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

[monkeyjoe]

Don't work for me or would have been good and what i was looking for

[uReside.com]

mine acts like it works... but... doesn't show an ad, plus i get the "Could not find GAB_Settings_Saved" error

[Bernd]

You have to fill in a value for "what to display if no ad is available" or something along those lines under settings. It didn't work on my site until I did that.

[rrr]

Is it possible to have members "earn" advertising impressions for each post they make?

That way it can be a shared advertising co-op kinda thing that would encourage members to be active in the forum?

Like one post equals 1 impression (or 1 post equals 10 impressions -- or 1 post equals 100 impressions after you are in X membergroup). When you reach X membergroup you get 1000 bonus impressions, etc.

That would make this hack the awesomest

[uReside.com]

Originally Posted by Bernd

You have to fill in a value for "what to display if no ad is available" or something along those lines under settings. It didn't work on my site until I did that.

where is that setting?!

how do i view the stats also, like views and hits??

[uReside.com]

Variables passed varibales: Usergroup: Administrators (6), script=index (0), forum=Apartments Inside!(30)
Problem No script was passed therefore no ad can be pulled.
Usergroup Passed usergroup. This usergroup is set to view an ad.
Toggle Passed usergroup toggle test. This usergroup could toggle ads on or off.
Script Passed script test. We are in a script that is set to view an ad.
Results: $GAB_ad1

when i test it, thats what i get

[The Geek]

If no ads are showing up, it usually means that there is either:
1- no $GAB_ad set in a template
2- and/or the global settings are not set right (check to ensure the correct scripts are ticked there as well as forums, usergroups set to view ad AND make sure that if the usergroup setting to allow usergroups to toggle ads is ticked, that the field value isnt blank)
3- and/or the forums/scripts settings in the ad itself isnt set right

rrr - Im not sure what you man exactly. I think it wouldnt be hard to do a tie in to Ucash where users get points for clicking ads - but ads getting points for impressions?

Guys - there are many installation bugs with this thing still. All workarounds are minor and listed in this thread but I wouldnt suggest someone install this unless they are cool with doing some playing.
The next version isnt far off but I havent had much time to play with it and the impending vb3.5 is hindering my drive to spend much time in development.
Ill see if I can get a smoother running install for this weekend - but I cant promise anything.

Thanks

[Bernd]

It has been mentioned before that the ad system only rotates 3 banners at a time despite the settings in the admin section.

Is there an easy fix for this? (manually changing settings in the database perhaps?).
I've currently found 5 sponsors for my site and would like to show a working rotation before we go live

Thanks a billion.

[rrr]

rrr - Im not sure what you man exactly. I think it wouldnt be hard to do a tie in to Ucash where users get points for clicking ads - but ads getting points for impressions?

Well, I don't really want to encourage members to click on the banners unnecessarily by giving them points.

I run a business type forum, so my members would benefit if they could have their banners shown in the forums.

The more you post, the more banner impressions you get.

For example if your postcount is 100 posts, that would equal 1000 impressions (ad views).

Or it might be easier to award banner ad impressions (ad views) by the membergroup the person is in.

That way, if a person reaches say "supercool membergroup", then they are awarded 10,000 banner impressions. If they reach the superdupercool membergroup, then they are awarded 50,000 banner impressions.

Hope that make sense?

[Mr.D]

Originally Posted by rrr

Well, I don't really want to encourage members to click on the banners unnecessarily by giving them points.

I run a business type forum, so my members would benefit if they could have their banners shown in the forums.

The more you post, the more banner impressions you get.

For example if your postcount is 100 posts, that would equal 1000 impressions (ad views).

Or it might be easier to award banner ad impressions (ad views) by the membergroup the person is in.

That way, if a person reaches say "supercool membergroup", then they are awarded 10,000 banner impressions. If they reach the superdupercool membergroup, then they are awarded 50,000 banner impressions.

Hope that make sense?

I agree with rrr this is what i was looking for great idea rrr. Geek can this be done. Will make us all happy :banana:

[kafi]

I just can't wait for full version :-((((((

[grecostimpy]

Great hack! I have it mostly working except no ads are showing up.

I have all the scripts ticked on the setting tab as well as my ad.

I added $GAB_ad1 to my breadcrumb template for the navbar

Here's the results of my test:

Variables passed varibales: Usergroup: (COPPA) Users Awaiting Moderation (4), script=index (0), forum=Knowledge Base(85)

Problem No script was passed therefore no ad can be pulled.

Usergroup Passed usergroup. This usergroup is set to view an ad.

Toggle Failed usergroup toggle test. This usergroup could not toggle ads on or off.

Script Passed script test. We are in a script that is set to view an ad.

Results: $GAB_ad1

Why no script?


Am I adding this to my navabr correctly (pardon the newb question)...this the very end of the code in breadcrumb....

		</table>
	</div>
	<!-- / mypopupmenu -->
<!-- / NAVBAR POPUP MENUS -->
</if>

$GAB_ad1

Not sure if I did that right?

[EchoZA]

O.K. I ran the install and all reported fine, I then uploaded the altered files over the old ones, and now my admincp does not show, just a blank page. Restored the backs and I have access to admincp again. I have gone through this process 5 times and the same each time. Any ideas?

[The Geek]

Do you get the navigation page but not the actuall GAB admin page?

There is a bug in the file change for admincp/index.php that leaves an orphaned =false; line. You can just remove that from that page.
Some users had reported problems with the javascript that is in GAB_admin.php (toward the top of the page).
Do one of the following to sort it:
1- After the javascrtipt, change the <? to <?PHP
2- Delete the javascript.

My guess is that the first should sort it for you.

Greco - a common mistake that you may want to check is that you do not have a usergroup set to turn the ads off with a blank value in the - er - value box (hope that makes sense!).

rrr & madman. So you want to give banners based on postcounts? Im sure that wouldnt be too hard to do - but I will reserve that one for the GUSH add on.

[EchoZA]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Do you get the navigation page but not the actuall GAB admin page?

There is a bug in the file change for admincp/index.php that leaves an orphaned =false; line. You can just remove that from that page.
Some users had reported problems with the javascript that is in GAB_admin.php (toward the top of the page).
Do one of the following to sort it:
1- After the javascrtipt, change the <? to <?PHP
2- Delete the javascript.

My guess is that the first should sort it for you.

Greco - a common mistake that you may want to check is that you do not have a usergroup set to turn the ads off with a blank value in the - er - value box (hope that makes sense!).

rrr & madman. So you want to give banners based on postcounts? Im sure that wouldnt be too hard to do - but I will reserve that one for the GUSH add on.

I get a blank white page, no admin login, nothing... which option should I try?