iZachy

Yesterday, I installed phpAdsNew, which is an open-source ad server. The ad server is free and is easy to install. OK, it was easy to install for me because my web hosting provider uses Fantastico, which makes installation of various programs easy. Installation is as simple as clicking on a link.

The ads on the right and the ads in the left column are served by phpAdsNew. The server randomly displays ads from Google and Yahoo in the left column and Amazon ads to the right of the content. Like Adsense and YPN, all you have to do is copy and paste a few lines of code. However, if all you want to do is rotate Google and Yahoo ads, then phpAdsNew is over-kill. You can get by with a simple Javascript/php script or a simple ad rotator plugin. However, phpAdsNew does more than just rotate ads, it's a full blown ad server with a bunch of bells and whistles. With phpAdsNew, you have the option of serving ads that you sell yourself.

Here are some of the things I like about phpAdsNew:

• Ads are still displayed even if Javascript is disabled.
• You can run phpAdsNew on the same server as your site.
• You can serve ads ads to multiple sites from one central server.
• Separate logins for advertisers to view stats in real-time.
• Server can handle regular banners and buttons, pop-ups, text ads, DHTML banners, and Flash.
• Works with both impression and pay per click ad model.
• You can set activation and expiration date and set maximum number of impressions or clicks.
• phpAdsNew can deliver different banners based on many different parameters, such as keyword, IP address, domain, weekday, hour of the day, language, browser or operating system. You can also combine these parameters and use logical operators to create very specific situations in which banners are delivered. It is also possible to limit the delivery of banners based on how often a banner is already shown to a specific visitor and how long since the visitor last saw the banner.

What I don't like about phpAdsNew:

• There's a lot of options to configure.
• Even though there's a lot of documentation, some of the explanations tended to be too brief.
• You will get an error message if you keep hitting reload to test the ad server (I'm on a shared hosting account).
• If you run a lot of ads on a page, sometimes all the graphics ads don't load in time (there's an X where the ad should be).
• Have not figured out to get phpAdsNew to track clicks on third party ads like Adsense, YPN, and Amazon.

To run phpAdsNew, PHP and MySQL needs to be installed on your web server. phpAdsNew can be used on many types of servers, including Apache running on Linux, BSD or MacOS X, Apache running on Windows, and Microsoft IIS. Here are some useful links if you need more info:

• phpAdsNew web site
• Documentation
• Forum

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 10:42 am and is filed under Reviews, Tools. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.