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

[grecostimpy]

Originally Posted by The Geek

greco- If you have any of the 'usersgroups that can toggle ads off' ticked, there is a drop down box that specifies which usergroup field to check to see if they want the option off - then there is a value box that indicates what the value should be if its off.
Frequently, I have helped people trouble shoot where they have a usergroup selected, something like the 'biography' drop down selected and then the value is blank.
Which essentially means those usergroups that are ticked with nothing in their bio will be choosing NOT to see an ad.
Another common problem is that there is a section to indicate which usergroups see ads - yet none have been ticked which means that no usergroups are set to view the ads!

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks, I checked everything. No usergroups are checked for toggle ads and all usergroups are checked to view ads. Odd, it just will not work! :ermm:

[The Geek]

and all scripts are ticked and there is a $GAB_ad1 in your navbar template?

[mamboking]

Can anyone tell me how to go about creating $GAB_ad2? I want setup a second region with a different set of ads.

[The Geek]

GAB_ad2 is created automatically depending on settings.

For example, if you choose 2 ads per page, you will get $GAB_ad1 and $GAB_ad2

The next version allows you to specify per page.

speaking of:

Progress report.
Today I have had to rip the guts out of the stats system to pave the way for the GUSH system. I have also decided to change the templating mechanism back to using vb templates which means we are slightly delayed again (that and the fact I am going out of town again). All things going weell we should see an RC this weekend.

[mamboking]

Thanks Geek,

I thought that's what I read somewhere else in the thread but don't how that translate into a second rotating banner like $GAB_ad1. If $GAB_ad1 pulls the ads for the first rotating banner; how do you designate ads for the second rotation. Or is it limited to one?

[kafi]

Originally Posted by The Geek

All things going weell we should see an RC this weekend.

Geek thanks for this and all you do .-)

[steadicamop]

This is a GREAT hack, adds all the extra stuff you ever wanted for ad banners!

I installed it quickly, and let it do the file changes, it actually messed up and missed out a $printhr from the admincp/index file, but not the issue.

I've uninstalled the hack and will try again tomorrow (late here!) but I had problems with the phrases, the GAB_settings_saved didn't work - it didn't exists, plus it would allow me to upload an image - failed to open stream.

I will try again tomorrow and give more detailed info, should it do it again, this time I'll make the file changes manually - I don't mind that much

Can't wait to get this working, just what I need!!

Thanks!

[grecostimpy]

Originally Posted by The Geek

and all scripts are ticked and there is a $GAB_ad1 in your navbar template?

Yes....no luck. I know obviously I'm doing something wrong, as it's working for everyone. I think I may uninstall and try over.

[tomshawk]

Originally Posted by grecostimpy

Yes....no luck. I know obviously I'm doing something wrong, as it's working for everyone. I think I may uninstall and try over.

No, you are not the only one

I had phrase problems and

even though the built in tester said it was successful, No errors.

It still didn't show up.

I basically said, I'll wait until the full version comes out.

Luckily I always test big things like this, on a non public site

As The Geek said many times,

It is a beta after all

[jamiepryer@hotm]

sorry for sounding like a total looser, but i have no idea what the following means - really sorry guys, i am new to all this :ermm:

Ensure the gish folder is chmod 0777
Make sure that the gish folder (and its contents) are chmod'ed to 0777

so i got the following error:

Attempting to auto hack files (in /).
Trying to make gish/gab ... Problem creating dir gish/gab !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0 ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0 !
Trying to make gish/gab ... Problem creating dir gish/gab !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0 ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0 !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup !
Destination path gish/gab/Beta 2.0/ doesnt exist. Cant copy files over for amending. Check readme for details on how to work around this.
Modifying file: global.php
gish/gab/Beta 2.0/global.php doesnt exist. Cant try to change.
Trying to make gish/gab ... Problem creating dir gish/gab !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0 ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0 !
Trying to make gish/gab ... Problem creating dir gish/gab !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0 ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0 !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup !
Destination path gish/gab/Beta 2.0/ doesnt exist. Cant copy files over for amending. Check readme for details on how to work around this.
Modifying file: global.php
gish/gab/Beta 2.0/global.php doesnt exist. Cant try to change.
Trying to make gish/gab ... Problem creating dir gish/gab !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0 ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0 !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0/admincp ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0/admincp !
Trying to make gish/gab ... Problem creating dir gish/gab !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0 ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0 !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup !
Trying to make gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup/admincp ... Problem creating dir gish/gab/Beta 2.0/backup/admincp !
Destination path gish/gab/Beta 2.0/admincp/ doesnt exist. Cant copy files over for amending. Check readme for details on how to work around this.
Modifying file: admincp/index.php
gish/gab/Beta 2.0/admincp/index.php doesnt exist. Cant try to change.
File Changes complete.
All files I changed are in /Beta 2.0. You will need to copy those over to their forum locations once you are satisfied they are changed correctly.
Completed Install!