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

[Borimikan]

where is the gab_stats.php file AT?

[Borimikan]

i have a couple of questions and problems...

1- I am using RC1 is it the last version?
2- i uploaded 3 ads already, and dont know how can i handle this hack to show those 3 ads in the forumhome, at the same time, no rotation!

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Borimikan

i have a couple of questions and problems...

1- I am using RC1 is it the last version?
2- i uploaded 3 ads already, and dont know how can i handle this hack to show those 3 ads in the forumhome, at the same time, no rotation!

borimikan - there is no file called gab_stats.php the file that will house the stats is advertising.php (which is still under development)

RC1.05 is the latest version.
Yes it can handle 50,000 ads on the same page no rotation. post me the results from settings->debug

(and click install please )

[kafi]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Hey Kafi - im confused on a couple of points you have brought up.
I think there is a bug in the debug dumping script that always shows a bannercount of 0 which really isnt too big of a deal. I was only highlighting it just in case.
The banner count should be at least 1, more should bring up static ads side by side or together in a rotating script.
I know the rotating script is working as Ive tested it to death and have seen it working on others sites. There may however be some sublt bug you have stumbled across that no one else has yet.

the order of adblocks determines the $GAB_ads[x] order.
The standard wrapper is the blcok AROUND the ad. Dont worry about that

If you want to zap me an admin account, ill look into it for you.

HTH's

1. Banner count is equal to Defined Ad Blocks in script.
2. Rotating banner means that it rotate without refresh? Now they rotate only with refresh, but that is working also without rotating option.
3. The order of adblocks determines the $GAB_ads[x] order. OK, but how do i determine this:
I have 3 banners and I want to show B#1 in GAB_ads[1] and to have B#2,3 appear rotating or next to each other in GAB_ads[2]
4. I tried to find how this is working with rotation and side by side, but it doesn't. Even though I set nr.of banners in AdBlocks to 0 there are still two banners I have changing after refreshing....

How do I send you admin account in private?

Thank you Geek!

[The Geek]

Just PM me an admin username and password (with a url).

1- If you want block #1 to appear in $GAB_ads[1], then make that the second block.
2- Banner count and defined ad blocks are two different things. The banner count is how many banners it will pull for the block it is in.
3- Rotation works fine - but you wont get two rotating banners side by side without customizing as each ad block has to contain the same type of adverts. For instance, if your bannercount=3 and the type is rotating, then you will get 1 ad block rotating 3 banners. If your bannercount=3 and the type is image/flash, you will get 3 banners side by side in 1 block. If the bannercount is 3 and the type is text, it wont matter as text ads dont use the bannercount.

HTH's

[kafi]

Thanky you Geek, your admin is in PM.

[kafi]

Again with baner control
I mean how to organize banners (not AdBlocks) with GAB_ads.

Lets say that:
I have 3 banners and I want to show BANNER#1 in GAB_ads[0] and to have BANNER#2,3 appear rotating or next to each other in GAB_ads[1]

I do not want Banner#2,3 appear in GAB_ads[0] and Banner#1 in GAB_ads[1].

[kafi]

Also:

Standard wrapper feature:

If you want to place banners wherever on the forum, you probably don't want to have every banner wrapped. I would prefer plain banner without wrap.
How to add new [empty] wrapper template?

[The Geek]

Create a template called GAB_wrapper_empty with only:
$gab_template
in it. Then click settings->templates->add new
Title: Empty value: GAB_wrapper_empty

Then change the categories accordingly.

HTH's

[kafi]

cool and easy .-)
thanks

[COBRAws]

when i select the forums for GAB to show up and save. I enter again into the edit and none of the forums i checked are checked, instead there are others checked. Weird.

But i saw a great progress from the last version.

[BradE]

Originally Posted by COBRAws

when i select the forums for GAB to show up and save. I enter again into the edit and none of the forums i checked are checked, instead there are others checked. Weird.

But i saw a great progress from the last version.

Same thing happens to me. I have 2 forums in particular that won't display or save at all.

[The Geek]

Have you guys upgraded from beta 2? If so, did you uninstall the previous version first? Clean installs are not really having any problems - dirty upgrades are though.

Post me the results from settings->debug and Ill sort it out for you (generally takes 2 seconds).

[007]

This is by far the best banner hack. Has it been tested in 3.5 yet? I plan to upgrade soon and would love to continue using this. Just wondering. Thanks!

[The Geek]

its not working for 3.5 yet - the next version is though... only sticking point is Im stumped as to precaching the datastore and templates. No one seems to know the answer