to a member function scalarval() on a non-object in c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\forum\includes\lib-xmlrpc.inc.php on line 729

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

[EdQ]

Thanks, just installed it. Works great!

[Trana]

Originally Posted by Trana

xmlrpcval: not a scalar type ()
Fatal error: Call to a member function scalarval() on a non-object in c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\forum\includes\lib-xmlrpc.inc.php on line 729

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

[fzzzt]

Hello,

I just installed this plugin a couple days ago. It seems to work, but for some reason the get variable separator (&) is getting translated into "&amp;" when displayed on a page. This prevents the picture from displaying, of course, since the URL is now something like "adimage.php?filename=blahg&amp;contenttype=gi f". I haven't been able to figure out where this is happening or a way to stop it...anyone know what might cause this? I've played with the htmlspecialchars() calls in the XML file but that didn't seem to help any.

Thanks,
Josh

[Trana]

Originally Posted by Trana

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

I figured this out. For some reason it is not accepting my URL, but the path works fine.

[Tru2Chevy]

After editing the following line of the config.inc.php file:

$phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true;

to reflect true instead of false, I get directed to the upgrade section of PAN, and then when I try to manually type the login page (http://www.mysitenamehere.com/phpAds/admin/index.html) I get a 404 - Not Found.

The reason that I edited that line was because of a database error I was receiving when attempting to use the <ad /> tag in the header template.

The user "Jiggles" had the same issue (back on page 8), and he was refered to the PAN forums (Which I have already posted in here).

I just wanted to know if anyone else had this problem and managed to fix it.

- Justin

[fortnox]

Hi!

First thanks for this hack.

My Question is, how can i put 3 banners ( 3 different banners) with ad tag in one line on header?

Can me anybody help please?