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

[Hanif]

Dont see where I can add the banners menu.

Installed successfully without a problem but unless I'm missing something can't see the menu to add adverts???

Wot am I missing?

Hanif

[steadicamop]

Have you copied the altered files from the /gish/gab/RC1.0 directory to their respective places?

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by steadicamop

Reading thru the readme file, the scripts page is for entering what template (?) the ads will be on ... in my case I went for forumhome, so I put that in the ID and Description .. and ticked both boxes, clicked save and nothing appeared, did this 3 or 4 times, nothing has shown - I'm presuming this isn't right?

The scripts will have been set up to begin with. You shouldnt have to add additional scripts just to get an ad to appear in the forum home.

Do this:
Go into your admincp, expand GAB
Click scripts
You should see a bunch of scripts set up already. All of them should have all of their boxes ticked. If not, tick them and save.
Click categories
edit the cateogry in question
ensure all scripts and forums are ticked
save

You shouldnt have to change templates, nor ad scripts. The forumhome script is actually called index

If you are still having problems, PM me an admin account and ill look at it for you

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Hanif

Dont see where I can add the banners menu.

Installed successfully without a problem but unless I'm missing something can't see the menu to add adverts???

Wot am I missing?

Hanif

Hanif, you may also have to edit a phrase (any phrase) and click save to rebuild the cache

[steadicamop]

Originally Posted by The Geek

The scripts will have been set up to begin with. You shouldnt have to add additional scripts just to get an ad to appear in the forum home.

Do this:
Go into your admincp, expand GAB
Click scripts
You should see a bunch of scripts set up already. All of them should have all of their boxes ticked. If not, tick them and save.
Click categories
edit the cateogry in question
ensure all scripts and forums are ticked
save

You shouldnt have to change templates, nor ad scripts. The forumhome script is actually called index

If you are still having problems, PM me an admin account and ill look at it for you

There's no scripts listed at all -- blank, will PM you now with details for log in ... thank you, very appreciative of your help.

[Hanif]

Have you copied the altered files from the /gish/gab/RC1.0 directory to their respective places?

sorry do you mean FTP all the files over...I've done that.

And looked at the phrases again to what the Geek has said but again no GAB menu or banners???

Strange.

Hanif

[steadicamop]

Yeah, the installed puts the amended files in the /gish/gab/RC1.0 directory, global.php needs to go to the root, and in the admincp directory, index.php needs to go to your admincp/ directory ... hope this helps!

[The Geek]

You should ftp both global.php and admincp/index.php from the gish/gab/rc1 folder to your computer, then upload them to the forum folder.

Essentailly your changed files are stored in gish/gab/rc1 until you physically move them yourself as a safety measure. It looks like they are still there (check out the readme)

Update:
I fixed the unchecked array just mentioned. It was occuring if the script had no ads assigned to it. To upgrade from the previous RC versions, just download the latest package and overwrite your physical files.

[Hanif]

ok bit lame here just to be sure then
RC1.0 folder
has global.php and index.php
and a backup and admin folder

now those two files need to go to the root of the forum folder?

and admincp folder holds
index.htm and index.php that needs to go in admincp folder right?

Just to be sure before I overwrite them?

Ta,

Hanif

[steadicamop]

The two files (global.php and admincp/index.php) should go to their locations as The Geek mentioned above, the backup directory holds the unchanged files - DON'T DELETE THESE JUST IN CASE! Don't copy index.htm to the admincp directory - your admincp disappears!! Only copy index.php.

If you're really not sure, download global.php and admincp/index.php before you overwrite them - better to be safe than sorry!