Banner manager

Full Ad Server plugin for images, HTML and flash banners, as well as serving AdSense or other 3rd party textual/image ads.

Description

The Banner Manager plug-in is a full Ad Server plug-in for images, HTML and flash banners, as well as serving AdSense or other 3rd party textual/image ads. It will help you easily organize, show and track statistics for ads/banners on your Vivvo website.

All banners can be a part of a zone, for easier grouping and displaying on different areas of the webpage. A zone consists of a banner or number of banners in different areas on the webpage. In case you add more than one banner to a zone, they will rotate randomly.

After creating a zone with banners or integration code, the code for including zones on Vivvo website is automatically generated and you only need to paste it on desired place in you template files.

For general install and uninstall instructions, please refer to Manage plug-ins section of user guide.
Before finish installation, you need to wait for a few seconds to import data in database. When importing is done, click on the "Finish" button.

Access

The path to the Banner manager plug-in:

Click on the Plug-ins link (which is located in the second level Menu on the right side at the top of your administration panel).

Choose Banner manager from the list of all installed plug-ins (on the left side of the screen).

User level

This plug-in can be accessed only by users belonging to groups that are allowed to manage Banner manager plug-in.

Actions

Quick link tab

This is the main tab that will be opened any time you access the plug-ins page.

• Add new banner - Loads the three-step wizard, which will lead you through the process of creating a banner and adding to one of your zones.
• Dashboard - You can see here "Banner statistics" - all about banners, campaigns, zones and advertisers, "Dashboard statistics" - impressions, clicks and CTR, "Yesterday's statistics" - diagram for statistics for one day before.
• Show all banners - Opens the window with all existing banners. You can delete, edit, preview banners, change the status, reorder banners or move them to the other zone.
• Add new zone - Loads the form for creating a new zone where your banners will be placed and grouped for displaying.

Zones tab

Open Zones tab if you want to add a new zone or to preview and edit previously added zones.

Search tab

Use search tab to search through your banners entering some criteria.

You can search by:

• Banner name - enter the name of the banner you are looking for. You may also enter a part of its name if you are unsure about its full name.
• Search in zone - you may want to perform search only through one particular zone
• Limit banner views - refine search by banner views
• Search status - search only for active or inactive banners
• Categories - search for banners displayed in some particular, or a few categories (use ctrl+click for selecting more than one category)
• Advertiser - show in results banners owned by one particular advertiser

Click on the Search now button to get the results.

Preferences tab

In this tab you can set preferences for your banners.

• Frontend url - You can choose the URL for displaying banners on frontend of your website, i.e. www.yourdomain.com/banner-manager
• Fraud protection - number of seconds between two subsequent clicks.
• Cache - number of seconds before new banner is selected for a zone.
• Random algorithm - You can choose 'yes' or 'no' if you want to show your banners randomly.

When you fill all desired criteria click on Save button.

Add new banner

Click on the Add new banner link from the Quick links tab to open the Step 1 where you will select some basic information about the banner you want to add:

Step 1: Banner Type

Select the type of banner. It can be image (JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG), flash (SWF) or Text/AdSense (Plain text, JavaScript or HTML code).

Step 2: Banner Properties

• Banner name - enter the name under which the banner will be referenced in statistics and control panel. This field is required.
• Destination URL - enter the link for your banner.
• ALT text - enter the appropriate name for your banner which will shown when the user put mouse on the banner.
• Status - set status for your banner as active or inactive, it can be altered at any time.
• Zone(s) - select one of previously created zones or leave the banner independent. You can later move the banner to another zone.
• Advertiser - choose a user who owns the banner and will be able to monitor campaign statistics. If empty, Administrator will be the owner.
• Target - select if you want a new window to be opened on a click or not.

Step 3: Banner upload and lifespan

• File - upload the banner.
• Start date - enter the date (using appropriate date format) when the banner begins to show up on your website.
• Limit banner views - choose what determines the lifespan of the banner.

If your banner is in flash format:

• Convert - check this box if you want banner that contain embedded links to be converted into Vivvo CMS  format. If you do not want to convert banners they will still work properly but the statistics for this banner will not be generated.
• Width - enter the width of the banner.
• Height - enter the height of the banner.

If you banner is HTML code:

• HTML - enter or paste some HTML code

If you select Date/Time as a criteria:

• End date - enter the date (using appropriate date format) when the banner should stop showing on the website.

If you selected clicks as a criteria:

• Number of clicks - enter the number of clicks before the banner expires.

If you selected impressions as a criteria:

• Number of impressions - enter how many times the banner will show up on your website before it expires.

Step 4: Delivery options

Choose delivery and and targeting for the banner.

• Categories - You may set the banner to display site-wide, only on homepage, or choose from list of specific categories (use ctrl for multiple).
• Countries - choose from which countries will visitors be able to see the banner (use ctrl for multiple).

Click on Save button and the message "Banner is added successfully" should appear.

Manage banners

To have a possibility to change some banner preferences, change status, preview or delete it you need to click on Show all banners link on Quick link tab. A list of all banners added to the system will be listed on the right hand side of the screen.

• Statistics of banner - To see the banner statistics you just need to click on the statistics icon on the right side of the banners name.
• Preview banner - To have the banner previewed in the pop-up window you just need to click on the preview icon on the right side of the banners name.
• Edit banner - To change banners preferences, choose the edit icon next to the preview banner icon. The form that follows is identical as for creating banner. By clicking Save button on the last step, all changes for selected banner will be saved and applied.
• Delete banner - You can permanently remove banner by clicking on the delete icon or checking the box next to its name and selecting Delete from Select action drop-down menu. You can also delete more than one banner at the same time.

Zones

Add new zone

Loads the form for creating a new zone where your banners will be placed and grouped:

• Name - enter the name for your zone.
• Status - set status of the zone to active or inactive.
• Banners - with ctrl+click you can add or remove multiple banners from zone.

Click on the Save button and if you properly created a zone the message: "Zone is added successfully" will appear.

Edit zone

Open the Zones tab and from the list of previously created zones click on the edit icon besides of the zone you want to edit. You can copy generated code for integration to your template pages, change the name and status of the zone, delete it, preview banners in this zone and remove them from the zone (it will not be removed from the system).

Use generated code in templates

After Banner manager has generated code for a zone, you need to paste it in your template file to have banners showing and rotating on your website. You may insert infinite number of zones to show in different pages and areas of your pages.

Commonly used templates we recommend for banner placement are: homepage/default.tpl (show banners on the homepage), article/default.tpl (show on the article pages), category/default.tpl (show on category pages).

Get additional help on template files and explanation of template system in the Developer manual.