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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.

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.