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View Full Version : Banner ads with vBulletin....


JWS
Tue 7th Nov '00, 10:18pm
Okay, I've been doing some searching here on the board about people's methods of using banner ad programs with vBulletin. Here are some of the statements I seem to see over and over:

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How to call CGI scripts from the $header template
MySQL-based ad systems don't seem to do great things for resource utilization on heavy-load servers (30,000+ views per day) with logging of any kind turned on.
CGI-based ad programs seem to cause problems with resource hogging.
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So, I suppose mywhat I'm wondering is this (and maybe this isn't vBulletin related in actuality): Does anyone have any great experience stories with ANY banner ad program with vBulletin?

I think there are some basic banner ad program needs, including the ability to log stats to show advertisers, so why would you want to turn off logging -- stats are such a great selling tool!

Let's look at some of the banner ad programs out there now and some of the advantages/disadvantages:

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AdCycle - seems to be a good program, written in Perl and uses a MySQL database to store stats and information. Seems to have a clean user interface. Have seen posts in this forum concerning how much of a resource hog it was.
phpAds - I used this one for a while and running on a VServer Ultra with about 20,000 ad views per day, it just about killed my poor little MySQL server. Had to disable it, although it kept good stats. Seems a little klugey and doesn't have great support. Many hacks exist to fix some of its bugs.
dot-Banner - wanderer has developed this PHP/MySQL-based system which looks good and looks like it has a lot of features. Haven't heard any real-world testimonials yet about it. I'm still leery since it's MySQL-based and don't want it dragging my system to a halt.
WebAdverts - I've seen several posts on this program and a lot of people seem to like it. Sounds like the UI might not be all that friendly or pretty, but sounds like it might work. It's written in Perl and uses files to keep track of ad views.
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Yes, I know that there are more, but those are some that I have looked into. If you have any comments on these concerning load, CPU usage, MySQL crashing, please post these here. I'd also like to know how many page views you're experiencing per day as well and what kind of server you're running on.

I really want us to be able to find something that works really well with such a great piece of forum software.

Thanks.

werehere
Wed 8th Nov '00, 2:14am
Adcycle is a resource hog with large sites in my opinion, and I have tested it on my site with well over 100,000 impressions a day!

Web Adverts is kind of generic looking, but does well, and can handle a fairly large load with minimum hit on resources.

JWS
Wed 8th Nov '00, 10:10am
What method are you using to call WebAdverts from your $header template?

Originally posted by werehere
Adcycle is a resource hog with large sites in my opinion, and I have tested it on my site with well over 100,000 impressions a day!

Web Adverts is kind of generic looking, but does well, and can handle a fairly large load with minimum hit on resources.

werehere
Wed 8th Nov '00, 2:05pm
JavaScript

JWS
Thu 9th Nov '00, 9:54am
Would you mind posting the $header code here of how you got it to work? I'm game to try it if I can get it to work from the $header template correctly....

TIA

Originally posted by werehere
JavaScript