phpNuke Advertising Module

Introduction

The Advertising Module was first introduced in phpNuke 7.7 and was a replacement for the Banners module.
The advertising module is significantly more flexible as it allows the webmaster to set specific
locations in which adverts can be displayed and provides a means for adverts to be paid for thus increasing
the possibility of the webmaster to earn some income from his site.
 
CONFIGURATION

Log into to your admin account and click on the advertising module link.

Step 1 - Terms
Click on the ‘Terms’ link. Ensure the pre-set terms which are included as part of the module satisfy your needs,
select your country and save.

Step 2 - Ad Positions
There are two pre-set positions. Position ‘0′ which is the ‘Page Top’ (banner appears above the nuke header).
Position ‘1′ which is for banners which appear in side blocks (Advertising block).
You can create as many Ad Positions as you need to include specific ads at specific places within your theme
but I’ll give more details on this later as it is not actually part of configuring the module.

Step 3 - Plans and Prices
There are a number of fields for you to complete here so I’ll go through them one by one.

Plan Name - this is where you enter the name of your plan. Think carefully here as you need to know at a glance
what the plan is for. Something like ‘HTM’ (for Header Top Monthly) or HT10000 (for Header Top 10,000 impressions) etc
I’m sure you get the idea.

Plan Description - Self explanatory. A quick description of your plan for the ‘HTM’ plan name in the above example you
might want to write something like;
“This plan will place your ad at the top of every nuke page (above the nuke header area) for one calendar month. The
maximum ad size is 728×90. Image may be .jpg .gif .png or .swf”

Delivery Quantity and Delivery Mode - these two are used in conjunction with each other. For example, an ad to be
valid for one month you would select ‘Delivery Quantity’ as ‘1′ and ‘Mode’ as ‘Months’. For a banner valid for 10,000
impressions you would select ‘Delivery Quantity’ as ‘10000′ and ‘Mode’ as ‘Impressions’.

Price - enter the cost of the ad. You can enter anything here as it is stored as plain text and is not actually
used to invoice the customer.

Buy Links - There are a number of options you can use here.
You could just include a link to a custom payment page or you can use the same method I do, log in to your paypal
account and use their ‘buy now’ button. Don’t forget to use the same ad ‘Plan’ name as your paypal ’sale id’ as this
makes it much easier when you get a paypal sale confirmation email to know what the actual sale was for.

Guardian Top Tip! - When using Paypal ‘buy now’ buttons look for the ‘more options’ link and ensure you have
selected a custom ‘thank you page’ address. You can use this url to take your customers to a custom page
(you’ll need to write it yourself) so they can enter their banner URL and description text.
If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to but you WILL have to email your customer for these details once you get
a paypal sale email!!

Thats it for the actual configuration options. You now know everything you need to know to sell advertising space
on your website.

Guardian Top Tips Extra!!!!
I am including some additional information here so you can make the most of your sales potentials.
The Advertising system makes use of the $ads variable to let nuke now which ad should be placed in which location on your
site.
As we can see above, the Advertising module has two default locations ‘0′ and ‘1′. If you look in your theme code
you will see something like this;
$ads = ads(0)
echo $ads
This tells nuke that where it finds $ads to place a banner at that location. The code previously declares the $ads value
as ads(0) so the banner to use is plan ‘0′.
In this way we can create many different plans and use them in different locations on our site.
You can find more information and support for using the Advertising module at www.code-authors.com

Creating Clients and Banners is exactly the same is the old Banners module.
1 Create a client - I recommend the ‘Client Name’ is something you can easily identify as it appears in the client listing.
I normally use an abbreviation of the site name, a banner for www.code-authors.com becomes a client name of ‘Code Authors’.
2 You can select any client log-in name and password you want for your client so long as you make a note of it in case your
client wants to use it to log-in to his account to see their statistics or change their banner image etc.