GAB RC1 Release Discussion

[The Geek]

It's time for all GAB users to rejoice...

GAB has hit Release Candidate 1. This means that the feature set is frozen and I am now focusing on any last minute bugs, documentation and phrasing.

This release is a massive update to the last release and it is vital that you follow directions made in this post to upgrade.

Since last version:

1- I have totally re-written about 95% of all code from scratch.
2- I have dramatically simplified the management of ads
3- Improved hopefully every aspect of the program.
4- Made ability to random between adverts in a block (i.e. randomly show a static image, a rotating image and adsense)

In my opinion, earlier versions contained too many nooks and crannies where options for controlling an ad could easily get hidden away. This cause a lot of time to be spent trying to find out WHY a particular banner wasn't showing. To solve this, I have moved all banner controls back to the individual banner level. In other words, to make an ad active, edit the ad instead of the ad and the category. In fact, I have moved virtually all options out of the categories and into the individual ad.
This makes the categories more or less of a way to organize your ads instead of control them. I now envision using the categories for categorizing ads based on their positioning on a page.

One other area I found clunky and counter intuitive in previous versions was the way that ad blocks were attached to scripts.
Therefore I have separated Block management (think of a block as a billboard, in fact I think ill change the terminology before gold) from the script management.
In other words, you will go in and create 1 or more blocks, then go into your scripts and assign those blocks to your scripts. The way this is done is far far better as well.

All in all, it is a much better system that is pretty close to being done. A little more tweaking and phrasing is all that it will need for gold.

For anew install:
Upload all files in the gab upload/forums folder to your forum.
Import the product-geek-gab.xml file into your product manager.
Refresh your admincp.

For an upgrade:
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT YOUR SETTING WILL VANISH. This is a massive upgrade and I could not port over all settings. Once you install, double check all is cool.
Upload all files in the gab upload/forums folder to your forum.
Import the product-geek-gab.xml file into your product manager.
GO through your active banners and MAKE SURE that your url for the banner is correct. I have changed this to an absolute URL so you may need to update your banners.

FOR ADSENSE USERS:
Adsense and HTML adverts are now stored as a banner entry instead of a template edit.
Take your adsense HTML, create a new banner and put the HTML in the HTML setting of the banner (no need to upload an image).

I think that about covers it.

nJoy

[truCido]

Been looking forward to his update, can I just verify that all stats and current advertisements wont be affected by upgrading (apart from the URL maybe)?

[The Geek]

They will be fine. In fact, as it stands now... your stats arent being reported correctly with anything earlier than RC1 :)

[Fleabag]

I even completely uninstalled the product and reimported and my ads were still there [that's a good thing I'm not complaining]. A fantastic release Sam, has made things much much easier as far as administration is concerned. It all makes so much sense now. For GAB I think it's to infinity and beyond, for any vB owner wanting to easily and accurately add ads to their' site there is no other alternative.

[The Geek]

Thanks Flea, Im glad you like it. Im pretty chuffed with the new version.

On a side note, I have uploaded version rc1d. The only file change since rc1c was gab_class_core.php so justreplace that file. It should take care of the bug mentioned this morning.

Ill give it a couple more days and if nothing major pops up, Ill finalize the phrases and release a gold product :)

[Michelle]

Just a friendly little spam to let you know that Geek Advertising Banner System has hit RC1.

LOOOOOOL!! Now that was funny!! :D
Is GAB like a phpadsnews alternative or serves a different purpose?

[attroll]

What I am looking for in a banner system is a way to have my banners all set up and have a expiration date for each banner so that the banner will stop displaying when it reaches that date. Does this do that or is there a way this can be done?

[The Geek]

GAB allows for start dates, expiry dates, max impressions and max click thrus. So yes (and more :) )

GAB is like a vB specific phpadsnews thing however I really am only guess as I have never used it :) Many GAB users were phpadsnew thingees before GAB :)

HTHs

[Brad]

Edit: Nevermind, I fixed it. I'm an idiot. :)

[attroll]

Is there a thread we can go to for troubleshooting this because I just installed it in my test site and I can not get it working. I thought I followed the direction correctly. I ran the debug tool and this is the error it gave me:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /admincp/GAB_admin.php on line 1788

[The Geek]

ah, dont worry about that debug error. I actually didnt update the debug dump.

Start a thread in the troubleshooting forum outlining what problem youre having and we will get it sorted

[PixelFX]

Does this script rotate groups of ads with in a given zone or group? aka you mention billboards?

example: say I wanted to do to 5 ads that rotate with each other in header of my site? $GAB_ads[0] .. how hard would it be to setup say example:

$GAB_ads[0-5] .. or does your system do this and I'm just not seeing it? Also can ads be defined rotation % based on bid level? if you have that type of setup or just through a natural rotation ? and is this even possible?

otherwise everything sounds great :D

thanks for the hard work on all of this.

Another Question: how well does this work with vbAdvanced CMPS 2.1.0 ? and do I need to code anything special to have ads load on my home page?

[The Geek]

If I understand you correctly... yes.

A billboard can contain 1 or more ads. You can specify to show all of the ads in the billboard or you can choose to randomly show one of them. Each adin the billboard can be a static image, a rotaing banner, a flash banner or an html (adsense) ad.
e.g. you can have 3 ads side by side (static image, a rotating and adsense) or randomly show one of them.

It should work on vbacmps though I havent tried yet. Seems like you are supposed to put $GAB_ads in the global output setting or something in order to make itwork.

HTHs'

[greg watson]

If you add a new category via:

GAB>CATEGORIES>ADD NEW

The new category name and order information are not displayed or saved - a new black line appears in the category listings.

The blank category appears as a selectable item (still blank) if you try to add a banner ...

And you can deleted the blank category ...

Greg

PS: Clean install. New installation of vB3.5.3. New installation of GARS 1.0e.

[attroll]

Is there an uninstalled script in case I want to remove this completely from my site later? A script that completely removed everything that is put into my database and what ever the plugin did?

[attroll]

Wow. I have been playing with this on my test site and I will only be using it for banners. But I love the way you can set up the dates for each banner to expire. Man the old way I was doing it by trying to remember who was next was a real pain in the a$$. This program has so much that I can use it for. Thanks for this hack. The only thing I did was play with the GAB_wrapper_standard template to get ride of what I thought was garbage. But others may like all the extra wrap around the banner, but I don't. I will be putting this into my main site later tonight.

Thank you once again.

[The Geek]

Thanks :)

BTW: You can turn off the wrapper by editing the block.

HTHs

[attroll]

Thanks :)

BTW: You can turn off the wrapper by editing the block.

HTHs
Yes I was aware of that. I wanted to turn off the wrapper but Ialso wanted to leave the statement under the banner saying "Want to Advertise?". That was why I edited the template.

[PixelFX]

If I understand you correctly... yes.

A billboard can contain 1 or more ads. You can specify to show all of the ads in the billboard or you can choose to randomly show one of them. Each adin the billboard can be a static image, a rotaing banner, a flash banner or an html (adsense) ad.
e.g. you can have 3 ads side by side (static image, a rotating and adsense) or randomly show one of them.

It should work on vbacmps though I havent tried yet. Seems like you are supposed to put $GAB_ads in the global output setting or something in order to make itwork.

HTHs'

when you talk about billboards having 1 or more ads, if all the banners are set to rotate, to they line up on the page so you can see them all at the same time or do they rotate in the same spot?

what I want is to be able to have 10 ads, that loop, with only one showing at a time.

With a random change every time the page refreshes that it shows a different ad.

[The Geek]

If you want 1 ad on a billboard that contains 10 ads that rotate, then in your block (billboard) have 1 ad set to image type and 10 for the number. It will then rotate 10 images. THose 10 are randomly selected and ordered.

Is that what youre after?

[PixelFX]

yeah, thank you :D, do you have section later that would show how I would put the code on the page to do that?

thanks about to go install script :D

[attroll]

I believe the documentation tells you how.

[The Geek]

Just a quick update guys...

I have sorted all minor issues out tonight except for I discovered that I forgot to put the code in to draw from specific categories. This isn't an issue for most, but it is for some!
Anyhooo, while putting the code in I hit a bit of a snag and I wont be able to update the package tonight, however it will be updated to RC2 tomorrow.
Here is a list of what I'm tackling:
1- missing height and width vars in flash templates
2- Banner display page not saving some changes
3- Category editor spitting out blanks
4- Limit billboard ads by category (the one I'm stuck on)

think thats it, though I may have missed a couple other things. Let me know so I can get everything rolled up into 1 package.

Thanks

[attroll]

Just a quick update guys...

I have sorted all minor issues out tonight except for I discovered that I forgot to put the code in to draw from specific categories. This isn't an issue for most, but it is for some!
Anyhooo, while putting the code in I hit a bit of a snag and I wont be able to update the package tonight, however it will be updated to RC2 tomorrow.
Here is a list of what I'm tackling:
1- missing height and width vars in flash templates
2- Banner display page not saving some changes
3- Category editor spitting out blanks
4- Limit billboard ads by category (the one I'm stuck on)

think thats it, though I may have missed a couple other things. Let me know so I can get everything rolled up into 1 package.

Thanks
This may also fall under #3 above. But when I try to create a category it is also spitting out blanks.

[The Geek]

Hey guys, good news and bad news.

Good news is that it is Valentines day so you should all think about love and stuff when I make the next statement: I have opened a can of worms with this category picker situation and wont have an update tonight. Let me explain.

The GAB ad pulling engine is quite clever and I'm quite chuffed with it. Basically, it figures out how many ads of each type you need on a particular page, grabs the banners and/or HTML that qualify in a random order based on their frequency rate and creates a mini little banner farm that each ad in each billboard (block) uses. If you require more banners than were pulled, it recycles the farm to fulfill your order. For instance; it will recycle if you needed 10 banners, however there were only 8 that could get pulled. Recycling seldom happens as most people have enough banners for their ads, but none the less, I code for completeness!

Well, last night I quickly discovered that I forgot to code the portion of the ad engine whereby you can specify which category banners will be pulled from on an ad by ad basis. Basically, this is a function that allows you to say 'these banners should only appear in headers and these in side blocks'. Well, no big deal, I whipped out my editor and started to whip up a fresh function. Well, this little problem that started as a little loose thread on a sweater started to really unravel the ad engine. The more I worked on my function, the more I had to tweak things to accommodate it. Last night I had the sucker in position before I went to bed. I knew exactly what I had to do to enable it, everything was in place and I was ready to finish it up tonight. Then as I started to finish it up, the thread unraveled further as I soon discovered a new problem: I could limit the query by category (no problem) however if there was another ad on the page that didn't limit by category, I would exclude the categories that were not specified in the other ads! In other words, if you had 1 billboard with an ad that pulled from any category and one that pulled from your skyscraper category, your first billboard would only have access to the skyscraper category! Well, that leaves 2 choices: Rethink the ad farm engine, restrict ads so that all ads on a page either specify categories or not (instead of each ad being able to) or my last option was to introduce a complex query per ad. The last option would be a popular one with many coders out there, however I don't resort to such hack jobs, so I have to look at the first 2. Since I hate restricting anyone, that leaves me with the first option: Rethink the farm.
I have made some headway on it already, however I have given myself an aneurysm doing so and I'm still not to the point where I can say that I'm on the right track.

Anyway, I decided to put it aside for the evening and clean up some GARS issues (which I did). I need to look at the problem after a good nights sleep and a fresh set of eyes.

As the product stands now, it should be perfectly fine for 95% of users needs. Those needing to specify categories to draw from though will be up poo creek until I progress the issue. I can however say that it shouldn't be more than a couple more days at the most.

Thanks for your patience and your support.

[attroll]

I am one of those waiting for the use of being able to use categories. I will try and be patient. Thank you for not giving up on it. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

[poongamer]

I am sooo confused on how to set this up...

I dont understand how to get 1 block of ads in one part while showing a different block of ads in another part of the same page....

I know it has something to do with the array inside the '[]' but I just cant figure out how to get the ads to appear in certain blocks and also how to have the different blocks show on the same page...

Any help?

[The Geek]

In the script listing page, there is a list like this:

$GAB_ads[0]
$GAB_ads[1]
$GAB_ads[2]
$GAB_ads[3]
.. etc

Those value will contain the contents of whatever block you set them to. For instance, if you have $GAB_ads[1] and $GAB_ads[5] set to a particular block, then the contents will appear in $GAB_ads[1] and $GAB_ads[5] and as such. those values should appear in your templates somewhere.

DOes that help?

[poongamer]

In the script listing page, there is a list like this:

$GAB_ads[0]
$GAB_ads[1]
$GAB_ads[2]
$GAB_ads[3]
.. etc

Those value will contain the contents of whatever block you set them to. For instance, if you have $GAB_ads[1] and $GAB_ads[5] set to a particular block, then the contents will appear in $GAB_ads[1] and $GAB_ads[5] and as such. those values should appear in your templates somewhere.

DOes that help?

Still confused....

Not sure if it is because some things are not working (like the catagories)...

What im trying to do is have 2 sets of ads:

1) 1st set in the header that display only ads about my site
2) 2nd set on the main page (all pages) that display ads from our sponsors

I set up an Ad Block called 'Site Ads'

I changed the Master Script to show the following:

$GAB_ads[0] Default
$GAB_ads[1] Site Ads

I then put $GAB_ads[1] where I wanted the Site Ads to show and I put $GAB_ads[0] on the main page where I want the Other Ads to appear. The only thing that happens is that all ads show up at different time in both spots.

I just have no clue on how to get the Banners for Site Ads into that catagory.

Problem Is I just dont know how to get the site ads to the Site Ads catagory

[The Geek]

Looks like you are doing it right. Im just running some last minute tests on RC2 so fingers crossed it will be out tonight and it will fix the problem you are having.
What you want to do is pull banners from a category that has only your ads in it and another ad from the other categories.

Hang tight, ill do what I can to get it up tonight.

[poongamer]

Thanks....for testing purposes I put only one ad in the 'Other Catagory' - The 'Other Catagory' is the one that is called in Site Ads - but unfortunatly all the ads are being run.