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

[king zell]

I got this messege when I tried to upload a banner :

Warning: copy(./gab/tg-tile-dsrpgsara-pinky.gif): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /admincp/GAB_admin.php on line 716

:ermm:

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by king zell

I got this messege when I tried to upload a banner :



:ermm:

create a folder called gab in your forum directory and chmod it to 0777

[king zell]

Edit : I managed to make it work.. everything is fine now

but there is a strange thing happening.. the banner img keep reloading in my browser.. ??

[DougM]

My question is - do you guys feel that the GAB system operating soley as an admin controlled system works to your liking?...

Just finished reading the 200+ post/story of GAB and could hardly wait for the ending. I would like to raise my hand with a vote for a user interface to upload/manage banners sooner than later. I will be using GAB as part of a business forum where paying members will have one banner rotated as part of their member benefits. Banners would ideally be associated with one member and stop when their membership (paid subscription) ends.

This looks like a fine piece of work and I look foward to installing it when a user interface is completed. The Geek - do you accept donations for your work? If this works as I think it will then you would deserve it.

[djjeffa]

got it to work but have a glitche with the :want to advertise with us? link is there a way I could make it go to a thread ill make to explain how to get a banner on my site?
and also when i do stuff is says could not find gab save setting how could i fix this mannually?

[Watson]

really interested in this also, and the idea of allowing users to upload in exchange for paying membership really appeals to me also

[The Geek]

TO be honest - quite a bit of the UI stuff is now done.
I think it would go much faster and easier though to decouple GAB from the UI perks.
That way we can all be happy that one works to our liking and then focus on the next bit. People not wanting the UI wouldnt need it.

Hope this makes since. I think its the way I am going to go. Otherwise I think GAB will actually take longer to get out there.

dj- dont worry about the gab_settings phrase bit. Its fixed in the next release and doesnt interfere with anything. The colon is in GAB_ad template. Change it to whatever you want there.

nJoy

[DougM]

really interested in this also, and the idea of allowing users to upload in exchange for paying membership really appeals to me also

... and if I may elaborate as to why I agree - A good banner manager, such as phpadsnew, can be installed and integrated into vBulletin in short order to give admin full featured ad controls. I've got that down. The real appeal of this to me is tying it into usergroup permissions with even a very simple user interface. That would be something found nowhere else. I would contribute to the completion and do a handstand over that.

The Geek - (or anyone) Are the screenshots still accurate or have there been changes since they were posted? Is there any UI at this point? And - whichever way you see fit to complete this is fine by me. I'll stay tuned for updates.

[TotlKaos]

Is there a way to setup multiple adds in one add display?
Say I have adds that are only 200pix wide.. and my forums are 600pix wide and I would like to put 3 adds in one banner spot..
Would this be possible?

if you do $add1 $add2 $add3 it will put 3 full banners there with the frames around it.. can the Add frame be removed as a variable?

Thanks!
Russ

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by TotlKaos

Is there a way to setup multiple adds in one add display?
Say I have adds that are only 200pix wide.. and my forums are 600pix wide and I would like to put 3 adds in one banner spot..
Would this be possible?

if you do $add1 $add2 $add3 it will put 3 full banners there with the frames around it.. can the Add frame be removed as a variable?

Thanks!
Russ

depending on your settings, GAB will producr a $GAB_ad{x} for each return.
You can stick these where you want.
If you are trying to get multiple ads side by side - that would require some tweaking of the GAB_ad template to remove the table around it. You would have to most likely stick that that in another template to wrap around the results.
Ill see if there is a way I can do that in the next release.