Howdy,

would be possible to limit the output of a submitted banner only to a specific node?

Es: when user submits the banner, he selects a node (with nodereference or other method) and the banner will show up only there.

thank you

Comments

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented
Title: Show Banner only on specific node » Limit Banner only to specific nodes

This would be helpfull to be even more specific respect to the Taxonomy filtering.

For example, on a geographic site, advertisers could choose to publish their banner (advertisement) only on a specific city page.

@wulff: do you think this is somehow a valuable feature or is it just a personal need? I need this functionality and would be disposable for paying / testing.
If you are not interested at all, the alternative solution could be to hire another developer..

comments apreciated!

thank you

manuj_78’s picture

manuj_78 commented

Even I would prefer the functionality to display banners on specific pages only. Rest I will let you know once I test it on my test site.

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

Manju, are you going to develop a patch about this?

In case i would be happy to help with some feedback :)

cheers

wulff’s picture

wulff commented

Couldn't this be achieved by using the page specific visibility settings of a banner block?

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

Wulff, yes, this could suit smaller sites, but it would be unmanageable for bigger sites with more complex structures.

Just to make an example, imagine to address specific banners for "city" and for "country" nodes in a geographic directory: you would need a block for each specific city and assign it to each specific banner (this would mean more than 300 blocks only for countries!)!

About the implementation: eventually an autocomplete nodereference textfield -just like CCK does- could do the job from an UI point of view ;)

wulff’s picture

wulff commented

I think what you describe can already be achieved with the current version of the banner module.

If you create two vocabularies (e.g. 'Cities' and 'Eating places') with a number of terms in each (e.g. 'Berlin', 'London' and 'Restaurant', 'Cafe') you are able to control which banners are displayed where.

If you have a node with the terms 'Berlin' and 'Cafe' the following will happen:

  1. The cache handler will try to find all banners with the terms 'Berlin' and 'Cafe' (AND)
  2. The cache handler will try to find all banners with the terms 'Berlin' or 'Cafe' (OR)
  3. If the above doesn't succeed, a random banner is selected

As far as I can see this should give the desired result - if not, then we'll have to come up with a way to integrate node-limiting with the taxonomy stuff already in place.

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

yes, i am aware of the possibility of using Taxonomy terms to filter banners.

The thing is that a "city" content-type would be tagged by two terms, one from the 'Country' and one from the 'State' vocabularies. Each city is therefore a node, not a taxonomy term itself, so a banner block shown on a city node would reflect banners for Countries and Regions and not just the banners specific for that City.

The more, considering situation number 3 above, if no banner is uploaded for a City, a random banner would be shown, also (erroneously) banners from other states or countries!

Does that make some sense? Or is there something i am missing? :o

thank you

manuj_78’s picture

manuj_78 commented

No idea about programming...I know how to enable modules and use them in the site and thats about it for my programming skills. Developing or fixing a module would require PHP as well as drupal codes knowhow which I dont have.

Also I read the readme file and I just noticed that it requires to set the file system to public, however my site uses private because of a module, the name of which I dont remember. Can I use banner module with the private file system enabled?

ALso I agree with Kiteatlas that with big sites handling of page specific visibility through blocks becomes cumbersome.

manuj_78’s picture

manuj_78 commented
Version: master » 4.7.x-1.x-dev

OK...I tested the banner module for a brief period on my test site today. Based on the tests here are my questions and suggestions

Questions
1) How do you increase banner groups?
2) in the install.txt file it says "Block settings: Choose how many banner blocks the module should provide"....but I did not see this setting...did I don something wrong or does it need fixing?
3) THis has been raised previously by me and kiteatlas - How to display particular adds only on a particular page?

Suggestions based on issues

1) There needs to be explanation so that user can understand what each of the term means...for example it took me 20 minutes to actually figure out banner block and banner groups and that admin/settings/banner settings are enabled only once you have created atleast one banner.
2) Without the functionality of displaying ads on particular pages only , the banner module will not be taken up by a lot (if not most) of people. I suggest something on kiteatlas lines that when a banner is created there has to be some sort of a list user can select or a emptly block where user can select where the ads need to be displayed or blocked or only that particular ad should be displayed.
3) Private file handling needs to be introduced - I cannot go to public file handling and with private file handling I face the following problems a) url specified in banner is not enabled i.e. when someone moves his pointer on top of a ad, there is no link to the target url link. b) On my text ad, i see >> at the bottom of the ad which refers to the url of the node rather than the target url.

PS I am using Drupal 4.7.3 and the banner 4.7 module released on 22nd sepetember

Manuj

wulff’s picture

wulff commented

1) How do you increase banner groups?

Go to 'admin -> categories' and add terms to the 'Banner groups' vocabulary.

2) in the install.txt file it says "Block settings: Choose how many banner blocks the module should provide"....but I did not see this setting...did I don something wrong or does it need fixing?

The docs need updating. I'm working on that.

3) THis has been raised previously by me and kiteatlas - How to display particular adds only on a particular page?

This is currently not possible. I'm trying to figure out a way to make this work without making banner targeting too confusing.

1) There needs to be explanation so that user can understand what each of the term means...for example it took me 20 minutes to actually figure out banner block and banner groups

You're right about the problems with the documentation. I'm working on making it better.

and that admin/settings/banner settings are enabled only once you have created atleast one banner.

'Admin -> settings -> banner' should be available as soon as you enable the banner module. If that's not the case, please file a bug report with steps to reproduce.

Without the functionality of displaying ads on particular pages only, the banner module will not be taken up by a lot

I'm not sure if that's necessarily true. The main purpose of an ad banner module is to be able to show rotating ads. Ads bound to certain pages is a 'nice to have' feature, but it's not the primary target of this module.

3) Private file handling needs to be introduced

Private file handling already works (uploaded banners are handled by the upload module, so this functionality is automatically included).

The only problem is that to make private files work with the file-based cache handler, the path to the private files directory has to be passed as an argument to the cache handler. I'm working on a solution for this which places the file-based cache in a directory under the drupal root dir.

with private file handling I face the following problems a) url specified in banner is not enabled i.e. when someone moves his pointer on top of a ad, there is no link to the target url link

Please explain this further. By design, the banners don't link directly to the target url. The banners link to URLs of the form example.com/banner/ to make it possible to count banner clicks.

b) On my text ad, i see >> at the bottom of the ad which refers to the url of the node rather than the target url.

Again, this is the correct behavior to make it possible to count clicks.

manuj_78’s picture

manuj_78 commented

wulff
thanks for the prompt reply

what happens if I increase the banner groups in terms...do the blocks also get created for that group automatically?

With regards to 3a and 3b - when creating the banner page by going to node/add/banner I specify the target url for the banner which I suppose means the url where the user will be taken to when he clicks on the banner. However when the ad is displayed in the block, the ad does not have a target url. To explain a bit clearly lets take the example of google text ads...if you move your mouse on top of an ad displayed by google the pointer changes to a hand and if you click on the ad, the user is taken to the target url of the ad. I dont see any of this happening with the ads created by banner module. The image or text is displayed but if you hover your mouse on top of the ad, the mouse doesnt change as there isnt any target url.

Manuj

wulff’s picture

wulff commented

what happens if I increase the banner groups in terms...do the blocks also get created for that group automatically?

Yes.

With regards to 3a and 3b - when creating the banner page by going to node/add/banner I specify the target url for the banner which I suppose means the url where the user will be taken to when he clicks on the banner.

That's correct.

However when the ad is displayed in the block, the ad does not have a target url. [...] if you move your mouse on top of an ad displayed by google the pointer changes to a hand and if you click on the ad, the user is taken to the target url of the ad.

The banner module should behave in the same way. If you are using text ads and don't include the placeholder %url in the banner text, a small arrow with the link is placed at the end of the text.

I dont see any of this happening with the ads created by banner module. The image or text is displayed but if you hover your mouse on top of the ad, the mouse doesnt change as there isnt any target url.

Is your site online or can you send me the generated source for a page with some banners on it ('tools -> web developer -> view source -> view generated source' if you are using firefox with the web developer tools)?

manuj_78’s picture

manuj_78 commented

test site at test.delhilive.com
you will see the text banner at left hand side and the swf banner in right hand side

wulff’s picture

wulff commented

The text banner works as intended. Because you haven't used the %url placeholder in an a tag in the banner body, the link is added to a » character at the end of the banner.

The » links to banner/154 which redirects to the target url. To have the first line in the banner text link to the target (via the banner/154 page), you have to surround the first line with an a tag:

<a href="%url" target="%target">>Banner title</a>

The uploaded banner breaks because anonymous users can't access private files. I still haven't found a way to keep using the upload module and still have banner work completely when using private files.

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

This [limit banners only to specific nodes] is currently not possible. I'm trying to figure out a way to make this work without making banner targeting too confusing.

Wulff, thanks for considering the issue :) Unfortunately no coder here, so for now i can only help with feedback/testing or donating some money for the cause.

As about UI: i personally find complicated for users to have a single interface for all kinds of banners (textual, image, external,..), and this is also a limit for the addition of new features to the module, that actually risks to become too confusing to understand.
Maybe it would help to separate the UI of each banner type letting users select immediately what type of advertisement they want to publish and then directing them to the right interface (ie: textual banners do not need pictures upload, or image banners do not need text to be submitted..), or maybe splitting the module in three sub-modules so to have 'Text ad', 'Banner', 'External ad' under "Banner" type on Create content page.. ?

Would this be far too complicated and worth to explore in your opinion? of course this would make a separate issue, but is still just a thought so far.. ;)

cheers

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

again about this:

yes, from a user POV it could be confusing to have settings for Taxonomy Blocks (regions), Taxonomy Terms and Single nodes, and thinking deeper about it, it could potentially lead to impossible combinations...(eg: a user wants a banner on a specific node but on that node there is not the choosen Block region, or the chosen node does not correspond with the choosen Taxonomy Term...)

the more i think about it, the more i like the idea of a sort of "banner construction kit", that lets admins pre-define "default" banner types to offer to their final users. Many of the most popular ad management scripts (Adpeeps, RevSense,..) use this logic. IMO this could help with:

  • a simplified UI for users: they would be spared from having to set where to publish the banner, in what target frame to show it, what type/mode of advertising they need.
  • possibility of integration with e-commerce package: each banner could become a product with it's specific price.
  • possibility to add other features: like geotargeting, per-node banners or others, without making the settings too complicated for users.

well, maybe after all this would turn Banner into another completely different module, anyhow i am licensed to brainstorm a bit, am i not?

wulff’s picture

wulff commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Marking as closed since the banner module has been abandoned.