Hi,

I have just been trying to find a decent solution to incorporate WebAdverts in to my Links site. I have read numerous topics on this, but.... I am more confused than ever. A search easily yield over 50 results so tha chance to find the right info this way is slim.

I think it would be nice for all of us out there if this thread could become THE place to look for everybody looking for more information on how to incorporate banners into their links site.... After all, that is how most of us are able to register for the full version and upgrade to Links SQL.

Let me start by saying that I want to incorporate it into links 2. I know there is some code for v1 (which got me even more confused:-< . I am using templates.

Here's some more of what I am trying to do... Probably the most one can do with links and webadverts, so anybody who wants to incorporate WA into links will at least find one of the explanations helpful as it will suit his/her needs.

So ... What I want to do in links :

1) On each page I want to have 3 banners.
(let's say 1 up, 1 down and 1 on the side)

2) The banners are of different sizes.
(468x60 two times) and (150x150 on the side)

3) I want to set up several 'targets' (I'll use this word instead of zones, so if someone says 'zones' later, we won't get confused). Targets are groups of pages that have a particular interest to a group of people..... I'll give an example ...
I want to set up the following targets :
home (index), list (add/modify, ... for webmasters' ads), cat (for the categories, but another question on this later), and gen (for the general pages not included above)...

4) So, on these targets I want to rotate banners. I guess you would advise me to go for 'zoning'... OK, but please explain... How do I handle the multiple banners on the same page? do I have to make 3 times as much zones? Should I install 3 copies of webadverts each with these zones? I just want to avoid that a banner of a different size gets into the wrong slot (of a different size)

5) And this appears to be only the beginning..... as I want to be able to target certain banners to certain categories and its underlying subs.... How do I handle this? Keeping in mind that I need multiple dif-sized banners on the same page.

6) The keyword targeting for search. What do I do to allow for this? Do I have to make 100 zones (3 times? for each different banner position) or is there an easier way? If I need this much zones, [I know the part that follows specifically is a Webadverts Q, but since you are all using it, you will know the answer:-] how can I set up WA to show the checkboxes for the zones, 4 next to each other or so, instead of having a 2 page list :-)

7) And finally... the 'page' attribute... I have read that I need to state 'page' on every WA bannercall. How can I make it generate a unique number on each page?

Some of you will find all of this just too easy, but for someone getting started it really though... I searched the forum and always got more than 50 pages so it's hard to find the right answer. Furthermore I'm unfortunately living in a country where dial-up is still widespread and free local calls are non-existent

Thanks in advance for all your help(?) ,
Chris


[This message has been edited by neurotech (edited October 22, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by neurotech (edited October 22, 1999).]

Could someone please at least help us out a little bit? I want to set up this site asap and will be the first to register links (at the moment it is running on my workstation) but it is no use if I can't get it to run ads.

Best regards,

Your probably confused because your trying to install two programs at once. Have you successfully set up webadverts? If not, my recommendation would be to set up webadverts first with all the zones you plan on using, then set up Links and plug them into the correct areas within your templates. If you need help with the set up of webadverts then post the relevant questions on this board: http://www.awsd.com/scripts/webadverts/
Or you can email me and I'll see what I can do!

When your ready to install Links and you have any questions regarding the install, then your best bet would be to come here and post a question regarding Links.

Hope this helps!

neurotech,


Well to start off, if you're using SSI to display banners, you need a different 'zone' for each of your targets. A zone is just a modified ads.cgi file. You only need 1 ads_display.cgi and 1 ads_admin.cgi file for all.

You will also need a separate zone for each sized banner. If the banners that are going to be at the top and bottom are different, one zone for each.

So if top and bottom banner are different, you will need 1 zone or top banner, 1 for bottom banner and another for the side. In this case, 3 zones for each target.

If top and bottom banners are from the same set of banners (Eg. you're charging the same price if banner displays at the top or bottom of the page), you only need one zone for them and a different for the side. 2 zones for each target.

Now, for each of your targets you'll need the same number of zones. If you have 10 different targets (subjects) you'll need 20 or 30 zones depending.


That's a bit more tricky. Have a look for a multiple templates mod. (I think there's one). You set up a different template for each of your targets. On each of those templates you place the banner code calling the appropriate webadverts zone.


There has been talk of this in the forum. I don't know if it have been resolved or not.


I read a message posted about that by, I believe, Phoenix? Modification to one of the scripts is required.

If you're going to be calling the banners with SSI, webadverts has a built in feature. But using SSI banners has some problems of it's own like inserting banners on the CGI generated pages like search, search results, search failure, add, add success, add failure, rate, rate success, etc.

Hope that helps.

Dan O.





[This message has been edited by DanO (edited October 22, 1999).]

Dear Domenic,

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, I have webadverts set up running great.
I have inserted some zones in the textarea and this worked great when I include them via img tags instead of SSI/CGI.

I haven't decided on hardcoding zones in the .pl scripts as I don't know how many I will need. I mean .. I have several banners per page, so, should I zone each banner. If I have 30 targeted pages at 3 banners-slots per page ... I would end up with 90 zones, right? Furthermore should I (or better CAN I, since the pages are generated in subdirectories) use SSI? I don't think so but am not sure. I tried the virtual include in the templates but this didn't work...

At the moment I have links 2 set up running
great on my workstation but I haven't set it up on the web yet. Will do shortly... :-)


[This message has been edited by neurotech (edited October 22, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by neurotech (edited October 22, 1999).]

neurotech,
Im in the same situation youre in.
I think using ssi is a lost cause.
I've been trying to incorporate Cliff's AD rotator, into a header or footer, of course it doesnt work, I also tried putting the banner code into the html. files for links.
it doesnt work. links doesn't allow extra data inputs(ssi?).

I think I'm going to have to go with webadverts, although the admin option aren't great.
BUT I'm going to also setup a text rotator that has a html link generator, and place it right under the banner rotator.

I think this might be the most time efficient, and easiest way to fix this.
I hope that this is what you mean.
If you find a way thats quick to fix ssi
get in touch.
and easiest

Hi Jolo,

>I think using ssi is a lost cause.
>I've been trying to incorporate Cliff's AD >rotator, into a header or footer, of course
>it doesn't work.

I know that it's a problem when it is called from subdirs as it is looking in the same directory to include the file, however I think there might be a solution to use the exec tag instead of virtual include, but I have not been able to try that one out yet.

I do know you can have webadverts feed data to your CGI-application (f.i. links) but then the data would be static.

>I think I'm going to have to go with >webadverts, although the admin option >aren't great.

I think webadverts is great but indeed it lacks better design. It would be great to build 'folders' of customers as now it can be quite cumbersome to find the right banner.

>BUT I'm going to also setup a text rotator >that has a html link generator, and place >it right under the banner rotator.
>I think this might be the most time >efficient, and easiest way to fix this.

I was only wondering how you would be able to include the textlinks. I think you would need SSI...

>I hope that this is what you mean.
I don't really care about textlinks (although I think I may change my mind later on) under the banners as all the ads will be 'boxed in', so I'd rather not have texts , but it's especially the zoning and page=xxxx problem that gets me crazy

I'll let you know if I find a fix as well.

Dear DanO,

Thanks so much for your clarification. At the moment it's 1.20 am over here so I don't have all the time to check all of it, but it seems to be your post answers a lot of my questions. I'll play around with some of these things tomorrow.

Thanks again from Europe.

Hi Jolo,

I know SSI doesn't work for the virtual include statement, but you CAN call it using <#--cgi exec="/cgi-bin/webadverts/ads.pl"-->

I believe the only way to zone for SSI, is to set up all those different adsZZZZ.pl files. I will check this out tomorrow.

There also is a great thread on zoning with SSI on http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/forum/resources/Forum3/HTML/003619.html

I will try and post other things I have found out over here as well, to get all the people new to integrating webadverts with Links on our way.

I will check out DanO's recommendations now.

Hi DanO, I tried your recommendations and they work great. I've got it running ok. I have some more questions though, but first for the other people who are looking for answers on this WebAdverts things, I will list here some other pages to take a look at.

The problem with this messageboard is that it is getting SOOO big that you hardly can find the right answers if you can only view 50 results... Maybe it is time to make some addition sub-boards or it would be great if someone would write a FAQ that answers most of the questions. I would volunteer for that, but unfortunately my knowledge of perl is quite limited and I don't want to mess up some code. :-D

* SSI works great on shtml pages (or html when parsing is set to ON in your apache configuration / or you can use the Xbithack method - see your apache manual)

* for pages such as modify, add, ... (that are not parsed) you can use webadverts to dump its data to your page via CGI. You might want to take a look at :
- http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/resources/Detailed/481.html
and
- http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/forum/resources/Forum3/HTML/000138.html

I will post more links when I need them and dig'em up from a hopefull succesfull search

One other thing I ran into... Since I am boxing in all of my ads (my structural elements enclose the ads).. I had the problem that using SSI, it generated an additional 'unwanted' space after my banners.

I solved it this way : Just after I call my SSI-banner, the first thing I did was include the >-tag... This should normally not be done, but by editing the webadverts-scripts a bit I added a <-tag with a fake tagname to the code...
Hence my webadverts script will result something like

<a href="yourlink"><img src"=bannerimage"></a><REMLINK

When it is included, the additional >-tag will complete the previous line and it doesn't matter how many spaces there are in between. Works great for me.

______________

Now for the questions...

DanO (or anybody else willing to help and who has a lots of banners running)... I was wondering how you deal with webadverts having so much zones. At the moment I have about 40 different zones and it is really hard not to err, including banners. I know this should be a better topic for the WA-board, but since most of us use it, we may already have the answer in-house. Furthermore, the WA-forum REALLY is a pain to search.

Thanks,

[This message has been edited by neurotech (edited October 25, 1999).]

One other thing I have noticed....

I am including WAds via CGI on the email update page. I am calling them from the script "big-cgi.pl" . In Webadverts I have this zone included for two accounts :
1) for e-cost.com &
2) for drugstore.com

I have two different banners for drugstore.com in that account, however, only the first banner is displayed when having banners included via CGI...

Anybody else has this problem?/fix?

 

I only have 4 zones so it's not a problem for me. And depending on where your problem lies, a solution will be different. Is the problem you're having with the ads administration or the links coding?

If it's the ads admin, I converted the zone input text box, in mine, to a multiple select drop down list. That way I can't go wrong inputting the zone data.

If your problem's in the coding for Links, you'll have to describe exactly what it is.

Can't help with the drugstore.com

Dan O.

Hi DanO,

[This section deal with Webadverts --> Links]

Once one has a lot of categories there seem to be a lot of problems too, unfortunately.

Let me tel you which zones I have :

* TOPB (top-big 468x60) Reg Style
* TOPM (top-medium 233x30) Yahoo Style
* BOXB (box-big 125x125) Deja Style
* DOWB (down-big) as TOPB, but for exchanges
* DOWS (down-small 120x60) ISP affiliate

But I have these for the following targets...
* home
* best (top/cool/...)
* cat (over all the built categories - until I can target inside the categories)

The ones above are all using SSI.
The next two are special, using CGI:
* web (wherever there is cgi, such as add, modify, rate, ... except for Search)
* cgi (the rest: ... search)

So I have a combination that becomes something like this...

TOPB-home.pl TOPM-home.pl ..... in total about 25 zones for the moment, but if we get it working in the categories maybe 100.

I have made all over the perl-scripts like these, but I rename my zones a bit, so I can at least know a bit what I am doing : Here's what I mean...

If I look at my page, the banners start like this : TOPBig, TOPMedium, BOXBig, DOWNBig ending with DOWNSmall ... For this reason I named my zones like this ...

1A-TOPB-home
1B-TOPB-best
1C-TOPB-cat
1D-TOPB-web
1E-TOPB-cgi

2A-TOPM-home
2B-TOPM-best
2C-TOPM-cat
2D-TOPM-web
2E-TOPM-cgi

... because all of these TOPS and DOWNS make it hard to grasp what all of it really is, and I don't want to put excessive characters in the HTML that is displayed on the web (if possible)...

** 1st Problem :
When I start webadverts, I am overwhelmed with 25 categories that hardly fit my screen.

** 2nd Problem :
Standard the zones are all checked, so if I want to view the results for only one zone ... my arm and fingers give up clicking >:

** 3rd Problem :
When I get to see all of the accounts for these zones, I see all of the zones that each and every account is member of. So if I have account number 1 in 10 different zones, I have to pan my browser [on a 21inch, 1600x1200 resolution]

** 4th Problem :
Editing accounts. All of the zones are listed down under each other. At the moment it is still do-able but I'm really worried what will happen if I approach 100 zones. It might be great to have them listed in target and zones. What I mean is ... for example to have the zones listed in 5 columns. One for the TOPB-slot, one for the TOPM-slot and so on.

** 5th Problem :
The generation of the adsXXXX.pl scripts (I called them TOPB-home.pl already because some webbrowsers filter out ads.pl banners and it saves some characters.) .. Since they are basically all the same, I think it should be easy [for a programmer] to have them generated from the administration menu.

These are my major problems. Maybe I am just trying to build the perfect index and nobody has all of these problems, I don't know. Maybe it's just me I just like to be prepared for if the site really is a big success.

I was also wondering about the following. If the site gets a lot of hits, I think after a few weeks/months (it was pretty soon with bannermaster) one will have to clear the logs. Do you have an estimate as to when it would be necessary? Also, if anyone is providing stats to his customers, how does he cope with this - the fact that all of a sudden previous info is gone?)

Best regards,

  
Try changing the HTML code, that the script generates, to show the zones in a drop down or multiple select form field.


Try changing the HTML code, that the script generates, so that the check boxes are not checked.


Try changing the HTML code, that the script generates, to show the zones in a drop down or multiple select form field.


Try changing the HTML code, that the script generates, to show the zones in multiple drop down or multiple select form field.


Probably. Or even a separate script just for that.


No. Would depend on your disk space and site usage.


Don't know. Someone was asking in the webadverts forum if anyone had a script that would harvest the stats monthly then reset them in the script. I didn't see a reply. You'd probably need to make one yourself.

BTW, this thread is no longer about Links and should probably be continued elsewhere? (before I get blamed for causing the demise of another message thread) >8~}

Dan O.




[This message has been edited by DanO (edited October 27, 1999).]