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

[djsydeburnz]

oh, also it seems to break the downloads module i have running (by ronin) and it doesnt like any characters in the url very much like & and ?

sorry to bother and thank in advance!

[Osiris2k]

this looks like one of the best banners hax out there..will definately give this a try tmr! (if it is bug free)

any forums rinning this?

[venomx]

I too will install this when its not beta and after 3.5 comes out and this has been updated.. got tooo many hacks as it is now that ill have to change over

[CosmicBlend]

Originally Posted by Osiris2k

this looks like one of the best banners hax out there..will definately give this a try tmr! (if it is bug free)

any forums rinning this?

im running it on my beta site.. runs perfectly ive had no issues what so ever.

[uReside.com]

<--- still trying to get it running right

i have that same "Could Not Find GAB Setting Saved" error too

[JoeyAnderson]

Alright, I've got it running near perfectly on my site now.

http://www.carolinarides.com

My questions are these: 1) Why does it seem like my .gif banner ads aren't running all the way through? I've tinkered with the settings repeatedly, but it still seems like it isn't letting the .gifs finish.

2) Is there any way to change the banner-click function to pop up a new window with the link, and leave the bottom window as my forum?

Sweet hack once I got everything to work and editted a few small tidbits. The finish version will likely kick ass.

[JoeyAnderson]

Originally Posted by Nuckolsc.com

after doing all of the fields for the banner in the admincp I now have this message:
vBulletin Message

Could not find phrase 'GAB_settings_saved'.

Know whats wrong. Thanks again man...

Disregard that error message, it will be fixed in the final release. The hack works fine even with that error message.

[JoeyAnderson]

Originally Posted by uReside.com

<--- still trying to get it running right

i have that same "Could Not Find GAB Setting Saved" error too

Disregard that error, it will be fixed in the final release. The hack works fine even with that error occuring.

[Bernd]

Does rotating allow the rotation of mixed banners? (flash and jpg for example).

As of now, only the flash banner shows up.

[Nuckolsc.com]

Originally Posted by JoeyAnderson

Disregard that error, it will be fixed in the final release. The hack works fine even with that error occuring.

Not for me. It shows me that error then brings me right back to where you add the banner.