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

[lasto]

have done that - have them showing on all pages

even set dates to 2003 and expire in 2006 and made sure they active and even made sure the usergroups are allowed to see ads.

Still nothig shows.

[lasto]

also another problem - had 2 advertisments so went to delete it and no matter what it wont delete.The page just goes to admincp homepage.

[The Geek]

hmmm. I may put out Beta 2 later today for you as it has some debug abilities that may help determine the problem. I was only holding off to get more of the usercp portion done - but maybe it would be best to put it out for the advert side of things (there are several new cool features like frequeny and such).

Watch this space

[dmatthams]

Originally Posted by The Geek

glad to hear dmatthams (though when I went I didnt see any ads!)

danhaga - Nope. I avoid MSN and AIM like a Huggy man with a Flesh Eating Bacteria infection. If you want to pm me login details with admin access - ill look into it tomorrow.

http://www.varilla.co.uk/forum/index.php?s=&styleid=2

^silly me

[dmatthams]

ps. will be very interested in the ability for users to purchase ad space (forum is based on bands and band members so the ability for them to expose themselves in that way would be great!)

If you need a hand with anything graphical then i would be happy to return some cheese x]

[swarangal.com]

Thanks for the lovely hack...

Every thing is fine with me except one thing !!! ... no ads are showing up. did every thing as per the docx said and can see the admin thingy kewl .. but no banner is popuping up !! can some1 or the geek help me

cheers

[The Geek]

ok guys... Im just putting some touches on Beta 2 right now. Once again - its slightly premature as it includes only a partially finished usercp. However, no users will really be able to do anything with it so I guess its not a big deal (heck, you dont even have to upload the advertising.php yet).
However, the reason I am releasing it early is because there is a test facility for testing the adverts (how and when they appear). This will be very useful for troubleshooting people saying that the ads arent popping up.

It also features a crap load of other new features.

Should be done in the next half hour or so.

[lordofgun]

Can't wait for the final release!

[Lionel]

Suggestions: One of the major limitations of all vb banners hacks is the fact that they are all limited to admin. An ad purchaser should be able to see his statistics. Perhaps a link to display only to ad owner and admin could be included in the ad's table?

[The Geek]

Okay guys. Its up. Please READ the README.

I wouldnt bother uploading advertising.php yet... its not even partially done.

To upgrade from Bea 1- upload all files and run gab_install.php choosing the install path (dont worry - its a smart installer!).
Make sure your gish folder is chmod 0777

nJoy

[Lionel]

Ucash integration. Points for clicking would be good too. Users can click as many times they want, but get points only once every 24 hours per banner click.

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Lionel

Ucash integration. Points for clicking would be good too. Users can click as many times they want, but get points only once every 24 hours per banner click.

I would see that as more of an add on. I really only focus on making hacks for my site. I dont use ucash so someone else would need to bolt that on.

As far as your other suggestion - that is in the plan. I am getting there

[lasto]

uploaded - ads seems to work but when clicking on em they go to a blank page with the following url

javascript:gotoAd();

thats it and page not displayed

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by lasto

uploaded - ads seems to work but when clicking on em they go to a blank page with the following url

javascript:gotoAd();

thats it and page not displayed

Thanks lasto - think I got to the bottom of it (and a really annoying frequency error). download, replace all files, run the installer.
Then make sure that you have frequencies set. THere was a bug in the previous version that would eat them at any opportunity.

BTW - you will then have to revert your GAB_ad_rotating template

[danhaga]

Ok i now have this installed correctly and its working great.. add show up where i want them and they link to where they should...

question.. can i remove the part under the ad that says "want to advertise with us" and "learn how to get rid of these ads?"

if so how? right now those links dont work but i wouldnt want them anyway

thanks