phpAdsNew Banner Ads integration (advertisements, classified ads, Adsense, etc.)

OpenAds / phpAdsNew Integration 1.0.4 for vBulletin 3.[56].x
2006-06-08 by mip

Integrates the OpenAds / phpAdsNew ads system by introducing a new template tag <ad ... />.
You can even deliver your Adsense stuff via phpAdsNew using HTML banners.

The features of phpAdsNew combined with the power of vBulletin's templating system gives you the possibility to place ads for specific user groups, forums, and keywords.

PREREQUISITES:
This plugin requires a working installation (local or remote) of a recent version ofOpenAds / phpAdsNew (free software released under the GPL).
When using OpenAds, replace phpAdsNew in this documentation with OpenAds (phpAdsNew is just the predecessor of OpenAds).

INSTALLATION:
When having a previous version of this product installed, see section UPGRADE instead.

Install product "phpadsnew-1.0.4.xml".
Set phpAdsNew path in Server Settings and Optimization Options to point to either your local phpAdsNew installation or a remote server (using XML-RPC).
It is strongly recommended to set $phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true; in phpAdsNew config file, to prevent problems when phpAdsNew uses a database different from the one used by your vBulletin board.

When using XML-RPC, make sure to have lib-xmlrpc-class.inc.php and lib-xmlrpc.inc.php copied from phpAdsNew misc/samples/xmlrpc/php/ to your forum's includes/ directory (not necessary when using a local phpAdsNew installation).

Read the NOTES section below.

Click INSTALL in this thread to mark product as "installed" and receive notifications when a new version comes out.

UPGRADE:

• 1.0.3 --> 1.0.4
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
• 1.0.2 --> 1.0.3
  Upgrading is recommended, as this is a bugfix release.
  
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
     
  2. Recompile any templates where you experienced problems with the <ad .../> tag (notably those where this tag is used repeatedly on a line).
     
• 1.0.1 --> 1.0.2
  
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
     
  2. Set $phpAds_config['compatibility_mode'] = true; in phpAdsNew config file.
     
• 1.0 --> 1.0.1
  There's basically no need to upgrade, as the changes don't affect a working installation, but I recommend to do so, to ease possible upgrades in the future.
  1. Import product as usual, with "Allow Overwrite" set to Yes.
  2. Alter the path to phpAdsNew in vBulletin Server Settings and Optimization Options to point to your phpAdsNew installation.
     As opposed to version 1.0 of this product, a local path is not relative to the DOCUMENT_ROOT.

USAGE:
Use the newly introduced <ad ... /> tag in your templates.
The syntax is similar to phpAdsNew's view_raw() function call - the tag understands what, clientid, target, source, and withtext as arguments.

Please make yourself familiar with phpAdsNew prior to using this product. You can't expect this product to work, if you didn't check if your phpAdsNew is delivering your banners cleanly.

Examples:

• Get banner using keywords:
  <ad what="foo|bar" />
• Get banner for guest usergroup (in this case, "ug1" must be set as a keyword in phpADsNew, see 2nd screenshot):
  <ad what="ug$bbuserinfo['usergroupid']" />
  (same technique can be applied to deliver forum-specific ads)
• Similar invocation using template conditionals:
  <if condition="$bbuserinfo['usergroupid']==1"><ad what="" /></if>

NOTES:

1. Always use the latest stable version of phpAdsNew.
   Old versions had bugs and some even had severe security issues - I'll give no support for installations with an outdated phpAdsNew.
   At the time of writing, latest version is 2.0.8.
2. Templates which make use of the ad-tag might need to get recompiled after product change.
3. Recommendations for heavy-duty servers: Move the plugin code to files; try to avoid using xml-rpc or cache xml-rpc requests (e.g. with memcache).
4. Have an eye on current phpAdsNew security issues
5. This product comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
6. Support is provided at will.
   Don't expect help if you haven't read instructions or phpAdsNew manual, if you're using non-standard vBulletin software or if your problem descriptions are useless.

PS:
This plugin is donationware - it helps you to make some money, so please be fair and honor my work with an adequate pecuniary donation.
Donate via Paypal

[The M.I.P.]

@lsgworldl
Please use new version 1.0.1. This should solve the confusion concerning paths.

[scottct1]

How do I set this up so that in each forum there is a different zone shown?

Some of my forums are sponsored and in those forums I want only those ads shown, and in the unsponsored areas I want another zone shown.

Thanks.

[The M.I.P.]

Originally Posted by scottct1

How do I set this up so that in each forum there is a different zone shown?

Some of my forums are sponsored and in those forums I want only those ads shown, and in the unsponsored areas I want another zone shown.

You do this by either using banner keywords as shown in my fourth example or you set the zones explicitly with template conditionals like I have shown in my fifth example:

<if condition="$foruminfo['forumid']==123 OR $foruminfo['forumid']==456">
  <ad what="zone:1" />
<else />
  <ad what="zone:2" />
</if>

Another possibility is the use of phpAdsNew client-ids:

<if condition="$foruminfo['forumid']==123 OR $foruminfo['forumid']==456">
  <ad clientid="1" />
<else />
  <ad clientid="2" />
</if>

You can also mix client-id with keywords, zone names, etc. - see your phpAdsNew manual for info. The ad-tag works similiar to the view_raw() function of phpAdsNew.

[salsabil]

Hi,

I'm trying to get to this work but nothing is showing up unfortunately.

I tested out phpadnews on a .php page to make sure that was functioning and it was.

I'm wondering if I've set the path wrong. My path I put was ../banners/ but the full path is /home/aussie/public_html/forums/banners/

Thankyou!

[The M.I.P.]

Originally Posted by salsabil

I'm wondering if I've set the path wrong. My path I put was ../banners/ but the full path is /home/aussie/public_html/forums/banners/

The base directory for inclusion is your forum's directory, so in your case, the correct path would be "./banners". You can also specify the full path.

(Your "../banners" would point to "/home/aussie/public_html/forums/../banners" which translates to "/home/aussie/public_html/banners/")

[salsabil]

Ah great! It's working now. Amazing how much of a difference a . can make!

Thanks so much for the great plugin.

[tassoman]

Hi!
I'm still trying to get plugin working outside forum root, cause I want to manage ads also into another 3rd level domain, for now called www.

While I ask forum pages, all runs ok. Ads are called from forum.dmn.tld/adv subdir.
If i ask vbadvanced homepage into www, banners images (and links) are broken, cause theire called from www.dmn.tld/adv

I've tried to edit "Replacements" adding adlog.php, adimage.php, adclick.php for vba in admincp, but seems not works.
The /adv directory shown into templates still the same of domain where page was called.

[The M.I.P.]

@tassoman:
First try to set the full path to phpAdsNew (instead of a relative one) in the settings of this product, to be sure that inclusion of phpadsnew.inc.php also works, when you're using the templating system in scripts outside of the forum's installation directory.
Also check if your $phpAds_config['url_prefix'] setting in phpAdsNew's config.inc.php is a valid absolute URL (e.g. http://example.com/phpadsnew/).

If this doesn't solve your problems, please be more precise and also post a link to your site (or show relevant parts of code (notably the HTML between <!-- BEGIN/END ad ...--> comments) and screenshots).

[tassoman]

Both fields are ok. in admincp there's full path from root to phpadsnew dir.
On config.inc.php there's full URI for phpadsnew.

My filesystem is like this:

/ (ftproot)

www

htdocs

forum

htdocs

adv

on forum.dmn.tld is called /adv and it's ok.
on www.dmn.tld is called also /adv but there isnt' any dir here.

So I solved for now with a symlink called /adv but I feel like a dirty hack.

[Brad]

Please upload the files to our server as attachments. As stated in the forum rules.

Thank you.