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

[Reeve of shinra]

ITs looking good. I'm gonna install anyway but whats the typical query count?

[The Geek]

Hanif - I think you have a previous package. Download the latest and overwrtie your files (I stumbled across that error shortly after I upoaded the first RC1 and am pretty sure I fixed it then).

Reeve - That totally depends on how you have it configured.
Text ads (i.e. adsense)=0 queries
1 static banner on a page with no tracking =1 query
More than 1 image/flash banner on a page with no tracking=2 queries
If any of the banners on the page require impression tracking then there is a minimum of an additional query per page. This is per banner that requires the impression tracking however there is a throttle level that dictates the maximum number of queries are made from impressions. For example, if you have 3 banners on a page that you are requiring impression tracking on and your throttle is set to a number less than 3, then it rolls up those queries into 1 to be unpacked at a later stage by the cron job.

Kind of complex, but all in the name of customization

[Hanif]

Hanif - I think you have a previous package. Download the latest and overwrtie your files (I stumbled across that error shortly after I upoaded the first RC1 and am pretty sure I fixed it then).

Geek donwloaded the latest package and overwrote my files.

I dont need to run the installer again do I ? If not when I click on want to advertise with us that opens up a blank page.

Also, I noticed another bug...just sometimes, the ads wont load all together you have to do a refresh of the page and then an add pops up. This I think is an intermittent problem, I've been trying to replicate it but its like a hit or miss.

Otherwise no other bugs or issues found as of today. Mu users are well impressed

Look forward to your thoughts.

Kind regards,

Hanif

[Hanif]

As discussed Geek, the attached image to the associated error message where sometimes, the ads dont load up.

Very strange. Can't figure it out.

Kind regards,

Hanif

[The Geek]

Looks like an erroneous entry (i.e. an uncategorized, empty banner entry). If you could pm me an admincp account, I will look into it for you.

[tomshawk]

OK, This is wierd.

I create a banner, and upload the image but it doesn't show up, even in the admincp banner setting screen.
I ftp in, to verify the image got copied in, it did, I see it sitting there!
But...

In the admincp, banner setting, the image does not display.

I told it to load in the header, as well as forumhome template.
Nothing shows, no banner and no image.

I try setting up an adsense, using my adsense code in the adsense template, Still nothing in header or forumhome.

Any ideas, as to what I may have done wrong?

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by tomshawk

OK, This is wierd.

I create a banner, and upload the image but it doesn't show up, even in the admincp banner setting screen.
I ftp in, to verify the image got copied in, it did, I see it sitting there!
But...

In the admincp, banner setting, the image does not display.

I told it to load in the header, as well as forumhome template.
Nothing shows, no banner and no image.

I try setting up an adsense, using my adsense code in the adsense template, Still nothing in header or forumhome.

Any ideas, as to what I may have done wrong?

Just check your templates for me. Another user upgraded yesterday and for some odd reason only a couple templates installed resulting in something similar. After running the template portion of the install again, it worked.
If you want to see a list of the templates that should be there, click settings->templates. The right hand columns are templates that should have installed.

[tomshawk]

These are te template I have

GAB_item_image
GAB_item_flash
GAB_custom_adsense
GAB_custom_custom1
GAB_item_rotating
GAB_wrapper_standard

I went ahead and reinstalled them for giggles, same thing

There is one odd thing, in Gab manager\Settings\Templates
The GAB_item_rotating template does not show up on that list, I just noticed it in the Style Manager

Because of that, I added a new Template called Rotating Banner with that template, but it did not matter.

Also, I did not upgrade, I did a fresh install to my testvb forums to get a clean start.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by tomshawk

These are te template I have

GAB_item_image
GAB_item_flash
GAB_custom_adsense
GAB_custom_custom1
GAB_item_rotating
GAB_wrapper_standard

I went ahead and reinstalled them for giggles, same thing

There is one odd thing, in Gab manager\Settings\Templates
The GAB_item_rotating template does not show up on that list, I just noticed it in the Style Manager

Because of that, I added a new Template called Rotating Banner with that template, but it did not matter.

Also, I did not upgrade, I did a fresh install to my testvb forums to get a clean start.

The rotating template is hard coded for selection when you set up an ad that rotates.

Tom, caould you spare me an admin account to have a look at your settings?

[The Geek]

BTW: is it adsense you are setting up? Did you put the adsense (or any text) in the GAB_custom_adsense template? Did you set up the ads in the scripts correctly?

The ads are defined in the script (generally MASTER while all others 'use master' unless you want to override the setting). For adsense, you need to have an ad block in the script in question, the wrapper template needs to be set to standard and the custom/adsense put in the ad pull down box

Also, all have to be marked as 'active'

[tomshawk]

Private Message sent,

Yes, I placed my adsense code in the adsense template

[waza]

I get this error:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class gab_base in /home/wazabe/public_html/forum/includes/gab_class_core.php on line 4

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by waza

I get this error:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class gab_base in /home/wazabe/public_html/forum/includes/gab_class_core.php on line 4

You most likely did the file change twice. Double check your global.php file edits (search for gab)

[waza]

Uhu, indeed.
But you know, file change 101 was done, and file change 100 and 200 weren't ?? :s

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by tomshawk

Private Message sent,

Yes, I placed my adsense code in the adsense template

sorted you