Ads not showing/site not validating

I've just signed up to the co-op ads network and followed the instructions (copied the PHP code into a file, added the include instruction for it etc) but the ads aren't showing up on my site. I know I've included the PHP stuff properly because I forget to set the right permissions on the text file the first time round and it showed up the error message. After I'd fixed this, all there is where I've put the $ad_network[0] code is a blank space.

Does it make any difference that I'm putting the ads in the header template rather than the SHOWTHREAD and other ones? I've got a big blank space in the top right of my site and I'd rather have the ads show there instead of anywhere else (I used to have Adsense displaying there and it worked fine, so I'm guessing it's not a templating problem).

As well as not showing the ads (or probably as a consequence of it), my site won't validate either - it keeps saying "Ads not found on http://www.roguestudents.com/".

Any ideas as to what I should do to fix this? The URL is www.roguestudents.com and I'm using vBulletin 3.0.

 

What do you mean by URL file access exactly? Does the co-op script that you use to validate sites use something like:

fopen('http://www.example.com/');

because if so I've disabled that "feature" in php.ini (I'm the administrator of the server).

 

I see. Well I'm not prepared to enable that feature just for one little script, so how can I go about deleting my account? (my co-op account that is, not my forum one)

Also as an aside, would it be possible for you to make it clear what the technical requirements are for using the Co-op network? If this had been in the FAQ or a "here's what you need to run the script" document (it just says "any site that supports PHP" at the moment, which is a bit misleading) I wouldn't have started messing around with it in the first place.

 

One little script with big potential that is.

Why not enable fopen?

 

Two reasons:

1. It's a security issue (which is why it's off by default and a lot of hosts don't switch it on)
2. The only way to enable it is in php.ini, which means it would be applied globally (you can't set it in a .htaccess file for just one directory, otherwise I might consider it)