Advertising

OpenX Manager

brmassa@drupal.org — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:21:15 +0000

Guys,

i just started a new module called OpenX Manager (OpenX = OpenAds). It will allow Drupal sites control remote OpenX servers. Users might create campaigns, banners, publishers and zones and also import all these data from the server.

It uses the OpenX API intensively. And because the API is new and yet very simplistic, the module only allows you to create/edit/delete these contents. Its not possible to check statistics for example.

My final objective is to integrate it with another module i maintain: e-Commerce, letting people to buy ad space.

I would love to get some feedback.

regards,

massa

Advertising

Drupal-based Open Source Advertising Network

Jeremy@kerneltrap.org — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 01:43:47 +0000

I'm looking for beta testers at Ad Bard, an open source advertising network that I'm building using Drupal and the Ad module. The project is current in beta testing, with the current goal being to build a network of websites focused in one way or another on free and open source software. If you're interested in participating, please sign up for a free account, and follow the directions to place the appropriate javascript on your website.

I'm also quite interested in hearing feedback on the idea. What would it take for an advertising network like this to be interesting to you? What features would you like to see? I look forward to any suggestions and/or criticisms.

Ultimately, there will be three classes of users on the Ad Bard Network. Website owners, Advertisers, and Resellers. We are currently in phase one of the project: trying to build a network of Website owners. For phase 1 the goal is to grow the network to a modest 5-10 million page views a month (from it's current 1 million page views a month). During this phase, development is focused on building tools for Website owners, allowing them to see ad view/click statistics and to easily track how much money advertisements are making them. The focus is also on simplifying account management.

Once the network size goal is reached, phase 2 will begin which will involve attracting advertisers to the network. During this phase, we will learn what a fair price-per-click is, and website owners will begin to get a feel for potential earnings.

Phase 3 will involve building and deploying the necessary tools to allow advertisement resellers. The goal is to allow ambitious web hosts to sell their own advertising (which would also reach other websites on the network), greatly increasing their potential earnings while also helping to grow the open source advertising network.

Throughout the entire project, the goal is to keep everything out in the open.

That's the general idea anyway. I welcome all feedback!

Advertising

Time to Give Back: Become a Speaker at Drupalcon Boston 2008

jwhatcott — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:49:57 +0000

Hello,

We are looking for speakers for the upcoming DrupalCon in Boston. Since you are subscribed to a business and marketing related group, you might be especially interested in the "Business and Marketing" track (see http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/business-and-marketing-track-description... ).

This track covers the following topics:

The Drupal ecosystem
Businesses learning to use Drupal
Case studies
Showcases: NPO, Education, News, Media, Government, Healthcare

You can find a list of existing proposals at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/sessions, and submit your own proposal on http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/node/add/session. Of course, it is at any time possible to submit custom session proposals which we did not yet cover on the list of suggestions.

We are looking forward to create an great business and marketing track with lots of benefits for all participants.

Thanks,

The Business and Marketing track co-chairs
Jeff Whatcott, Jim Edgett, Liza Kindred
http://drupalcon.org

Search Engine Optimization

What ad server do you use?

prfb@drupal.org — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:54:49 +0000

I have a consumer information site in a very specific niche. I've got AdSense and Commission Junction accounts today, but I think it would be very feasible to sell CPM ads directly (since this is such a specific niche and I know a lot of the players personally). The question is, using what platform?

My closest competitor uses Open AdStream by Real Media (and they say this on their site!) but their site also happens to be written in ColdFusion so I don't think of them as cutting-edge...

I've installed Jeremy's excellent Ad module (I use it for my CJ ads) but it seems like advertisers would want independent confirmation of the # of impressions they get. (I know I would!)

Anybody have experience with Openads (aka phpadsnew), Open AdStream, self-serve with the Ad module, etc?

Thanks!

-Patricia

Social Networking Sites

Drupal Newsletter - June, 2007

robertDouglass — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:43:50 +0000

Robert Douglass: So how? We make a wiki page for each section? Here's one for events.
BorisMann: I was thinking more about a wiki page per issue, and the issue could get flesh out over time.
Robin Monks: Boris, sounds good!
BorisMann: I was thinking that we could stick to Markdown rather than HTML, to make it easier to make a plaintext version. Still not ideal for links, of course.
Robin Monks: Boris, the text version is automatically generated from the HTML output Drupal creates, so it doesn't really matter.

What more do we need here? I feel like this is getting close to good? If there is a "todo list" then I'd be happy to write more stuff, but as it is I don't know what more to add.
ChrisKennedy: I think a "Drupal 6 status report" would be valuable for a lot of people. Mainly the list of features in the ChangeLog, but also the release schedule. A table of contents ("In This Issue:...") at the top might be handy too. Oh and how about a blurb asking people to donate to the Drupal Assocation?

--------- NEWSLETTER BEGINS HERE ----------------

Upcoming Drupal Events

June 29, Drupal Camp Seattle 2007. Seattle, Washington, USA.

August 25-26, FrOSCon. Sankt Augustin, Germany. The first ever Drupal event in Germany will take place over two days with two rooms for Drupal, as part of a larger open source and free software conference. See http://froscon.de/?L=1 for details. http://cfp.froscon.org/ if you want to propose a talk. More details on http://groups.drupal.org/froscon-germany-2007

September 19-22, DrupalCon Barcelona 2007. Barcelona, Spain. This new Drupal Conference is in the early stages of organization, see http://barcelona2007.drupalcon.org for more information.

Administrative Tips

Update Status Module - The Update Status module will help you manage all your sites. It keeps track of all the modules that you have installed to see if you have any updates. You can easily see the status of your site and if any of the modules on your site have security, bugfix, or feature updates available. Each time that you request data, you additionally report which contributed modules you have installed on your site. This information is useful to the module developers so they can determine which modules are popular and perhaps deserve more attention or possible inclusion into Drupal core.

Shift+click your way to happiness when you see a list of items in the Drupal administrative interface, try shift+clicking or control+clicking. With Drupal 5 the administrative interface gained this ability to do multi-selection of checkboxes. This is a great feature for promoting, deleting, or publishing comments and nodes in a big group. It greatly reduces the amount of time you spend clicking on each checkbox.

User Group Meta Group

If you are the leader or help coordinate a local Drupal User Group, please consider joining the User Group Meta Group which provides tips and assistance for geographic user groups. The first major tip is how to get one free copy of the Pro Drupal Development Book.

Drupal Sightings

Moms Rising
Moms Rising is an exceptionally well-built Drupal site for a petition to help new mothers. From the site:

The United States is one of only four countries (out of 168) to not have any national form of paid leave for new moms. This petition supports a bill, titled The Balancing Act, which includes paid leave for all new parents.

Communities for Clean Ports
Communities for Clean Ports is a community of activists proposing stronger legislation and tougher laws on ports.

Sunlight Foundation
The Sunlight Foundation uses Drupal to power it's blogs and community tools. From the website:

The Sunlight Foundation was founded in January 2006 with the goal of using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing...

Forbes Office Pranks

How Not to Render Your Site Obsolete in Six Months

One of the challenges facing every Drupal site administrator is managing change. If your site only runs Drupal core, you probably have a fairly easy upgrade ahead of you next time a new version of Drupal is released. If your site incorporates more than a handful of contributed modules, however, your upgrade becomes more complicated and you may find yourself waiting for modules to be upgraded, or, worse, you may discover a module your site depends on has been abandoned.

If you're a developer-type and can get down into a module's PHP and generate a patch or two, you can push a module's upgrade along and help contributed module maintainers and others who use that module.

But we're not all developers, and it's not always easy for some to apply patches. And for these people there are a few things they can do to help future-proof their sites when considering contributed modules.

Listen to the Lullabot "Deprecated!" podcast. It provides invaluable information on current trends in Drupal and on the changing landscape of contributed module relevance.
Click the "Developers" link at the bottom of a module's Project page. The Developers page tells you who has contributed to the module, how many times they've contributed, when they last contributed, and more. Look for names you know and recent activity.
While you're on a module's project page, check out the issues and support requests.
Search Drupal.org for what people are saying about the module.
Stay up-to-date with Drupal. Subscribe to feeds that are relevant to your site. Look for them on drupal.org and groups.drupal.org. Planet Drupal is a great aggregation of many Drupal contributor's blogs. And for a ready-made collection of Drupal feeds you can catch the Drupal Universe on Netvibes.com, setup by Matthew Farina.

Despite these tips, you may still find yourself stuck with a difficult upgrade or a delay while you wait on a contributed module. The handbooks on Drupal.org can help. But why not take this time to educate yourself on PHP, MySQL and Drupal? Empower yourself, and you can take the energy you'd spend on worrying about your upgrade and do something about it while helping others and Drupal, too.

Interview with Jeff Eaton

Note: this still needs an intro/bio written

How did you come to use Drupal? How long ago?

My first taste of Drupal was in 2004, just before the release of Drupal 4.6. A friend and I were developing an online game, and we needed a web site that would let us feed new content in without too much work. I wanted something that was Wiki-like in its flexibility, but had better support for structured content and portal-style features.

I tried rolling my own a couple of times in ASP and eventually in C#. At the time, I was using an inexpensive webhost with Fantastico installed, and I made my way through a few of the one-click CMS installations. Xoops, Mambo, TikiWiki... Eventually I hit Drupal and it felt like a good fit. The node system really stood out to me: it captured 80% of the functionality of the complex systems I'd tried to hack together in C#, in just 20% of the code.

Is your work on Drupal a hobby or job or both?

Both! I got sucked into working on Drupal (and contributing patches for Drupal core) pretty early on, and and was in love with the flexibility. Eventually I started doing small projects on the side, including a few for Lullabot. My friends and family were joking that I was trying to convince random strangers to use Drupal at that point -- between ideas I had, and exciting ideas other people had, I was in pretty deep. That's about the time I joined Lullabot full-time, and it's been a great experience.

Why do you contribute your time?

I'm a geek who loves code, but really I enjoy polished finished products. Drupal allows me to do cool stuff that would otherwise take me years of grunt-work coding. As I build on it, it's exciting to see other people using the same tools. And when I have an opportunity to make Drupal itself better -- through core patches, or helping other people understand it better -- the whole network effect grows stronger.

How long was it after you first encountered Drupal before you became a contributor and what was your first contribution to the community?

Well, my very first contribution was a horrible patch to Inline module that would have crippled any site with more than a dozen visitors. ;) (Thankfully it was rejected...) That came a couple of months after I installed Drupal for the first time, and started poking around at the modules. Not too long after that, I wrote comic.module -- it was a badly hacked cross between book.module and image.module, with a couple of security holes thrown in as a bonus. As time went on and I started studying other peoples' code, I had more 'aha!' moments and started grasping why Drupal did some of the things it did.

I started getting involved in a productive way almost a year into using Drupal, when I tried to add content ratings to one of my web sites. There were a couple of nice voting modules, but neither of them did exactly what I wanted and there was no way to take the UI from one and graft it onto the features of the other. I ended up brainstorming, contacting the authors of both modules, and asking them what it would take to make a shared back-end that both modules could use. Eventually that grew into VotingAPI, and while it has rough edges, I'm proud of how well it's stood up over time.

The big tipping point for my involvement in the core Drupal project was when I started poking around in comment.module, and posted a patch for it that let people add fields to its forms. I was hanging around in #drupal trying to get people to review it when the now-infamous Form API patch landed, and suddenly it was All Hands On Deck, Who Wants To Help Fix Things? I said, 'I'll help!' and the rest is history.

What do you consider your biggest accomplishments in the Drupal world and why?

I'm really proud of the contrib modules I've built -- stuff like VotingAPI and Custom Breadcrumbs have all grown out of needs I had and have ended up helping others. I think my biggest accomplishments have been low-visibility stuff, though. Helping refactor the internals of the Form API in Drupal 5 to make things simpler and more understandable is incredibly gratifying. I know that everyone who uses Drupal will benefit from it.

What Drupal projects/issues/ideas are you are working on now?

Rob Roy Barreca (RobRoy) and I have been working on a number of improvements to the way that nodes are rendered in Drupal, trying to make the code more consistent, and more flexible when dealing with new ways of outputting content like Flash, XML, ATOM feeds, etc. It's a tricky problem, though. Dries and Steven Wittens (UnConeD) have been giving us some really valuable feedback and it'll be good to see the effort evolve.

I've also got a lot of ideas rolling around for Install Profiles. I think Drupal could really rock for people building their own webcomics -- it has the tools necessary for a really successful community site, it lets you integrate all sorts of different content, and the theming system makes it possible to make the entire site -- including the forums, the online store, etc. -- work with your style.

Like a lot of things, though, it takes knowledge of how to work with a few tricky modules. Whenever I can I try to help polish features or help with modules that make a system like that easier to set up. There are tons of sharp and creative people working in the community -- more and more I find that I can help by building and polishing useful APIs that other module developers can build on without reinventing the wheel.

Do you have any open source experience outside of Drupal?

I briefly used the DotNetNuke system, a portal system written for Microsoft's ASP.Net platform. I used it for some of sites I now run with Drupal, and the community was a lot different. Inside the Drupal world, there's often heated discussion about how friendly the development community is to newcomers and less experienced users. I think we run into that question because there's such a large and diverse group of people who participate. All of those people are not just installing and using Drupal, but developing for it, building modules, writing patches, hacking and testing and working together. To me, at least, it's really a great example of how Open Source can work.

If Drupal didn't exist what other projects might you be involved in?

I'd probably be working on similar CMS systems written in C# -- the language I used at my day-job before stumbling into Drupal. I was in the early stages of writing my own around that time, and a project called Rainbow caught my attention as well. There are so many great ideas floating around, it really takes a vibrant and active community to make an ambitious project thrive beyond the first beta release or so.

If you had to pick a totally different career from the one you have now what would it be?

Before I got sucked into software development, I was a freelance writer... But now? I might take the plunge and go for sociology. I love figuring out how things work, and Sociology sounds like that kind of learning applied to entire societies. How cool!. Either that, or poodle ranching.

If you could be any superhero who would you be?

I would totally be Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, from the 1963 comic "Doom Patrol." He could change himself into any animal, mineral, or vegetable: I'm horribly indecisive when answering questions like this, so shape-shifting sounds like the ideal solution.

Community

Question about using Node Profile and AdSense at the same time

Walt Esquivel — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:16:08 +0000

So far, I have read the AdSense module and Node Profile module's “readme” files, the AdSense and Node Profile module's descriptions, the AdSense author's module info on his web site, and done a search on both d.o and g.d.o. However, I didn't find my answer.

I was wondering about the AdSense when using the Node Profile module because when I go to my website's modules page, e.g. www.abc.com/admin/build/modules, under the AdSense module it states: "Depends on: Profile". This means the core profile module must be enabled for AdSense to work.

Basically, I'm confused on what gets stored if I use both modules (core profile out of a necessity for AdSense AND Node Profile as my choice for enhanced profiles).

So, since AdSense requires the core profile module, does anyone know if I can use the core profile module AND the Node Profile module at the same time? Or are the core profile and Node Profile modules incompatible for use at the same time for storing user info, i.e., "either use one or the other but not both"?

And if the core profile, AdSense, and Node Profile modules ARE all compatible, will I need to store user info in BOTH core profile (for AdSense to track things for individual users and roles) AND Node Profile (for enhanced user profiles)? My hope is that AdSense will be able to use Node Profile instead of the core profile so that ALL a user's info can be stored in one nice and easy to present manner (not to mention a lesser headache for the admin).

This part of the AdSense module's description causes me concern because it sounds like I might need to maintain user info in the core profile for AdSense to work which would be in addition to user info via Node Profile (if I choose that route for enhanced profiles):

Ad revenue sharing with configurable percentage of page views for specific node types going to the node author. Also integrates with referral module so referred user's node can get a certain paercentage to teh referring user.

Thanks in advance for your kind assistance! I hope my blabbering and meandering sentences make sense. :)

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Advertising

Is there any advertising module currently working for 5.x?

mal — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:14:54 +0000

If not I assume that everyone in this forum either is not running 5.x, or is not advertising on their sites. I doubt that either assumption is true, so can someone please tell me the secret?

How do I accomplish advertising on a 5.x site.

I saw that the calssifieds module is ported. But I don't need classifieds. I need text, banner and button ads.

Advertising

Let's get Google Checkout to work with Drupal to allow membership subscriptions-based, recurring credit card charge

Walt Esquivel — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 20:44:28 +0000

Not too long ago, Google announced FREE processing of your Google Checkout sales until the end of 2007. That's right - more than a year's worth of free processing!

From now through December 31, 2007, you can process Checkout transactions for free, even if you aren't an AdWords advertiser. If you're already an AdWords advertiser, you can process your Checkout transactions for free regardless of your AdWords spend.

This potentially affects folks who use Drupal's ecommerce and advertising modules. Wouldn't you like to use Google Checkout (GC) for your Drupal web site(s)? Before that's possible, we need someone to create a module. Unfortunately, GC currently works ONLY in the United States. Regardless, I'd like to see a developer step up and write a membership subscriptions-based, recurring credit card charges capable module and I'd be willing to make a small financial contribution. Here's a short GC video demo, but please read on for more info.

Drupal's developers have expressed their desire to support GC. Please register your interest (as a developer or a user/tester) on this GC ticket over on drupal.org. In addition, I'm hoping that whichever developer is interested in building a GC module for Drupal, that s/he will post requirements below as a part of this page and that s/he will eventually provide info for Reverse Bounty Status of Projects Needing Financing so we're all aware of basic needs and progress.

Here are a few links to Google Checkout:
- June 29, 2006, Google Checkout Open For Business, Internet News, By Vangie Beal
- December 20, 2006, Google Steps More Boldly Into PayPal’s Territory, The New York Times, By Miguel Helft

The NY Times article by Helft points out that:

Unlike PayPal, a full-fledged payment system that can be used to transfer money between individuals and can draw funds directly from bank accounts, Checkout merely offers users an easy way to use their credit cards.

[my emphasis in bold, not the author's]

A MAJOR LIMITATION to building this module may very well be that GC has recurring charge limitations. This might mean having to wait a while on this module's development until such time that GC actually allows automatically recurring credit card charges. Or is there a way to work around this? Probably not since the credit card info is entered via Google and so if they aren't set up to do the recurring charges or don't want to do recurring charges, there probably isn't a current solution. In that case, I would just rather hold off on funding. To illustrate the limitation, here are some posts I found:
- recurring payments are not yet available in Google Checkout.
- Google checkout currently does not support recurring payments
- No, Checkout doesn't do recurring charges.
- Google Checkout is designed primarily for one-time transactions.

Google Checkout is designed primarily for one-time transactions
involving tangible goods. You may use Checkout for subscriptions though
we don't currently offer the ability to charge buyers automatically on
a recurring basis.

Joel
GoogleCheckoutPro

In conclusion, per the guidelines posted on the Projects Needing Financing home page, here is my info:

My donor and business name with a link(s):
Walt Esquivel, Wellness Corps
Project I'd like to contribute to:
I'm interested in helping get Google Checkout up and running with my Drupal-powered web site by making a small financial donation to the developer leading this effort. I need a membership subscriptions-based, recurring credit card charge capable module.
Web site(s) with additional information such as where your donations come from:
http://www.wellnesscorps.com/50drupal.htm

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Advertising

New advertising module: ad.module

Jeremy@kerneltrap.org — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:31:45 +0000

Far too many months ago, I decided that the design of the Drupal banner module made it too difficult to maintain and began working on an improved replacement. At that time I got as far as defining the database schema, but then life distracted me and the project was left unfinished. In the past couple of weeks I've had a need again for the new ad module, so I've dusted it off and begun implementation. Today I've uploaded an alpha version that can randomly display image ads, tracking how many times the ad has been viewed or clicked. It is a humble beginning, but ready for a few brave alpha testers to give it a try, report problems, review the code, and make suggestions.

The goal of the new module is to provide a simple to install scalable advertising API that offers necessary ad management features such as randomly displaying ads, auto-activation, auto-expiration, limits, notifications, statistics, and ecommerce integration. Different types of ads will be supported through plug in modules, such as the included ad_image module for displaying banners and image-block ads. The forthcoming ad_text module will offer adsense-style text advertising. The API makes it possible for additional advertising types to be contributed later by third parties to display for example flash ads, or externally hosted ads.

The underlying database schema offers a highly relational design. Statistics collection is greatly improved allowing for time-based reporting and analysis. Future integration with the eCommerce package will allow useful analysis such as cost-per-impression and cost-per-click. Ads can have multiple owners and maintainers, each with different permissions. The module supports an unlimited number of named banner groups. It will be possible to configure an unlimited number of notifications based on an assortment of criteria. Ads are seen by Drupal as nodes, which will allow for complete support of the taxonomy system for ad categorization, and make it possible to comment on ads.

My personal needs require that the module be integrated with eCommerce, allowing people to buy and renew ads through a web interface. I also intend to support using the ad module to serve ads to remote websites. Many new features have gone into the banner module since I stopped maintaining it, and I will review them to see which I like and belong in the core ad module, and which belong as plug ins.

The ad module is in an alpha state and is still under very active development. While I encourage the brave to download it, test it, report problems and make suggestions for how it can be improved, be warned that the underlying schema is likely to change before it reaches a beta state and automatic upgrades will not be provided. Thus, I do not recommend using any alpha version of the module on a production server. Testers, comments, suggestions, donations and patches are all welcome!

Advertising

What modules assist in advertising on your site?

robertDouglass — Sun, 21 May 2006 16:33:17 +0000

And also, which can be helpful for managing advertising campaigns?

Advertising