I am about to make over the banner management of XOOPS, because the "old" banner management is (friendly said) a mess.

I made a new input form for adding banners (see here). You can set the height and width of the banner, you can set start and expiration of the banner (if needed) and I am going to introduce a zone model for banners. With several banner zones you can pinpoint specified banners to specified zones.

Additionally I am thinking about building in the banners with smarty. Any thoughts or suggestions?

XOOPS 2.5 has already some changes in the banner management, which is only a modernized version of the banner management of 2.4x. Should I focus on 2.5?

hi'

Very good idea :)

I never used this feature but it would be great to be able to choose one area per "banner". Slyss has already made a hack, but it was just a hack.

Also, it would be useful to play with header (example). Image / banner changes each time page is reloaded... and admin is able to change it by his own : with your new form it is more simple

So please contact core dev !!!

Thanks again

I know the hack, which is in fact older than the article. slyss published this hack on his homepage, where I accidently found it (if I remember correctly).

About your changing the banner in the header (or somewhere else): right now banners are randomly picked and I think it would be great if I can define that a certain banner will be displayed on a specified URL. This would be a good idea if you want to sell banners for articles.

There will be a bunch of functions to which some parameters like mode, range and extras will be passed.

Well, I find it quite weird that we can limit the number of impressions, but we can not limit the number of banner clicks. I know that CPM models are good for high-trafic websites, but how do I deal with CPC model ad campaigns if I can't limit the number of banner clicks? Just a suggestion. Good to see someone's picked up XOOPS banners.

Another thing is that it doesn't count the impressions right. Or is it only my xoops?

You are right, limiting to clicks will be definitely in.

You are right 2, XOOPS is miscounting the impressions. Impressions are even counted in the backend. It is even getting worse, if you place flash banners on a site.

BTW webmasters should not be counted in any way.

1. integration with block ?

2. if it has not been done... integration of features from the rwbanner module

I tested rw-banner w while back and seems to provide most of the functionality needed. There was a an issue with one of the blocks. I like its ability to include various types if adds and the blocks can be cloned. It also allows you to include banner anywhere, you can also specify tags.

here is an updated release which I have not tested but suspect would be a starting point.
http://luciorota.altervista.org/xoops/modules/wfdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=2

forum: https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=70888&forum=32&post_id=324730#forumpost324730

Site using it:
https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5251


Here are some forums:
https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=67453&forum=28&post_id=305391#forumpost305391

https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=67453&forum=28&post_id=305199#forumpost305199

Would be great to see this module seriously adopted and developed further by the community it does have the potential, instead of re-inventing the wheel.

Quote:
Totally agree! I hate reinventing the wheel!

If you are redoing the Banner system can I suggest some features?

Probably would be a good idea to keep track of the users the impressions are being made by and where the impressions are being made from. Then you can have a selection for the users to NOT include in the impressions count as well as limit the locations the impressions are counted from. Although I guess I don't get how ads can be counted from the backend since they shouldn't be getting listed??? Anyhow..


I have an idea for changing the banner system that would become more of an extension of what is already included in XOOPS then a total revamp.

We include a new item for the banners called "zones" for lack of better term...

The zones are then added much like how we use templates or themes. Each zone would be simply defined as the size of the banner plus any other identifying information we would need. You would actually display the banner by calling its associated zone. So in a block or in the theme you would have somethings as simple as "block(zone);" listed.

What you would do then is in the normal banner system you would define which zone the ad was associated with. You could then have the same ad in multiple zones if you wanted to. Since different zones could be different sized you would want support to have different images for the multiple zones. Would be easiest to define a default image URL and then allow secondary URL's for additional zones if they are different sized.

I think this simplistic approach should work out pretty well...

You will want to have an "anti-collision system" included that won't allow the same ad to be displayed on the page at the same time. Realizing the same ad could be displayed in multiple zones at the same time and the same zone could be displayed multiple times on the same page.

Just some thoughts... Been kicking around the whole banner idea myself but I just don't have the time and have bigger fish to fry right now.

And for an overhaul like this I would look to 2.5 for it. 2.4 is in maintenance mode and anything added to it would be as a hack. This would be a nice core upgrade for 2.5+

Rodney

I ran the free, closed-source PHPAdsnew ad-server for a while a few years ago. I would recommend taking a look at it's campaign structure, impression and CTR reporting if you're looking for ideas. It is now called OpenX Community.

http://www.openx.org/ad-server

I never upgraded, but their OpenX Market looks interesting if you want to monetise a site.

I would imagine a really good banner management system would be a bit of a heavyweight resource for XOOPS core. Perhaps would be better as an optional module?. The more XOOPS versions it works with the better IMHO.