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An Ingenious Banner Rotation System

The author says: This all started when I was trying to get banner ads up to cover the hosting costs for the site. I started using a company called BurstMedia. I've been fairly happy with them overall but I also wanted more flexibility in my advertising. I looked at downloading some free banner rotation software but I didn't find anything I was excited about. Plus, none of software used the cool new way to select a random record that I'm going to cover in this article. I had three main goals for this software:

  • First, it had to be simple and easy to implement. Whenever I add a new feature to the web site I like to make it as simple as possible. I always learn so much about what I really want while I'm using the feature I hate to invest much time up front.

  • Second, it had to support advertising networks, link exchanges and serving my own ads off the site. My site is still relatively new and I'm still working on the best ways to generate revenue.

  • Finally, I wanted a solution that I could build on as I required more features. Nothing in my first requirement should make my work harder in the future. That sounds like a contradiction but I'll explain more in the article.
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Server Side

Creating a Banner Rotation System

So, you want to create a banner rotation system for your website, eh? Well, you have a number of options on how to do it. If you do not need to keep track of how many times the banners are displayed, and how often they are clicked, then the simplest approach is to use Microsoft's Ad Rotator, a component that comes free with ASP! There is a great article already on 4Guys that explains how to use the Ad Rotator.

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Server Side

Automatically Configured Advertisement Display

In this project we are going to look at how we might choose to handle the automatic selection of advertisements to be displayed on our web site. Not only how this can be done for static (non-search result) pages, but also dynamic (search result) pages. During the tutorial we will be discussing mostly the method of implementation. For more a more detailed view of exactly how our results were achieved you should look at the files supplied.

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Server Side

Developing a Customizable Banner Rotation System

One of the most popular forms of advertising on the Internet are rotating banner advertisements. Using a banner rotation system, rather than a static system, you can sell many more banner ads for a smaller price. Another major advantage of using a banner rotation system is that you do not need to manually edit each page once a customer's contract has expired or a new contract begins. The system can also be spanned over multiple pages (and sites, so long as such sites reside on the same Web server).

To develop a customizable system we need to, as the saying goes, "look back to look forward." For starters, we should examine those tools that we are currently provided with to see what we can improve and innovate on. We'll start with an examination of\ Microsoft's solution, the Ad Rotator.

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Server Side

Using the Ad Rotator

We've all seen the sites which have nifty rotating banners. Each page you visit, you see a random advertisement at the top. If you click on the banner, you are taken to the advertiser's website. If you've ever considered adding such a system to your own site, you are in luck, because Microsoft provides a component that makes banner rotation painfully simple.

The component from Microsoft is called the Ad Rotator, and comes standard with ASP. (This means that your web host provider more than likely has this component available for you to use!) The Ad Rotator isn't a solve-all; for example, the Ad Rotator doesn't track banner impressions and click-throughs. (However, with a little tweaking, we can keep track of some of these statistics.)

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Server Side

JSPs or Servlets--Which Architecture is Right for You?

SINCE THE INTRODUCTION of JSP technology, two architectures have emerged for building server-side Web applications in Java. The first involves JSPs only, and the second uses JSPs and Servlets together. Referred to as Model 1 and Model 2 architectures, respectively, each model has its advantages and disadvantages. The Model 2 architecture has become quite popular recently, and has received a great deal of coverage on the Web and in trade magazines. In fact, many developers mistakenly believe this architecture has replaced the Model 1 architecture and is the "right" way to use JSPs.

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Server Side

An introduction to JSP Tag Libraries

Over time as I program in both JSP and ASP, I am increasingly finding JSP to be the far more powerful of the two server-side programming solutions. More than any other feature, tag libraries are the one aspect of JSP which has caused me to to choose JSP as my primary server-side web application tool.

Why? It all comes down to two issues: maintenance and development speed. Server-side scripting languages are the melting pot of Internet development. Within a single server page you may easily intermix different scripting methodologies and objects. Like concrete, this mixing of 'materials' is what gives server-side scripting its strength and it enables the server-side programmer to design very dynamic and flexible web pages. The free intermixing of scripting, however, can be very hard to maintain, especially as the size of the project increases. The end product is one that takes an experienced programmer to build and maintain instead of a traditional web designer. As a result server-side applications tend to be weaker in their final graphical design and implementation. Even worse, as the code gets more complicated the development speed decreases. Consequently, many medium- and large-sized server-side web applications are late and over budget. Finally, once implemented, many shops face the problem of finding qualified programmers to maintain what has become known as *spaghetti code.*

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Server Side

JSP: THE SHORT COURSE

JSP: The Short Course is intended to provide you with a basic understanding of JSP - enough to allow you to quickly become a confident builder of content-rich JavaServer Pages. Beyond that, you will have a solid base for further learning.

Will this tutorial make you a JSP expert? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Will it give you the basic tools? ABSOLUTELY YES!

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Server Side

Using JSP with JavaMail

Interested in building a form mailing utility with JSP? Well, you have come to the right place. In this tutorial find help with writing the HTML page used to gather email data, understanding some important features of the JavaMail API, and incorporating those features into JSP. This primer on JavaMail basics includes a working example of successfully implementing JavaMail in JSP. Once mastered, JavaMail is a powerful API utility for JSP applications.

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Server Side

ASP.NET Web Forms: An Overview - Part 2

Yesterday, in part 1, Rey Nuñez introduced us to Web forms, an ASP.NET technology designed to easily build dynamic, interactive web pages. Today, he delves a little bit deeper into this technology, looking in detail at web controls - ASP.NET web controls are analogous to, but more flexible than HTML controls. They are designed to provide a simplified way to add powerful functionality to a web page via web forms.

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