Clicking Through: A phpBanner Primer - Of Pictures and Words (
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Once a client account has been activated, he or she can easily access the application and modify both user profile and password using the "My Profile" and "Password" options that appear in the menu. However, clients will usually be more interested in the "Image" and "Create" menu options, as these are probably the only ones that they will use on a regular basis. But before I get into the nitty-gritty of these features, a quick explanation of how the system functions.
The process of adding a new banner to the site is fairly well defined, and it looks like this:
Step 1: The client uploads an image to the server.
Step 2: Next, he or she create a banner and associates any one of the images previously uploaded with the new banner.
Step 3: The administrator "enables" the banner, and also defines hits, clicks and keywords for the banner (more on this later).
Begin by selecting the "Image" link and logging in. You should now see something like this:
As you can see, this screen has it all: you can view a list of existing images, upload a new image, and delete existing images.
When you upload an image, it is always placed in the directory specially created for the client. If you want a quick preview, simply click the corresponding file name in the listing above and you'll be able to see what you just uploaded.
Right, now that the image has been uploaded, the next step is to create a banner associated with it. Click the "Create" menu item and log in again to see this:
If I can take a minute out to gripe here: one strange and unnerving feature of this application is the lack of session-based user authentication. This means that every action has to be validated with a password, over and over again, an extremely irritating problem that can easily be rectified by adding PHP session support to the code. Hopefully, this will be fixed in future versions of the application.
Once again, this easy-to-use screen has it all: the list of uploaded images in a neat little drop-down box, a text box to enter the URL that the banner points to, another text box to enter an image label (useful for text-only browsers and Web spiders). The client can add as many banners as needed -- using the same image also if required -- for different URLs.
