Commercial Break (A phpAds Primer) - Getting Started (
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Let's start with the basics - what
the heck is phpAds, anyhow?
phpAds, in the words of its author, is "a
banner management and tracking system" for Web sites. It allows Web
administrators to manage advertisers and advertiser banners on a Web sites,
display them in a random or pre-defined arrangement, and deliver reports based
on user impressions per banner. It's also pretty popular, and quite a few Web
sites use it to manage their online advertising activities.
The first
thing is to make sure that you have everything you need for a successful
installation of phpAds. Typically, you'll need a PHP-compliant Web server (I'm
using Apache), and a MySQL database server. Most Web hosting providers already
offer these three components; however, in case yours doesn't, you can get Apache
from
http://www.apache.org, PHP from
http://www.php.net and MySQL from
http://www.mysql.com.
Once you've got all
three packages configured and installed, download a copy of phpAds from the
official Web site at
http://www.phpwizard.net/, and uncompress
it to a location under your server root.
$ tar -xzvf phpAds_1.4.0.tar.gz
Next, create a MySQL database to store all the application
information. Drop to a command prompt, and start up the MySQL client.
$ mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 7311 to server version: 3.23.39
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql>
Create a new database for the application (I've called mine
"phpads").
mysql> CREATE DATABASE phpads;
With the database created, it's time to set up all the
required tables. This isn't as hard as it sounds - the phpAds distribution comes
with a single SQL file, "all.sql", which contains all the SQL commands needed to
set up the application's database tables. All you need to do is execute these
commands via the MySQL's server's client program.
$ mysql -D phpads -u root -p < /usr/local/apache/htdocs/phpAds/all.sql
Once the tables have been created, you need to set some
configuration parameters so that the application knows where to find the
database. Locate the "config.inc.php3" file in the application directory, pop it
open it in your favourite text editor and modify the following parameters:
// MySQL hostname
$phpAds_hostname = "localhost";
// MySQL username
$phpAds_mysqluser = "root";
// MySQL password
$phpAds_mysqlpassword = "";
// The database phpAds lives in
$phpAds_db = "phpads";
// phpAds' database tables
$phpAds_tbl_adclicks = "adclicks";
$phpAds_tbl_adviews = "adviews";
$phpAds_tbl_banners = "banners";
$phpAds_tbl_clients = "clients";
$phpAds_tbl_session = "session";
$phpAds_tbl_acls = "acls";
// The URL to your phpAds-installation
$phpAds_url_prefix = "http://www.melonfire.com/phpAds";
Most of these parameters are self-explanatory - the database
name, username and password, and the URL of the location the application is
installed to. Once you've made the necessary changes, save the file, and attempt
to access the application URL through your browser. If phpAds has been
successfully installed and configured, you should see something like
this:
Aaaaaand you're done! Flip the page
to find out how you can begin using the application.
