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Banner Program
On the topic of 3rd party utils, if you are looking for a banner rotation program that uses MySQL, is free, and seems to have most of the wanted features, check out:

http://www.adcycle.com/

(you need the 'www' or you get metagopher)

I'm just playing with it now,and if it looks good, I'll try to make some specific instructions for using it with LinkSQL.

It's a work in progress.
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
pugdog,
I setup this script when ti first came out and haev it running great, however, I am unsure how to call teh ads properly. How do you call ads so that multiple banners from the same campaign rotate? Thanks!

------------------
Ted Sindzinski
www.infinityinternet.com


[This message has been edited by infinity (edited September 29, 1999).]
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
I'm not sure what you mean... but I set up one campaign to try, with 3 banners.

I made a file http://www.postcards.com/adcycle.html to display them... (this file will be there a few days, but not longer). Reload it a few times and see what it does <G>

From what I gather, the banners in a campaign rotate somewhat randomly. I haven't gotten into the code at all to see how. But, this looks like the most promising script, and since it's open source and free, and MySQL based, and a 'give back' by the webmaster to the web community, it seems the perfect script to try to integrate with LinkSQL.

The fact it's set up to handle all the standard sized banners is great! I'be been dying to rotate my 120x60 and 88x31 banners automatically <G>

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Re: Banner Program In reply to
That's just what I want to do, my question is what does your actual link/image code look like (what is the source before it's run) or are you using static image calls and no random functions or such?
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
The way this program seems to work is all the ads go into a pool, and are randomly/rotationally displayed based on the calling convention used.

The calling convention has to give a type (size) and a pool, and an optional keyword.

Each time you call the code, a different banner will be displayed. You can give them a position to number to overcome the browser cache.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you are asking. The rotation of banners within a campaign is automatic, and the rotation of campaigns in a pool is by the rules you set up.

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Re: Banner Program In reply to
pugdog, is the program stable?

Will it use a lot of resources?

I have used a very popular ad program but it use a lot of resources after it got a lot of hits. So i switched to another one.

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Bear EveryWhere
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
I don't know, I'm just playing with it now. The author dives some hints on performance in the docs.

The optional tags to the banner program:

pool=1&media=1&id=[number]&keywords=[word]

where [number] is a postion integer, and [word] is a keyword to the ad campaigns.

This looks like it can be easily tied in with links to provide context sensitive banners on category or search words.
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
adcycle is only in beta......

i don't know where i heard it from.. but i heard that it is gonna be free... but like X percent of the ads is theirs.. meaning they are gonna encrypt the source code (using that annoying thing that emumail uses) and then it's gonna have some code in it to just randomly chose a number i guess.. and 1 out of 10 times.. it will be their banner..

that's what i heard.. not sure if it is true.. i'm not even sure where i got that from..

jerry
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Jerry,

What encryption? The AdCycle is pure perl.

There are several programs like Emumail that provide a "free" version if you do their advertising. Maybe you are thinking of one of them. This looks likes it's really a free program, in the GNU spirit.
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Jerry - I don't think they are, from what they have said on there site, sounds like its a free, all round script - none of there banners... and if they do...

The backspace button will be used alot when they release that version Wink

------------------
Michael Bray
....
Review your webhost, or find a new one at www.webhostarea.com




[This message has been edited by Michael_Bray (edited September 30, 1999).]
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
michael..

you won't be able to delete anything..

first of all.. emumail or some other web based email script has perl encrypting done to the file.. it's weird.. but i did it to my admin.cgi.. it just makes the code into weird code Wink

the only 2 lines that are still "editable" is

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use Perl: Wink

i dunno where i heard it.. but i do remember hearing it Wink

jerry
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
I've had no problems modifying the code to my likings at all....
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
i'm not saying that it is coded now!!

like i said a billion time (once) it's in beta..

jerry
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
I've got the program working a little with both LinkSQL and Links 2.0. I have not started to deal with keyword integration yet.

I can see where I would probably change parts of this program if (when) I get the time to use it, since some of the hard-coded database features should be broken up into multiple databases (the database is far from being normalized).

One thing to be aware of -- the reporting of SQL error messages is poor to non-existant, and I spent a lot of time chasing my little curly tail last night.

I've got it set up to use my unsold inventory by using click-through and associate programs. Some of the URL's contain characters that need to be escaped when being sent to SQL. We don't see that in Links, since Links catches most of them, but this program doesn't clean the input. I _thought_ I had cleaned my URL's, but I had missed one character in the string I was inserting, and I was almost at the point of re-compiling MySQL before tried the string through the SQL monitor and got an SQL error.

I'm playing with this program, and using some of the new features of LinkSQL, I'll try to integrate these two programs more closely.

If anyone else is working on this, please raise your hand, and lets start sharing insights and qirks/bugs of the program and LinkSQL integration.

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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Widgetz, I guess you might be right, cause there is a part of the code that says

Code:

$sth = $dbh->prepare("
CREATE TABLE cp(
C0 VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C1 VARCHAR(200) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C2 VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'ON',
C3 DATE NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C4 TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 2,
C5 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT ',1,',
C6 VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'IM',
C7 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'OFF',
C8 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C9 DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT '1999-1-1 00:00:00',
C10 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C11 TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 1,
C12 FLOAT NOT NULL DEFAULT 99999999.00,
C13 FLOAT NOT NULL DEFAULT 99999999.00,
C14 FLOAT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0.00,
C15 FLOAT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0.00,
C16 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 999999999,
C17 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 999999999,
C18 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 999999999,
C19 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 999999999,
C20 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C21 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C22 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C23 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C24 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C25 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C26 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 100,
C27 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C28 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C29 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C30 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C31 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '$images_url/banner1.gif',
C32 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '$images_url/banner1.gif',
C33 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '$images_url/banner1.gif',
C34 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '$images_url/banner1.gif',
C35 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '$images_url/banner1.gif',
C36 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'http://www.adcycle.com',
C37 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'http://www.adcycle.com',
C38 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'http://www.adcycle.com',
C39 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'http://www.adcycle.com',
C40 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'http://www.adcycle.com',
C41 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C42 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C43 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C44 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C45 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C46 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C47 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C48 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C49 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C50 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C51 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C52 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C53 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C54 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C55 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C56 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C57 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C58 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C59 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C60 INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
C61 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C62 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C63 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C64 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C65 VARCHAR(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C66 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C67 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C68 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C69 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C70 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C71 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C72 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C73 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C74 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C75 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C76 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C77 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C78 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C79 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
C80 VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'VIEW'
)");
$sth->execute;
$sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO cp SET C0='DF01',C1='DFLT',C4=1,C3='$date'");
$sth->execute;
}

Which is made to automatically display there banners, you would have to change that early on though cause its in the build subroutine...

Oh well - Hopefully they won't encrypt it!!! Wink

------------------
Michael Bray
....
Review your webhost, or find a new one at http://www.webhostarea.com


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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Right now their banners show on the admin.cgi program, which is fine by me. In distributing a program, you also have to seed it with some defaults, so why not use your own?

Here is the copyright information from the distribution file I have:

Quote:
# Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
# modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
#
#
# * Redistributions must retain the above copyright notice, this
# list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#
# * Links, text, images, and advertising banners in the Administration
# areas must not be modified or removed from original form without
# specific prior written permission.
#
# * Redistributions must reproduce the above copyright
# notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
# documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
#
# * Redistributions must be free. Under no circumstances may this software
# be sold (modified or unmodified).
#
# * Neither name of the AdCycle.com nor the names of its contributors
# may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
# software without specific prior written permission.

Basically it sounds like "copyrighted public domain" -- the code and source are freely usable, provided the original copyright and original notifications remain intact.

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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Cause I am modding the code and gonna distribute it I had a talk to the main programmer guy... he said it was 100% alright as long as I left the code there...

PS - there banners appear in your rotation I think Wink - not just the admin screen

------------------
Michael Bray
....
Review your webhost, or find a new one at http://www.webhostarea.com


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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Ok, maybe one of you can help me out as this program is not working right at all. The install goes fine, adding banners goes fine, hell it ALL goes fine. I can view my nw banner ocne and after that it turns into the default banner, never to resurface. Then, when I call the link for id=1, it sends you to the page of the banner that no longer shows.

There is no roation of banners or links. If you'd like to give me a hand, please contact me here or via icq (#9539507). Of course, I am willing to work out some form of deal with anyone who spends their time helping me.... thanks!

------------------
Ted Sindzinski
www.infinityinternet.com
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
I had some problems too, and I'm not sure what the reason is, since I'm working on several things at once.

Did you make any changes to the code? Or are you using the generic install?

Rotation seems to occur, sometimes, then stops, or eventually just displays the 1st banner. I asked him about it and he said it was some sort of browser cache, but I don't think so. It has to be something in the random/rotation logic.

I've decided that while this is a good start, it's got some hard-coded features I don't like, and I'm gonna rewrite it along the links of Links. To add a banner size I had to make about 8 changes to the code, and some were sort of obscure. That should all be dynamicly generated.

IT's really not too hard, since SQL (again) does most of the work. Once Links has it's admin feature and 'editors' the same thing could be used to log in 'advertisers' and at that point the code becomes even more simple.

I hesitate to rush anything, with the 1.1 'final' release on the way. Once that is out, I think you will see a bunch of add-ins and some of the things already built in.

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Re: Banner Program In reply to
i used adcycle for a day and i didn't like it Wink

btw.. yes.. they do have ads on both admin and rotation..

jerry
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
i was able to do a backup.. but it was a LAME backup.. i made a perl script that basically logged in to my pdamania.com mysql server and got each line in the table and then it created a table with the same exact fields and same type of fields and then it inserted each line one by one onto my local mysql server.... hehe

then i did the same back and it worked.. hehe

i'm afraid it might get slow after awhile though..

about adcycle.. yes.. the code does sorta suck doesn't it..

to do keyword searches can't be that hard with a bunch of ORs in the Where section of the query.. hehe

anyways.. i'm tired.. i slept REALLY late last night.. and i don't want to do anything except for like.. trying out some stuff..

LOOK WHAT I MADE!

http://www.pdamania.com/getfile.cgi

upload a GIF file.. (make it longer than 20x20 pixels please.. for better results Wink

check out the PNG format images that tell you the width/height of the image.. hehe.. i was surprised i actually got the text to center..

anyways.. that's just another thing i recently learned how to do Wink

may be useful for uploading images to an ad management script perhaps? [ERROR! The width/height or size of the banner exceeds the current limit!]

jerry
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
hehe,

You guys are also having probs with the code. I had it working for a while and I tried to make some changes and it stuffed, got it working for a while and it stuffed up again Wink

I like there concept of an PERL/SQL program, I don't like the way they wrote it Frown. I have been trying to figure out how to get the damn keyword/category searches for Links to work with it.

Anyway - Maybe they release version 0.2 and all the probs will be solved Smile

------------------
Michael Bray
....
Review your webhost, or find a new one at http://www.webhostarea.com


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Re: Banner Program In reply to
The one thing I really didn't like, was an 80 column table, when it should have been 'normalized' so that the campaigns/banners/rotations etc are in separate but linked tables. I've got a database schema worked out, and sometimes that's most of the battle. Rotation code is not that complex, actually, the admin features are the most complex aspect. For integration into Links, many of the routines are in liks already, and can be copied, or used in place.

When the admin comes out, I'll probably have the banner rotation done shortly after. That's high on my list, since I want to be able to rotate banners, link pages to keywords and banners to lilnks.

I want the categoris to have a 'default advertiser', and an override in a link so that on the detail pages during a build, a targeted (or paid) banner spot can be assigned.

FWIW -- I'm using Links as the basis for my site, and any growth I have will come from this program base, so the banner program will _probably_ be integrated into Links, rather than 'stand-alone'. Meaning, some of the 'assumptions' it makes will require Links, (and hopefully be able to be added to the Admin features so I don't have to build my own).

Any comments or suggestions are welcome... if you think of problems with AdCycle or have suggestions about how to change/work-around what they are doing, I'm open.

For one, with linked tables, there should be no arbitrary limit on the number of banners in a rotation. A rotation (campaign) will have a unique ID, and the banners will be stored in tables with that ID.

A _BIG_ controversy in the MySQL lists is whether images should be stored in the database or not. For advertising images that are all under 15k, a good argument could be made for storing the image _IN_ the database record as a blob. Another argument could be made that it's better to let the browser do the work of calling for the images, rather than serving them down a cgi connection. But would the extra IO off-set the speed of having globed the MySQL record and sending the data out in one process?

Heck... the only way to find out would be to run tests, and I'm not that tecchie.

I'm open to ideas about storing the image in the database, vs storing the image as a file off-line.

One advantage of storing them _in_ the database is file-management is much easier, since you don't need a directory for the images (no external maintennance routines), and if a user has 'change' ability to the database, they don't need 'upload' ability to the server to make changes to their ad rotations. (You can exclude access to the 'images' table if you don't want advertisers to be able to change images in the rotation on their own through MySQL permissions system, and give that access to the editors with a different log-on level).

Of course the down-side is that you can't 'gulp' the server to see the files, but I think, in this case, storing the image as part of the 'banner' record is a good idea.

(NOTE: I'm generally against storing images in the database, since they are a discrete 'object' that can exist on their own, and can be referenced by a URL or Path from the database, so why put htem "in" the database. It seems to violate the rules of 'normalization' to me. IMHO ... but in this case, I'm leaning towards, since the 'object' is not the image itself, but the 'banner' which is a collection of data, one of which is the 'image' blob.)

Comments??



Quote Reply
Re: Banner Program In reply to
store as a blob.. i have done this with my screen shots for my version of links 2.. and it's pretty cool.. i was able to store more than one screenshot for each link too.. by seperating them by something that i am not sure if it will ever make it into GIF syntax.. "jerry".. hehe Smile i couldn't think of any other.. so i had to use it.. Wink

what i would like to know is how can i copy a mysql database onto my local computer?? i've only been able to make a copy of a table with it's data.. but the files still are where my mysql database folder is on the server.. i can't copy it to like

/home/pdamania/ or something

jerry
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Re: Banner Program In reply to
Any suggestions on how to rank or order the 'zones', 'pools', 'campaigns', 'rotations', etc?

What things are you looking for or find missing in other systems?

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