In the event that some of you have been noticing strange behavior of BGDF, I have been working on making a "Future Ad Program". Currently the existing implementation only allows for "alternating" banners (cyclical but random).
The problem is that there is currently no support for URLs to click and follow the ad to the desired website. I've racked my brain, searched the Internet a thousand times, tried so many combinations nothing is working as normal PHP would have it.
The caching module on BGDF (Drupal 6) is very "fragile". It probably works to boost performance but it produces questionable navigation for us Admins.
In any event, I plan to re-write the banner routines over the weekend. When this is done and working, I will update BGDF with additional links to details about the "Ad Program". Trust me, it will be very reasonable and not like Google Ads which pops up all kinds of non-board game ads that are of no interest to most members.
I plan to pitch this "Ad Program" to conventions, kickstarters and indie board and card game designers, people who have a website (a designer with an off-site blog, etc.) Ergo for this program to exist... To enrich our lives not bog them down with flashy ads... We will only support JPEGs and nothing animated (No Flash, no animated GIFs, etc.)
And of course, for those needing temporary relief from ads, our standard banners will continue to function and serve as "quiet moments of tranquility" between the raging ads of the next great game or RPG to play.
So sorry for the bit of instability today ... Was racking my brains out trying to figure what I was doing wrong. A days worth means that I need a "fresh" approach.
Lastly why I am interested in this "Ad Program" is to generate a small amount of revenue to pay for domains, privacy, backup space, server hosting, etc. ... Such that BGDF can continue to thrive ... While we wait for the "Next Big Thing" (I'm sure Rich will be working hard on that).
I'm a simple person, I'd just like some "revenue stream" to pay for all the "out-of-pocket" expenses that I am currently assuming.
Thank you for visiting BGDF and rest assured, we will have a professional "Ad Program" to help differ the costs of running BGDF such that the site doesn't become a casualty of insufficient funding!
Cheers,
Kristopher
Aka QuestCCG
"Indie" Game Designer
BGDF Moderator/Administrator
I thought it would be SIMPLE to just add a $_SESSION[variable] to the server superglobal for each user and recover the value once in the decoding of the web page (which ever one you are on, they all have a banner)...
But I found two (2) things: since the PHP page to "load" the banner files is NOT part of Drupal, using session_start() to init the $_SESSION superglobal did only create an empty Array ( ).
So I searched low and high, and eventually found that Drupal could DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_SESSION and initialize the Drupal system for sessions to be permissible.
Again this didn't do ANYTHING. The $_SESSION superglobal was always an empty Array ( ). I fought with this for an ENTIRE DAY ... Getting real super frustrated because it should be as SIMPLE as $_SESSION["current_ad"] = $URL; and $URL = $_SESSION["current_ad"]; to retrieve it.
But again nothing is SIMPLE with Drupal. The caching mechanic is so messed up that it create a real POOR User-Experience for admins. It causes all kinds of "Permission Denied" when login off, since it doesn't flush the cache for the pages we (or I) have visited as Admin.
Bottom line, I'm going to use File System with a CACHE and INFO (2 files) to manage the loading of the correct banners... That should all be standard PHP code and I'll even make it a bit "fancy" with JSON files and Arrays. Honestly I don't want to waste time TRYING to figure out WHY the cache is messing with the $_SESSION superglobal, all I know is that with so many attempts, it plainly just does NOT work.
That's the technical response.