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This is the form to create or edit banners, it s quite big so we are going to examine each section in detail to explain how to create different banners:
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In the first panel you have to indicate the URL where the banner will link, you have to select a client for the banner and you have to indicate the maximum number of impressions for the banner and the zone where the banner will be used. If you have no zones you can create a zone using the create zone field and button on the right side.

Zones are sections of your site where banners will be displayed, for example we may want to set-up 3 different banners in our site, a normal 480x60 banner at the top of the screen, a text add in a user-module box and some button-like banner at the footer. Since we don t want a 480x60 banner being displayed in the textadd box we should set-up three different banner zones. You can name zones as yoou want, if you will only use normal/regular 480x60 banners at the top create a zone with any name and assign all your banners to that zone.

Later when displaying a banner in a Tiki template the syntax will make us indicate which zone will be used in that position.

For example create a zone textadd that will be used to put some textadds on the right side bar. After creating the zone you will be able to select the zone in the drop down.

Let's examine the next panel

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This box can be used to limit the banner lifetime to certain dates, you should enter when the banner will start to be active and when it will stop and check the use dates checkbox in the panel. If use dates is not checked the banner will be active until it has run out of impressions (using the maximum number of impressions in the previous box). If use dates is acti ve the banner will stop if it runs out of impressions or if the current date is not between the dates in this box. This panel is useful, for example to create a special banner for the holidays or a special date.

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In this box you should select the hours when the banner will be active, for example you may want a banner to be displayed only at night or a banner to be displayed between 3pm and 4pm to announce a sports event. This box can limit the weekdays where the banner will be displayed. You may have a banner for Fridays, special banners for the weekends, etc.

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And finally here s where you actually indicate the banner. You have four different banner types and you must select only one to create the banner data. The options are:

• HTML banner
• Image banner
• Fixed URL banner
• Text banner

Each option will be explained as follows:

HTML banners use a snippet of HTML code, this is very common for banner exchange sites where they will send you (show you) a portion of HTML code that you have to display in order to proceed with the banner exchange. Just paste/enter the HTML code in the text area and make sure the radio button is selecting HTML code to use HTML banners.

Promo.Example.com

An image banner is just an image displayed as a banner linking to the URL you indicated. You should upload the image to be used for the banner. Use the upload box to upload the banner and make sure the radio button is pointing at the Use image option.

A fixed URL banner is a banner that will be retrieved from a URL, this is typical for dynamic chaning banners, for example http://bannerserver/mybanner?id=foo or something like that. For this option you should enter the banner URL, each time tha banner is selected to be displayed the content will be retrieved from the URL and displayed.

A text banner is just a snippet of text, this is known as text adds which are very common in sites such as Google or Kuro5hin.

For the example enter a couple of textadd banners in the textadd zone.

Once you have created your banners you want to display them, you can display a Tiki banner in any Tiki template including user modules system. You have to use the following syntax to include a banner in any template:

{banner zone=foo}

Where zone is the zone to be used. In our example let s create a user module from the user modules screen to display our textadds:

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Once created assign the banner to some sidebar:

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Now you should have a user module displaying the text add banners at the right side bar, refresh the screen to see how the banners are rotated (if you created more than one add). You now have textadds in your Tiki site just as Google or Kuro5hin!

Once banners are running you or your clients (friends) will want to check how they banners are doing in the Tiki system, from the banner listing you will see a link to stats .

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Clicking on stats will display the banner stats:

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The banner information screen displays the statistics for the selected banner.

Future versions of Tiki will enhance the banner systems even more, new constraints will be added to the banner creation form (max impressions per week, restriction by group, etc) and new stats and graphics will be added to the stats page. New versions will be compatible with this version so you can start using the banners right now. Please let us know what would you add to the banners system to make it usable and we ll be happy to include ou suggestions in a new version.

please link to the live Feature on tiki.org

This page is for the latest released stable version or release candidate(not stuff in CVS).

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