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

[sm00nie]

Yep, it shows in my default template ( as well as custom_custom1, custom_adsense, item_flash, item_image, rotating, wrapper_standard).
When I create another banner, and up another image it goes to the same folder (gab/0), could that be the problem ?

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by sm00nie

Yep, it shows in my default template ( as well as custom_custom1, custom_adsense, item_flash, item_image, rotating, wrapper_standard).
When I create another banner, and up another image it goes to the same folder (gab/0), could that be the problem ?

The folder (in this case 0) is a structure based on the userid (in other words, userid 0).

Gimme a few - im looking into it.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by beatyourtruck

First off, I am a new Vbulletin user (former phpBB2) and an very pleased to find this mod! It is exactly what I am looking for (I have never liked phpAdsNew...too hard to operate). Thank you for all the hard work and effort The Geek!

Anyway, downloaded and installed the mod today. No errors, only had to do the save phrase thing to get the words to show in the GAB menu. All is cool with that. Also was able to upload a banner! Excellent.

Now the problem, my forum (brand new 3.0.7 install with only CSS style changes done to it) just comes up with a blank screen. I placed the old Global file back in the root and the forum comes up! Hmmm! So I uninstalled the mod...reinstalled and the same thing.

Any ideas? Something goofed with Global or......?

definatly sounds like a bad global.php edit. Try making the edits manually.

[beatyourtruck]

Thank you....I did try that earlier (several times) but I must have included some spaces or did something wrong?! I think sometimes it is good to walk away from this stuff for a couple of hours and then come back to it

It is working now.....I have banners uploaded and will now attempt to get them to show up on the board!

Thanks very much for the fast reply!!!

[beatyourtruck]

Is it possible to have specific banners appear only on specific forums? I think so if I am understanding the logic correctly (or maybe I am not understanding it):

If I wanted a specific banner to appear on a specific forum, could I create a new category (with for instance, "showthread", "forumdisplay") that only applied to that specific forum and then set the desired banner to that category? Then I would have to add "$GAB_ads[x]" ("x" being the Banner ID number) to my header template and it would only show when that forum came up? Am I thinking about this too hard or.......

One more thing.....I tried putting the $GAB_ads code into the navbar template but nothing happened. I just created a table <table width="100%" align="center"><tr><td>$GAB_ads[2]</td></tr></table> but I am thinking that is the wrong way to do it?

Please help!

Sorry for the stupid questions! I seem to know just enough to get myself in trouble And for what it is worth, I will be happy to donate some cash for this. It will be a GREAT tool!

[The Geek]

There are no stupid questions. Theres just eggplant. Now thats stupid.

First off - I just updated the package. It was slightly premature so the stas thing is a bit crude... however I released it to help with debuging mysterious missing code blocks. If everyone would be so kind to install the latest version (follow the readme upgrade instructions - its pretty mild).

Now onto your Q.

Forst off... no need to stick $GAB_ads[0] in a table. Just stick it as the first line in your navbar template (you can move it about when you feel advanced )

If you want a specific banner in specific forums, do as you suggested:
1- Create a new category (always smarter) and tick the scripts AND forums you want them in.
2- Make sure it and the scripts are active.
3- Make sure the scripts have at least 1 ad block (or better - make sure 'use master' is ticked and that has at least 1 ad block).

Thats about it. If you are still having problems getting it to appear, install the latest package and give me the debug info.

HTH's

[Protoman]

found 1 bug..
it tries to make changes to admincp/ files
but it assumes your folder is called admincp.. it needs to look at the config or something to get the correct path.

[Protoman]

ok 2.
need to tell the user to delete the install file.

make that 3
Warning: move_uploaded_file(htdocs/forum/banners//0/bannerfinal.gif): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /includes/gab_class_admin.php on line 400

Warning: move_uploaded_file(): Unable to move '/var/tmp/phpHN8muV' to 'htdocs/forum/banners//0/bannerfinal.gif' in /includes/gab_class_admin.php on line 400
Got some freaky error.

[The Geek]

yea, its stated in the readme just to rename your admincp back to admincp during the install to prevent any problems.

Otherwise its no big deal... just means you have to do a manual file change there.

[The Geek]

Your settings are incorrect. you need to set your server path.

[Protoman]

I removed the /home/sites/blahblahblah part.. paths are correct.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by corollasbest

blahblahblah

Well, whats with the /forum/banners//0/banner.gif it should read /forum/gab/0/bannerfinal.gif

An invalid settings is usually the culprit for 'No such file or directory'. The other possability is that the php process doesnt have the ability to write to the gab folder. Try either changing ownership of the folder, or chmod to 777 to see if that sorts it

HTH's

[Protoman]

server ignored my chmod the first time.. works now

[Protoman]

ok, totally lost now. I created an ad.. went to edit it and the macromedia flash thingy was where the image would appear.
I hit save, and now the ad is gone. And every other thing I hit now.. ad blocks will not save.., different ads will not save. nothing saves :/
no clue.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by corollasbest

ok, totally lost now. I created an ad.. went to edit it and the macromedia flash thingy was where the image would appear.
I hit save, and now the ad is gone. And every other thing I hit now.. ad blocks will not save.., different ads will not save. nothing saves :/
no clue.

Make sure that the category you put it in is active (for that matter - best make them all active)