it's clear that not alot of attention has been paid to the banner module, although it's not really a module because it comes installed whether you like it or not, along with the base.

#1) remove it from the base install and treat it as a real module, allowing users to either install or not as they prefer

treating it this way would/should (wouldn't it?) allow the administrator to create blocks wherever he wanted with banner ads served within those blocks. (phpmyadmin has good ability to serve different sizes of ads and lets you even specify which advertisers ads to serve in a specific block. we need this...)

as it stands right now, there is only one place the banner ad appears and changing it from that one place, if it happens to be inconvenient for you is a major headache to change. very rigid and not user friendly.

#2) integrate it with the user base of XOOPS so that the administrator doesn't have to create new usernames and passwords for each new advertiser. (and then the advertiser forgets the long url needed to access their stats and tries to use the login screen on the home page and of course that's an invalid username/password). i see no reason why the banner ad user database is necessary, just pull the usernames and passwords out of the main one. you would need to also put some info on the user's current running ads on the "Edit account" page. but that's obvious right?

the banner feature does work and does provide a very reasonable level of functionality but not really what some people are looking for. when you're trying to mine your userbase, you want them to understand it all happens under their username and all the features of the website are accessible to THEM. after all, it's more money to me.

i've got better things to do than take emails that say "uh, how do i get my banner ad stats?" i'd rather just reply, "login and click on view account". otherwise it might go like this:

advertiser: i forgot my advertiser username
me: well, what's your business name?
advertiser: smith enterprises.
me: your username is sment and password is 1342
advertiser: how do i log in? it's saying invalid login??
me: oh, you have to go tohttp://www.mysite.com/html/banners.php and login, sorry about that misunderstanding.
advertiser: no problem thanks for your time.hey it sure would be easier if i could access all this stuff with my username on your main login of your website.
me: really? i'll post it on XOOPS and see what happens.

I agree with most of your post, but I disagree with your statement about how rigid the placment of the banner is. A modification to the theme html files gets rapid placement in place where it fits according to site design. Although, on the surface you are partially right in that it is not flexible enough for serious users. A more feature rich module with different size elements would be great because many advertisers offer varied sizes. I have had to resort to custom blocks to place ads in the past.

Plus, the default XOOPS one that come with it are very intense, can we get rid of the flash and just use normal .gif images with a base install? Or better yet an option during installion if we want the ads in the frst place. I wholly understand and support the reason for including them in the package, so it may not be something you want to readilty let go, but more consideration into this would be appreciated none the less.

I never knew the login page until I saw this post, again a good point to make about the module that should be more obvious to clients. I no longer create accounts, I just add the banner code I need for what ever banner and I organise it into cataegories. I don't bother with users, period, since I'm the only one creating and editing the module. Sure, it's fine for me, but as you mentioned it still a weak system.

One thing you failed to mention and something I have observed, is that once an ad has expired, there is no way to reactivate the add without first deleteing it and somehow obtaining the code again if it's particularly complex. I use doublick ads (evil, but ripping them off is an inner joy I can't explain), and trust me it isn't easy to do. Once I loose the code after it expires and gets deleted, I'm stuck rebuilding it again.

Good post overall and I too would like to see some love applied to the banner areas in a future build.

This is a great module.
I dont think it's that difficult to ad a link on your site that goes directly to the admin log-in.

I didn't even realize we had the admin log-in page until I read how bad it was! LOL!

Stewdiao
As far as code entering into your banner over and over...
If I were you I'd have such complex code on file. just a simple text document.

I make such bacups for several "snippets". It has saved me a lot of trouble...

Your right of course, but I'm lazy as heck!

of course it isn't difficult to "ad a link on your site that goes directly to the admin log-in". No one is debating that.

What is being discussed is why there are two separate databases. One for the advertiser username/passwords and another for the userbase usaername/passwords.And the relative merits and benefits of combining those two...

Quote:

Oh I see....

Unfortuantely I just dont see any "merits" or "benefeits", because I don't think my potential advertisers would be interested in membership. But I could totally not be seeing what other "benefeits" you are talking about...

please list them...
Thanks alot!

Well there's an issue with banners.

We've recently activated Google Adsense on our XOOPS site, and it turns out the banner count for the ads runs to approximately twice the number shown in our Adsense account.

Moreover, Adsense uses JavaScript in their banners, which prevents the click count from updating (it stays blocked at 0 in xoops).

Has anyone else experienced discrepancies in banner count?

Eric Vautier

You might find this article interesting. How the Adsense count is made is not exactly a transparent process. I think Google excludes certain things it believes are 'invalid'.

Was the Adsense count lower than the XOOPS banner count ?

Hello again,

Thanks for the link, which is very instructive indeed.

As I understand it, Google aims to prevent click abuse, and uses their own algorithm to sort the "valid" from the "invalid" clicks. It a visitor takes sudden interest in a site and visits many pages in a short period of time, the algorithm might decide that this constitutes abuse, and (retroactively) ignore clicks issued from this visitor.

We have such a user who apparently has been "crawling" our site in a very unefficient manner, increasing our page count artificially (which is annoying). This is likely the reason for XOOPS having a significantly higher page count than Adsense.

What's disturbing is that such artificial access to our pages might trigger Google's algorithm to pull the plug on us, should a specific engine or an actual user decide to click on every Adsense ad.

Therefore the truly xoops-related question is the following:

Is there an easy way for XOOPS to block display of banners on specific IPs?

or

Would you consider a visitor using a poorly-written spider that generates artificial page counts as impolite, and shut him out entirely using the existing IP ban list in the Preferences section?

If anyone has already implemented a per-IP banner ban, holler. Otherwise I'm willing to look into this myself when I have some time.

Thanks again, MadFish. I like your obnoxious avatar .

Best,
Eric

P.S. I don't mean to start a discussion on the Google issue here at xoops. I just noted that there was a discrepancy and wondered whether other XOOPS users had had the same experience. Discussion about moral or legal aspects should probably be carried out as a comment to the above-referred excellent article.