New Joomla! banner component

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I was recently working on a Joomla! site which required a fairly unusual banner management system. The spec was that the user would be able to enter a list of banners, links, start dates and expiry dates, and that these banners would be displayed in a random order in the main content area. The component will accept all major image formats, and flash movie files. (.swf)

I wasted quite a bit of time trying to mold other components to my needs, but I could have saved myself some time if I had just written my own!

Here we are, then; the result of my labour.

This component requires Joomla 1.5 or later.

LICENSE + DISCLAIMER:Copyright 2008 John McCollum. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

By downloading this component, you are indicating your acceptance of the terms above. Please make sure you back up your files and database before installing this component.

Click here to download the component!

EDIT – by popular demand, I’ve written a simple module to interact with this component. It simply loads a random image or .swf into a module position, based on dates supplied by the user. Note – you must download the component to use the module, although you can use the component on its own!

Click here to download the module!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Joomla, content management systems, web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

 

65 Responses to “New Joomla! banner component”

  1. DarbNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi

    nice work hope you will put this up on the joomla directory as well!

    rgds

  2. adminNo Gravatar Says:

    Hey Darb,

    Thanks for all your encouragement! I’ve taken your advice and notified the JED, hopefully it should be listed there soon.

    John

  3. DarbNo Gravatar Says:

    Good to see that you have put it up on JED!

    Thanks from the Joomla community!

    rgds

  4. Joomcss - Easy Ad Banner Component Says:

    [...] Download [...]

  5. johnmccollum.co.uk » Blog Archive » Joomla banner module Says:

    [...] I’ve written a companion module for my Joomla advertising component. [...]

  6. johnmccollum.co.uk » Blog Archive » Modules and Components in Joomla & which banner solution to choose Says:

    [...] I’ve received a surprising number of questions and comments from users regarding my Easy Ad Banner component and module for Joomla. [...]

  7. candyNo Gravatar Says:

    component will not install. keep getting this:
    \install_48920111a7d8d\com_advertising\admin\site\index.html’ does not exist

    by the way, install_48920111a7d8d\ does not exist.

    module installed fine.

  8. adminNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi Candy, thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear about your problem – if you could email at john AT johnmccollum.co.uk, I’ll do what I can to help. :)

  9. JeanNo Gravatar Says:

    Installed component & module – works great!

    It would be cool to set the bg-color for flash and add some custom flashvars because most banners have clicktags inside, so the vars for this have to be send to the flashmovie. And an option for opening a new window (“_blank”) when clicking the banner would be nice, too.

    Keep on your good work & thanks a lot!

  10. RichNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi I get this error message install_48984972565f3/com_advertising/admin/site/index.html’ does not exist is this because I run Joomla 1.5.3?

  11. IvanNo Gravatar Says:

    Excelente trabajo todo perfecto, gracias.

  12. Calvin MitchellNo Gravatar Says:

    I noticed that you have Google adwords…did you use your component/module to set that up? If so, how?

  13. adminNo Gravatar Says:

    @Calvin – no, this site doesn’t use Joomla. If you google ‘adsense Joomla’, there are quite a few plugins that can help you with that.

    @Ivan, Gracias :)

    @Jean – these are things I will definitely be looking at in the near future. Thanks for your suggestions!

    @Rich, Candy – unfortunately some people seem to be having issues installing the component, across various versions of Joomla. The cause of this is not clear at the moment (in fact I have been completely unable to replicate this problem) but I would be very interested to hear if anyone knows of a cause or solution!

    In the meantime, you could try one of the other installation options, like ‘install from URL’, rather than direct upload.

  14. AllenNo Gravatar Says:

    I was experiencing the same error mentioned above but was able to work around it.

    I used the option to install from directory to help track down the problem. It appears it is trying to install from within the admin folder rather than the parent folder. Here are the steps I used.

    1.Extract the archive into a directory (ie.. /tmp)
    2.This will create a new directory in /tmp called com_advertising (/tmp/com_advertising)
    3.If you try to install from this directory you still get the same error. To work around it do the following:
    4.In /tmp/com_advertising you will find a directory called admin, go to that directory.
    5.Create a new directory called admin. This will give you something like /tmp/com_advertising/admin/admin.
    6.Move everything in this directory to the new admin directory
    7.Go back to the parent admin directory (/tmp/com_advertising/admin)
    8.Move the site directory into admin
    9.Move advertising.xml into admin
    10.Install using the install from directory option in Joomla 1.5 using /tmp/com_advertising as the directory to install from.

    This should work. Hope I explained it clear and hope this helps to track down the problem. I don’t know enough about Joomla to know why this works or why the origianl way doesn’t.

    Allen

  15. AllenNo Gravatar Says:

    Unfortunately once I got this working I discovered it wasn’t what I needed. I need all the functionality of the core banner component of Joomla with the addition of a start/end date.

    Thanks anyway.

  16. CMS CriticNo Gravatar Says:

    Very interesting article.. Thank you.

    Mike @ http://cmscritic.com

  17. StevNo Gravatar Says:

    Thank you very Allan for the solution..it worked perfectly…
    Also the component is great, especially because it supports .swf format.

  18. GuilhermeNo Gravatar Says:

    I was having the “admin\site” installation error for a component I’m developing and ended up here while searching for a solution.
    In my case, the error was caused by the fact that the xml with the install instructions was on the admin folder. Moving it to the root folder of the component solved my problem.
    Hope that helps.

  19. HonlapNekedNo Gravatar Says:

    Great work! Thanks for sharing!

    Regards,
    Gab

  20. Adwords ManagementNo Gravatar Says:

    Very useful function, thank you much for sharing! Made my life easier :)

    Cheers!

  21. malcolmNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi

    I am a very new user of Joomla 1.5. I need to drop a banner into an article, and am hoping this component will do it.
    I have added the component, I can add a banner image and set it up, but how do I call this into my article?

    Appreciate the patience upfront.

    Malcolm

  22. PuxNo Gravatar Says:

    thx

    but you can add option for opening add in new window or in old one

    thx
    pux

  23. AbeNo Gravatar Says:

    Great add, but is there a way to randomize the banner?

  24. Joomla non-smokerNo Gravatar Says:

    Thanks for all your hard work it is an excellent addition

  25. ramiNo Gravatar Says:

    nice component. I like it

  26. bouncingelephantNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi there,
    to fix the admin/site/index.html does not exists problem, remove the xml file from the admin folder. Hope this helps ;) . Best regards, bouncing elephant.

  27. MenoNo Gravatar Says:

    The author, and you to order do not write?

  28. Football AcademyNo Gravatar Says:

    Flash too ! That’s so cool. Thanks for the info. A Stumble for your efforts :)

  29. Mattias HarnemanNo Gravatar Says:

    Keeps getting this message when I´m trying to create a banner:

    Fatal error: Call to undefined method TableAdvertising::getErrorMsg() in /homepages/31/d221539842/htdocs/www/WEBSITES/MUSICSTAGE_DEVEL/administrator/components/com_advertising/models/advertising.php on line 87

    Anyone has an idea about that?

  30. Tony LindskogNo Gravatar Says:

    Is this Joomla 1.5 native or legacy only?

  31. adminNo Gravatar Says:

    @ Tony, this is 1.5 native.

    @Mattias, that’s a new one – could your installation of Joomla be corrupt?

    @bouncingelephant, Guilherme, thanks for the solution to the installation woes, this shouldn’t re-occur now!

  32. Mattias HarnemanNo Gravatar Says:

    Hmm, don’t know. I have Joomla 1.5.3
    Don’t think it´s corrupt. Is there anyway to find out if it is?

  33. JoomlaNo Gravatar Says:

    Great solution to a problem I was just having. I needed a banner management solution and it seems that this does just the trick. Thanks for providing us with such a useful component/module match.

  34. FranklinNo Gravatar Says:

    Great solution indeed! We were looking for a way to manage our sales banners in a more efficient manner. Thanks for posting this! Can’t wait to see the results by offering a wider range of sale items.

  35. Chris GoodallNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi John
    Great component, many thanks! The only method I’ve found of getting a swf file into Joomla!

    Unfortunately I have a few hiccups on my test site. The Flash file published OK, but when I click, it opens a new window with target URL plus it reloads current window with target URL, giving me two open windows with same site!

    I’d like it just to open the target in a new window/tab and leave existing site loaded.

    Also, any method of monitoring click throughs?

    Thanks again
    Chris

  36. AlcorNo Gravatar Says:

    Hello.

    Good component, but… Is it possible to do the module with swfobject and to be SE friendly?

    Thanks.

  37. SJL Web DesignNo Gravatar Says:

    Just installed the component on one of my sites and it works great! Thanks a lot.

  38. Riccardo CesariniNo Gravatar Says:

    problem on line 87 can be solved in this way:

    component search the table `jos_advertising`, but if you have your own table prefix (I have “PD_” and not the default “jos_”), component doesn’t find the table!

    So go in PhpMyAdmin, SQL query and type:

    “RENAME TABLE `jos_advertising` TO `(insert your own tables prefix)_advertising`,

    and now it has to work!

  39. matu666No Gravatar Says:

    thank you for that nice component and module.

    for me there is few minor problems. if i have multiple banner positions like in header and second in footer and i want to show different banners, even different sizes, so what should i do? i make modules to both locations but i cant choose what banner i will show in that position. so in component, banners should have id-s and in module i can choose what banner i show in that module position.

    i hope you can make these modifications :)
    thank you

  40. OakNo Gravatar Says:

    I’ve got this working! Its a really great component.

  41. VrboNo Gravatar Says:

    Hey great plugin just downloaded it and have been playing with it on the local side before going live. This has just saved me hours of coding my own plugin! THANKS!!!

    -Victor

  42. Melbourne AccommodationNo Gravatar Says:

    I would love to leave psoitive feed back but for some reason this component / module won’t recognise my image directory. While the module installs ok I just get a ‘no images’ message.

  43. KmeliaNo Gravatar Says:

    It does work great!! But as some others say, how can the clicks be monitored, in oder to report this to the advertiser?

    And if i need any other banner with different size and place, how can i manage it?

    Thnx a lot,

  44. Casa MiaNo Gravatar Says:

    installed and it work great!!! thanks for the tips

  45. Milton KeynesNo Gravatar Says:

    Awesome component, works like a charm!

  46. christinaNo Gravatar Says:

    Will it run on Joomla 1.5 in legacy mode?

  47. Joomla LoverNo Gravatar Says:

    hello Alex,

    though this Joomla! extension is not much complex but it will be more helping if you could explain the file structure and installation method for this Joomla! extension.

    Ahsan @ http://ahsangill.wordpress.com

  48. Kitchen DesignNo Gravatar Says:

    Hey John just wanted to drop you a line and thank you for all your hard work and excellent products!

  49. RoccaNo Gravatar Says:

    Banners are not shown? What am i doing wrong? The module you see, but without the banners.

  50. Web developersNo Gravatar Says:

    Thanks for your work, John!
    It’s really good. And thanks for sharing. :)

  51. richiebeeNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi,
    great componant,
    2 questions requests

    1.”This is a very simple component that allows you, the admin, to add any number of flash or image banners to a single page on your site. ”
    What do you mean by a single page.. to do this I have to create menu links manually and assign the mod only that menu link?

    2.The target link takes users out of your own site (should be _blank)

    cheers and congratulations on a great com!

  52. HiltonNo Gravatar Says:

    Hi, Im new to joomla and extensions, i have installed it and see it but when adding a banner i dont see anything on the site? am i missing something? is it my template?

  53. Meeting roomsNo Gravatar Says:

    Thanks for the post. I’m really looking for a component or module that allows the display random images in the header graphic on most templates. Please drop me a line if you stumble any related post..

  54. Rak Logo DesignNo Gravatar Says:

    Thanks for sharing this excellent joomla component John.

  55. web desgin nowichNo Gravatar Says:

    Thanks, this is great for managing banner advertisements on large websites

  56. Landlords InsuranceNo Gravatar Says:

    Thanks for sharing this great joomla component John.

  57. TransportadoraNo Gravatar Says:

    Good Man :}

  58. Jogos de MeninasNo Gravatar Says:

    This component is a great addition to Joomla. Thanks!

  59. GermanNo Gravatar Says:

    Hello,

    I’m trying to open the urls in a new windows but I don’t know where i have to put target=”_blank” in the code.

    Can you help me.

    Thanks

  60. KnisloroCouriNo Gravatar Says:

    Да,несогласен с предыдущими блоггерами
    Споки :-)

  61. Carl, Ars Logo DesignNo Gravatar Says:

    I’ve tested both component and module and work superb. We found the swf file support very useful as we’re geotargetting flash content depending on the visitor’s origing. Thanks for your effort.

  62. Save My MarriageNo Gravatar Says:

    Nice of you to share this Joomla banner component with the rest of us, I’m going to try it out. Thanks a lot! :)

  63. RuizNo Gravatar Says:

    Nice component, but how can I opening a new window (”_blank”)? Can I edit de code to get it? Can you help me?

  64. teckna bilförsäkring på internetNo Gravatar Says:

    Ty for sharing, I’m going to DL this joomla banner component and try it out.

  65. TessaNo Gravatar Says:

    This seems like a perfect solution for our site, but I am having issues with the install. The flash is coming through in the Banner portion and I installed the module but I get a broken image icon on my site where the banners should be. I also do not see where the start and end dates are entered (which may be the cause). Did I miss something??? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks!