Simple Machines Community Forum

Customizing SMF => Tips and Tricks => Topic started by: 1MileCrash on June 09, 2005, 01:52:00 AM

Title: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: 1MileCrash on June 09, 2005, 01:52:00 AM
looking for the easiest way to put ads or sponser banners on your forums? Well, i think this little trick is as easy as it's going to get.

The news box, used to display the forum news. If you have multiple news entrys, they will change with each refresh of the page. They also allow bbc code, so you can easily place images and links in the news box.

I did this for the default theme, so doing it for another theme may require a different (harder) technique (i.e. if it uses text for the word "newsbox" instead of an image.)

All i did was make (http://img255.echo.cx/img255/2286/newsbox24qy.gif) to replace (http://img295.echo.cx/img295/5702/incase3ak.gif).Then i uploaded it to themes/default/images/english as newsbox.gif, overwriting the old file.

Now, the "newsbox" is going to say "sponsors". So you can place a linking banner to your sponsor, and not look stupid. Like, "hey, that's not news you dumby". Keep the banner under around 53 pix, or you'll get a scroll bar. Eew. width can go up to around 250 pix.

using bbc code, just edit the "news" to display the linking image. since the page changes with every refresh of the page, you can put multiple banners in there own "newsbox".

Just a little trick i thought id share.  :P

another good idea is to make a page to let companies know how to advertise on your forum, than put a link in the "sponsor" box to the page. I.E.- "If you are interested in advertising on www.*****.com, click here" yada ya or something like that.
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: dtm.exe on June 09, 2005, 02:02:19 AM
Good idea.  Thanks for the tip :).

-Dan The Man
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: 1MileCrash on June 09, 2005, 02:09:37 AM
thanks. I just didnt feel like doing alot of work to put banners on my forums.  :P
and i never use that news box thing anyway. I made an announcements forum. works good enough  :P
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: bfromd on July 15, 2005, 08:22:15 AM
hello, i dont no if you can help but here we go, i have a personal logo id like to have in the background of forum pages im using theme one now i tried to create them but it did not show . it was succesfully uploaded, but the background was all white, i uploaded it from my desktop.....can you help?
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: rebelbah on August 02, 2005, 01:03:25 PM
how do you make the banners useing what programs
thanks for any assistance


Quote from: Tippmaster on June 09, 2005, 02:09:37 AM
thanks. I just didnt feel like doing alot of work to put banners on my forums.  :P
and i never use that news box thing anyway. I made an announcements forum. works good enough  :P
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: SoftDux on June 20, 2006, 03:18:41 PM
Quote from: Tippmaster on June 09, 2005, 01:52:00 AM
looking for the easiest way to put ads or sponser banners on your forums? Well, i think this little trick is as easy as it's going to get.

The news box, used to display the forum news. If you have multiple news entrys, they will change with each refresh of the page. They also allow bbc code, so you can easily place images and links in the news box.

I did this for the default theme, so doing it for another theme may require a different (harder) technique (i.e. if it uses text for the word "newsbox" instead of an image.)

All i did was make (http://img255.echo.cx/img255/2286/newsbox24qy.gif) to replace (http://img295.echo.cx/img295/5702/incase3ak.gif).Then i uploaded it to themes/default/images/english as newsbox.gif, overwriting the old file.

Now, the "newsbox" is going to say "sponsors". So you can place a linking banner to your sponsor, and not look stupid. Like, "hey, that's not news you dumby". Keep the banner under around 53 pix, or you'll get a scroll bar. Eew. width can go up to around 250 pix.

using bbc code, just edit the "news" to display the linking image. since the page changes with every refresh of the page, you can put multiple banners in there own "newsbox".

Just a little trick i thought id share.  :P

another good idea is to make a page to let companies know how to advertise on your forum, than put a link in the "sponsor" box to the page. I.E.- "If you are interested in advertising on www.*****.com, click here" yada ya or something like that.


Quite a neat little trick. Could work well with phpadsnew. I wonder if the news box can be moved, to say the bottom of the page?
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: 1MileCrash on June 20, 2006, 08:33:23 PM
sure it could. just make your own table/div/whatever in the main_below sub template in index.template.php, the variable for a random news item is ', $context['random_news_line'], '
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: dairin on June 24, 2006, 02:37:00 AM
@Tippmaster -> how to make the news box not only showing in the main page ?? i want it to show in all pages in the forum
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: dairin on August 01, 2006, 07:54:31 PM
any1 can help ?? Tippmaster ??
Title: Re: easily place banners on your forums
Post by: Me_angus on October 24, 2006, 03:44:56 PM
where would I look for the "text" that says news in my theme (Pod_v1)?