I've been looking around for an SQL based ad solution up to $750 and there isn't much choice. Could GT produce one?

Basics features I'd personally like to see:

Ad Types: Banner, Button, Text, Raw HTML

Client Management: Basic details of client and their website/s and/or ad campaign. Also list their current ads (clickable to edit). Option to suspend all ads for a client (radio button or tick-box).

Groups: Group ads together by Zone, Client, or manual selection from list.

Zones: Where the ad is called to appear, can be anything you like, appended to the script i.e.; ad.cgi?zone=*, ad.cgi?client=*, ad.cgi?group=*

Ads expire by impressions, date, click-thru's or can be suspended and re-introduced later. Start and end dates for individual ads, groups and/or clients.

Lots of other things I can think of as well, but main features should be flexibility and speed.


All the best
Shaun

I found a great banner management system - centralad.com. It has all the features you are looking for and more.

Take a look...

Cheers,
Alex Beaton
Nobags.com UK

Links SQL will have a banner system in it, and once the frame work is defined (the program is released) there are quite a few people ready to attack and upgrade it.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

Sounds good - the ideal partnership if the ad-server is built-in. Wow, I'm dreaming of the posibilites already!

Don't suppose you know if this will be implemented with my LSQL installation at the end of June? Or is it still in development?


All the best
Shaun

Well,

Let's see were do I start.

CentralAd - it blow's, WAY WAY to slow, poor management, and VERY unrealiable in high-volume implementations.

AdJuggler - Expensive for most people, hard to get support, not great in high-volume implementations.

I'm currently using 2 different programs, I'm using RealMedia, as well as a MySql / Perl combo called AdvertPro
www.advertpro.com

I'm putting advertpro through about 8.5mil impressions per day with no slowdown, and no lack of features.

the support is GREAT, price point is perfect for most people, and new features all the time.

and no I'm not making any commission on this either, just baseing everything on my experiance.

I don't know to many perl based programs that can stand up to 8.5 million imp's per day.

And yes if anyone ask, I will disclosure the hardware I'm running it on.

-
Eric



-
Eric Geiler
Links SQL User

Hey,

Lucky I saw your post, I was just about to purchase centralad! What one do you recommend? It needs to support everything that centralad does but reliable. It will need to work in Links SQL.

I realise that a banner system is to be included but will it include all the features of centralad?

Cheers,
Alex Beaton
Nobags.com UK

AdCycle is based on MySQL and is free. It is available from http://www.adcycle.com. I can't tell you how well it works because the version of MySQL on my server does not meet the minimum requirements for the program (3.22.04 or higher) and my system administrator is unwilling to upgrade for me.

egeiler,

I've spent a full week looking around and have more or less decided on AdvertPro. It seems to offer everything I need with the exception of calling ads through a cgi script, although I'm working on finding out if that can be done.

Thanks for the tip!


All the best
Shaun

--- UPDATE ---

I've just got a reply from ARCS this morning, apparently it will support ads called from within CGI using the LWP::simple module - I've got that with my web account so that reassures me :)

I have just purchased advertpro and it is really really great. I would recommend it and you have made the right choice!!!

If anyone is a member of exchange-it.com you will probably like to know it is powered by ADCYCLE.COM

This is available for free, uses MySQL with CGI, and utilises mod_perl for speed. I've just started using it and I've absolutely no complaints!!

Cheers!
Ben
------------
http://www.travel-experiences.com

phpAds 1.4 might do it.

http://www.htmlwizard.net/projects/phpAds/

Also, AdCycle uses a lot o' cookies (if I recall correctly); and http://www.adbility.com/ is a helpful site.

Just seen this on the advertpro site

NEW Hyperseek Keyword AND Category targeting plugins
COMING SOON - GossamerThreads LinksSQL integration
Contact sales@advertpro.com for more information

Thought you might like to know.

Regards

MDJ1
http://www.isee-multimedia.co.uk

egeiler,

Yeah, right... if you were selling 8.5mil impressions per day, I am sure you wouldn't be hanging around here. Just about any joe these days claims millions of page views. I would love to see your site and find out what makes it serve 8.5mil impressions.

That really isn't so far off. I believe 8.5 million impressions a day. Many sites can do that. Remember, it's an "impression" and not unique-vistors.

The average visitor to my site does 7+ pages per session. That's anywhere from 1-impression per page, to as many as 7 impressions per page because the advertising program is serving up the top and bottom banners, as well as side-bar banners.

8.5 million impressions may be 1 million page views, and that is very well within the moderately successful range.

Then again, 8.5 million impressions, if the average visitor is clicking 10 pages, each with 8 advertisements on it, would mean just over 100,000 visitors per day, which is _EXTREMELY_ do able.

So, I don't see why you feel that he would be so successful he wouldn't be hanging around here?

Who knows... maybe his site is serving up pages of button banners, and each page has 25 buttons on it, each a different campaign, in which case the "unique-visitors" per impression go pretty low, but the advertising program is _STILL_ serving up 8.5 million impressions --- and that was the point of the post.

Not how many visitors to his site.

(Or, more likely, he is running a Top-10 site, with the top 5,10, or even 25 sites getting their banners displayed on each page, in "popularity" ranking" and each banner display is an "impression" and such top-10 sites can get quite high traffic.)

Let's stick to the facts, and the information as posted.

And, yes, it would be nice to see his site, and see how fast the advertising program really was, and if it could keep up with my high speed connection. I find that almost all banner programs -- even the big services -- I can click pages fast enough that I never see the banners.... (and not just to see if I can do it, but my page loads and I'm off to the next before the graphic displays.).


http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

I don't know pugdog, I would be very suprised to see a machine handle that load. Unless I'm doing my math wrong, that translates into a load of 100+ cgi requests a second (8,500,000 impressions / 86400 seconds), and that is conservative. Considering bursts, you are probably looking at 200+ requests a second.

If it's running under mod_perl or php perhaps, but regular cgi would be way to much overhead.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Guys...

umm... anyone curious about stats etc..email me, I can show you third party stats.

We are going about 150,000 uniques to the front page of our search engine a day, which is about 180,000 or so visitors (non-uniques reloads) to the front page.

The average pages per session is 12.1
The average number of spots per day is 8.5 ad spots per page, this includes SSI included text links and SSI banners.

We are using AdvertPro. The machine can handle it fine, running FreeBSD on one, and solaris on the sun box.

The biggest thing you need is RAM, we have 2 gigs of ram in the intel box and 2 gigs in the solaris box, apache is set to 3000 processes

At anyone time, I have about 2500 or so open during peak periods..

It's all doable just very expense.. you have to select your hardware carefully.


-
Eric Geiler
Links SQL User

ohh ya btw, it's an adult oriented :)


-
Eric Geiler
Links SQL User

<G>I gave you the benefit of the doubt on that one ;)

But I figured as much.

And, the fact you are using Solaris with a lot of RAM on a sparc chip also means you've got top end equipment. Is that the banner server?

I only have a Sparc 10, with 128 meg, and I can't get the machine to break a sweat on the basic websites. I'm really hoping to have to add a new machine this Oct/Nov <G> (lot's of new sites opening this month, and next). I do get a tad slow when the weather program is doing all the updates, (there is a hesitation on my DSL line) but that's about all. The pages serve at a click of the mouse.

Now, if anyone goes and checks...the weather program _is_ slow -- it's a pig, and I'm not really running it under mod_perl. It works, and it works well because I have a lot of extra resources on that machine -- but when it's updating the various zones and charts from the NWS and sending out the mailing list, it causes the other sites on the machine to have a slight hesitation. (I hate getting verbose, but I know someone will have jumped on it).

(BTW.... I really, really, HONESTLY didn't mean the pun in the paragraph above!! I stop short of apologizing for it, but I _really_ didn't mean it!)


http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

Top end equipment.. yep.. for the price I paid it better be. The sun box is running the cgi, the files are stored on a NetApp. The logging is handled by the intel box.

Here are some specs on the sun box.. btw, the 10min load avg, never hits more than 8.50 or so

4x 400-MHz UltraSPARC-II modules with onboard E-cache
4MB external cache per processor
Two independent, buffered 144-bit UPA buses; 128 bits data, 16 bits ECC; two processors per bus
UPA operates at 100-MHz with 400-MHz processors
2gig of ECC Memory on two buses
Five 40-MB/sec UltraSCSI-3 buses for internal disks
5 x 9gig UltraSCSI-3 drives, in RAID5 config for apache + cgi
2 x 9gig UltraSCSI-3 drives, in RAID0 config for system
2 x 9gig UltraSCSI-3 drives, in RAID0 config for swap

2 x 100MB FullDuplex Ethernet to NetApp
2 x 100MB Ethernet to Cisco Cat5500


The Intel box is an Dell with the following config.
PowerEdge 6450
Quad Processor Pentium III Xeon 700MHz w/2M Cache
2GB RAM,4X512, RGT DIMMs
PERC2-QC RAID Card,128MB (Int channels = 2) C6-C7
5 x 18GB 1" SCSI Hard Drive,10K RPM
Two Intel Pro 1000 Gigabit NICs


also to take some of the loading off the servers and give us room to grow we are looking at putting in a reverse cache to handle alot of the images and statis parts to the site.


-
Eric Geiler
Links SQL User

"WOW"!

And all the people who try to run sites on "free" webhosts....

You've got more hardware than most start up ISP's! (except for the dial ins).

But, it does underscore the needs of large websites. You just can't do it on shared, or even small dedicated servers. I'll need a Database/CGI machine this year if we grow even a little over last year. So much as been added, that the demands of the system will require it.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

Hi Eric,

You know, you would see a huge performance boost if you switched to a mod_perl proxied solution. Regular CGI causes so much overhead at that level of concurency. If you are looking at growing, that would be my recommendation, it would free up a ton of resources.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Alex,

If you are looking for some brain change, maybe post a document on how to set up a mod_perl proxyed solution.

I _KNOW_ i can be dense sometimes, but I've played with it a bit, and there are a lot of things I still don't have clear -- such as how to run my mod_perl scripts, how to run the non-mod-perl scripts, etc.

I do know that if you use "exit" at any point, you lose the value of mod_perl, since the script terminates, but can also be used to "clean" out a script that you don't want to stay resident.

I would think that most people who want to run a mod_perl apache proxy, would have only one server, and put "thin" apache on port 80, and "mod_perl" apache on another -- say 81, or something "reserved".

My problem (after setting this all up) is how to get my /cgi-bin/links/ directory to run under mod perl, while my /cgi-bin/other_program/ directory doesn't.

I've actually got all the proxy's working, I just don't think I've gotten the mod_perl part working <G>.

The set up for mod_perl with "registry scripts" is somewhat confusing.

I've tried a few times to make it work, but I think someone who has actually done it right should give hard examples. :)

I've also tried to run a "thin" apache on the front, and compile mod_perl and mod_php into the "fat" apache, but gave that up because no one on the groups or the how-to author could figure out how to proxy [anything_ending_in.php3] to the "fat" server. It looks simple -- but the obvious doesn't seem to work <G>

Anyway.... I would love a hard set of examples for a httpd_fat.conf and httpd_thin.conf file for a basic virtual server running proxy to mod_perl.

I think I posted pretty good step-by-step how to compile it all in, and set up the two servers about 6 months ago, but I have never figured out the configurations properly!!!! <hanging head in shame>



http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

Does anybody know what the true story is with adcycle? Supposidly it uses a lot of system resources.

Any comments?

Adam

The "true" story?

Much depends on how you run it. But, on a shared server it probably does use a good deal of resources, since it is constantly being called, and run, and querrying the SQL database -- same as if you used page.cgi to generate the Links site, rather than static pages.

If your site is already pushing the limits of a shared server, this program (or any locally run ad management system) will probably put you over the top, so to speak.

From what I've seen, and I'm working with an install of it now, it's pretty good. I'll know more in a few days.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

I'll assume all your cgi scripts are perl. =) If so, then what I would do is:

1. In your "thin" httpd.conf proxy back all cgi-bin requests.

2. In your "mod-perl" httpd.conf delegate what should run under what.

3. For your scripts that are mod_perl compat:

and now the mod_perl ones will run under Apache::Registry, the other ones will run under Apache::PerlRun. If you had something that didn't work under mod_perl at all you could do:

to use the regular cgi handler.

Well, you should have asked here. =) To do that you should use ReWrite:

and that will proxy any URL that has .php in it to the mod_perl server.

Let me know if you have any other questions, or want a fuller example.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.