Documentation
FAST BANNER ROTATOR:  V2.0


System Requirements

Preliminaries

  • Determine the path to PERL 5 on your web server host.  Note that some web hosting companies run both PERL 4 and PERL 5.  Make ABSOLUTELY sure you are not setting this up under PERL 4.  Ask your administrator if you are not sure.
  • Download the tarfile for this program and save it to your desktop.
  • Unpack the tar archive on your desktop using a program that unpacks UNIX TAR ARCHIVES. If you don't have such a program then download WINZIP FREE from SHAREWARE.COM
  • After you have unpacked the TAR archive you will have a collection of folders and files on your desktop.  Now you have to do some basic editing of each of these files (or at least some of them).  Use a text editor such as wordpad, notepad, BBEdit, simpletext, or teachtext to edit the files.  These are NOT WORD PROCESSOR DOCUMENTS they are just simple TEXT files so don't save them as word processor documents or save them with extentions such as .txt or they will NOT WORK.   Note that there may be a some files inside of folders which are "blank".   This is normal.

Preparing the CGI scripts

Define Path To PERL 5

The first step is to open up each and every file that has a .cgi extention and edit line number one of each script.  Each of the cgi scripts is written in perl 5. For your scripts to run they must know where perl 5 is installed on your web server. The path to perl 5 is defined to a cgi script in the first line of the file. In each of the cgi scripts the first line of code looks something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

If the path to perl 5 on your web server is different from /usr/bin/perl you must edit the first line of each cgi script to reflect the correct path. If the path to perl 5 is the same no changes are necessary. If you do not know the path to perl 5 ask the webmaster or system administrator at your server site.  

Create database and upload the .sql file

Upload the .sql file into your mysql database (review mysql tutorial) if you do not know how, or better yet - bug your isp and get them to do it.

Configure the .cgi files

configure.cgi

This file pretty much runs the whole show.  If you screw this one up don't count on anything working properly.   In other words, make sure you take the time to do this step CORRECTLY.  Ask your administrator if you need to.  Below are the variables used in ALL of the other cgi scripts.  All of the other cgi programs USE configure.cgi to figure out where certain things are.  You will use TWO COPIES of configure.cgi to run this system.  They are the EXACT SAME FILE - just TWO COPIES (/cgi-bin/banner/configure.cgi and /cgi-bin/banner/admin/configure.cgi)

  • mysqldatabasename = "your mysql database name";
  • $mysqlusername="your mysql username";
  • $mysqlpassword="your mysql password";
  • $cgidir = "/cgi-bin/banner";
  • $imagedir = "/path/to/banner/ads/images";
  • $imageURI = "/ads/images";

For the frickin 1 millionth time A URI (i.e. that is NOT a URL) is NOT a PATH.  If you don't understand... hey... I made a tutorial to read!  Imagine that!

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Upload all of the cgi files (.cgi) into a directory you create called "banner" inside your cgi-bin
  • Upload rotate.cgi, userstats.cgi, and configure.cgi into /cgi-bin/banner/
  • Make a directory inside of your /cgi-bin/banner folder called admin and the files inside of the cgibin/admin directory after you unpack the tarball and upload the rest of the cgi files into here.
  • Make a directory inside of your normal webspace (http://www.yourdomain.com/banner) called banner and upload index.html (the login page) here.
  • Make another directory inside of http://www.yourdomain.com/banner/admin/ (called admin.. duh) and upload the admin index.html page. 
  • Make another directory inside your webspace http://www.yourdomain.com/banner/images/ to store the banner gifs and jpegs
  • Password protect both the /cgi-bin/banner/admin/ and http://www.yourdomain.com/banner/admin/ directories with .htaccess.  Read the tutorial section if you don't already know how to do this.

Chmod the files

  • Chmod all the .cgi files to 755. 

Upload Your Banner(s)

  • You have to upload the banner files by ftp (as BINARY DATA) to the images directory when you are going to create an account.  You may ask why there is no automatic signup page for creating banner advertising accounts.   Well, if you have sold banner ads in the past you would already know why.   Most places that sell banner ads require prepayment by certified funds and will ALWAYS want to manually APPROVE any banner ad before displaying it on their site.   Thats why.  So when you get a new advertiser first upload their banner to the images directory, then add their account information through the http://www.yourdomain.com/banner/admin/index.html panel.  You can then email your client their username and password so they can check their stats.

Operating your Banner Program

There really isn't much to it.  Install the system.  Get a client.  Upload their banner (that is if you approve it of course).  Set their account to expire either by duration (number of days) or by impressions (number of impressions).  Add their account.  Email them their login information to check their stats.  Pretty simple (I hope).

Oh yea... one important thing... to display your banners simply use the following linkcode on any and all pages you want the rotator to display banners

<a href="/ads/rotate.cgi?url=&user">
<img src="/ads/rotate.cgi?banner=&user"></a>