1. Advertising
    y u no do it?

    Advertising (learn more)

    Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.

    Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.

Error trying to add site?

Discussion in 'Digital Point Ads' started by Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011.

0
Page 1 of 2
  1. #1
    I'm getting a similar error that someone else reported and I do have a PayPal "Premier" account I've been using for years. :confused:

    We are a good sized Adsense publisher with a fair amount of click thrus ...

    I have set up the ad format and it is displaying properly on our site, with the text comment "Your Ad Here" being displayed ...

    I'm afraid I'm not technical enough to know how to handle the DNS notification thing.

    Can you help?

    Thanks ... :)

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  2. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #2
    Follow up ...

    I also added sales_api1.digitalpoint.com to our Premium PayPal account with the permissions you indicated ...

    RefundTransaction
    MassPay
    SetExpressCheckout
    GetExpressCheckoutDetails
    DoExpressCheckoutPayment
    DoCapture
    DoVoid
    DoAuthorization

    ... then tried to add our site again ...

    Still got the same error .. :(

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  3. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #3
    Can you post a screenshot of your PayPal API setup by chance?
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  4. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    Thank you for the quick response ... very gracious of you as I know your site is very busy ... :)

    The mistake was mine ... :eek:

    I checked off the box "DoReAuthorization" instead of "DoAuthorization"....

    I now have site listed, XML with API key installed and I've got the "Your Ad Here" code displaying under my existing Google Adsense code, which I use a Atakan's Google Adsense Postbit Integration to put Adsense right after post #2 in a thread.

    I also use your excellent mod Digital Point Ad Positioning, as well as Digital Point Maps, Digital Point Chat and Digital Point Spy. Would you say I like your coding? :D

    My wife and I operate a not-for-profit web site for about 16,000 collectors world wide of old military surplus firearms and equipment (lots of antiques), where the average age demographic is somewhere north of 55+ (I'm 63) ... :D Our site is unique and our on-line research library has some of the best photo montage examples of these old collectibles in the world.

    Since we fund the dedicated server personally and only get some donations to keep it going, I've started to use Google Adsense of the last year to help subsidize the operational costs. It's been quite successful and although it doesn't completely cover our site costs, it's up to about $250/month which has been really helpful to us.

    I came to your site for two reasons. First I wanted to donate to you somehow as a way of saying thank you for all of the great mods we've been using for free and second, I wanted to sign up for your advertising program as a publisher, to see if we could incrementally generate more ad income, similar to what we've managed to do with Google Adsense. To point one, I notice you have a Premium members program, so perhaps instead of a simple PayPal donation I can sign up for that?

    Second, we just started using MemCache and I just installed you MemCache Monitor (thank you) which is really helpful to viewing what it's doing. It has really helped our site and the speed increase is noticeable with Pingdom Tools showing us at least a 30-40% improvement in load time for the forum home page. I'm an old Fortran programmer out of the 1960's, so I know enough to be dangerous with this modern HTML and vBulletin stuff, but I've managed to implement some of your simpler optimization things for our vBulletin 4.04pl1 ….

    I notice you are showing Sphinx Search For vBulletin 4 which you've indicated can substantially speed up a site was well. Is this something we could contract you on a fee-for-service basis to install for us?

    Thanks again for your help ….

    Do I wait now for ads to start appearing, os is there something else I need to do for your service to kick in?

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  5. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #5
    Well a couple things...

    Memcache
    Memcache should only be used for a datastore if you have multiple web servers. If you just have a single web server, you should use something like XCache. XCache doesn't have the overhead of opening a network connection to your memcache server (necessary to have a central datastore server when you have multiple web servers). Memcache in a single server environment is better than no datastore, but XCache would be better since it's local.

    Sphinx Search
    If your forum is bottlenecking (slow queries/table locking, etc.) with search queries the Sphinx system certainly is a good choice (it's what we use here to handle search). I'm not sure the size of your forum, but generally if you have more than 500,000 posts that are being searched, it's a good idea to start thinking about it.

    We don't offer consulting services for things like installation unfortunately. We are crazy busy developing and managing our site that we don't even have time to do stuff we want to do for ourselves. But if you want to install Sphinx on your servers and you are having difficulty, you may want to just contact the developers of the Sphinx Server, as they offer installation services: http://sphinxsearch.com/services/ We can help you get our Sphinx stuff working, but it's assumed you have Sphinx Server up and running on your server already (similar to how vBulletin requires PHP and MySQL to run).

    Premium Membership
    You of course are welcome to sign up for premium membership, but I wouldn't do it if you are just looking to donate. If there's something useful that premium membership gives that you want, then sure... otherwise, don't worry about it. :)

    Digital Point Ads
    DP Ads is a system that allows you to sell ad space directly to the advertiser (they pay you directly via PayPal). While you may get some new advertisers finding your site through DP Ads, it's generally the other way around. Advertisers from your site use DP Ads to bid on ad space. The best thing you can do is promote that they can buy ad space on your site. For example, we give users a slide-out note about it, as you can see in the Google cache for the site: [search=google]cache:forums.digitalpoint.com[/search]
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  6. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #6
    Thanks again for the quick feedback ... :)

    We use MemCache with vB Optimize PRO and to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what it's doing except they indicated it cached SQL calls to the database? Whatever it's doing, it certainly has sped up the performance of our site. Many members have commented on how much quicker posts, threads and even the home page loads. Does that make sense? I could change to xCache, but I think we'd have to hire a technical person again to install it on our Redhat Linux server.

    We don't currently have Sphinx Search installed at all, so I guess the first thing I should do is contract them (or someone) to do that, then have a look at your specific vBulletin install.

    I was going to send you $50 U.S. via PayPal as a donation, so I'll do that instead of the Premium thing as you suggest. Honestly, I wasn't sure what the Premium thing would do for us anyway, as we're not into commercial Internet use in a big way. What PayPal address can I use?

    Now I better understand the DP Ads system. I guess I was confused with what it is, but as you point out, I could still use it to offer space to potential advertisers we already know who want to place ads with us.

    That slide out is really neat ... :D

    Is that something I can use for our site?

    Thanks again Sean ...

    Regards,
    Doug
     

    Attached Files:

    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  7. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #7
    Well if you installed something that uses memcache for something other than a vBulletin datastore, then yeah... leave it in place. No point breaking something that uses it. :)

    For the slide out thing, you are welcome to mimic it, but it's not something we have as a stand-alone thing that can be installed elsewhere... parts of it are pretty deeply embedded in a lot of unrelated stuff... like it's functions exist within our generic site-wide JavaScript file, it requires jQuery libraries, which vBulletin doesn't use by default, etc.

    As far as the donation thing, don't worry about it... don't need donations. :)
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  8. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #8
    Very generous of you ... :)

    Thanks ...

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  9. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #9
    BTW, I set up the "Buy this Link" and it appears in the footer as a small text line at the VERY bottom (see pic). I don't think very many potential advertisers will notice it, so I was wondering if there's any other material or methods we could use to draw attention to DP Ads?

    I also tested the "Buy this Link" and it redirects potential advertisers to a "Find Sites" listing to advertise on, but I can't seem to find ours there anywhere. Have I missed something?

    Thanks .. :)

    Regards,
    Doug
     

    Attached Files:

    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  10. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #10
    Your site will only show in the list if people can currently buy ads on it. Do you have the banner ad code installed? (You can set it up to simply display AdSense ads if there is nothing sold for your site to display)
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  11. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #11
    Hmmm.... :confused:

    Yes Sir, I do .... (see pic)

    I have it displaying the "Your Ad Here" default....

    So, wouldn't that qualify as allowing people being allowed to buy ads, or is there something else I need to set up?

    Regards,
    Doug
     

    Attached Files:

    Badgerdog, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  12. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #12
    Did you by chance install the addon and enable text link ads before you added/enabled banner ads? If so, go to your list of sites and click the reset link for your site to reset the monthly traffic counter. Then visit a page of your site that has the banner code, and then check the site list and (hopefully) you should see it in there. http://advertising.digitalpoint.com/publisher.php?do=sites
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 20, 2011 IP
  13. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #13
    Yup, did a reset of site and ended up with a new API number, which I replaced old one in the field for your mod in our AdminCP, then I reset statistics ...

    I then went to a forum and clicked on the "Your Ad Here" banner which brought be to your site and I can find us now .... (see pic) ... :D

    I guess I just have to figure out how to drive potential advertisers for our 16,000 + membership to your site and get them to want to advertise.

    Thanks for your help Sean ... :)

    Regards,
    Doug
     

    Attached Files:

    Badgerdog, Mar 21, 2011 IP
  14. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #14
    I guess a page rank of 2 isn't very good .. :(

    We've been on-line since 2006 ...

    Ironically, when collectors search for terms like "milsurps" or "milsurp", our site almost always comes up in the top few, so I don't know why we're so low ...

    Anyway, I'll do a lot more reading and spend more time on your site reading posts, which will probably help this old guy learn the new digital world of advertising and generating revenue. :D

    BTW, I did subscribe to becoming a Premium Member for one year as a way of saying thank you for all your help here and other add-ons for vBulletin ... ;)

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2011
    Badgerdog, Mar 21, 2011 IP
  15. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #15
    I was thinking if giving publishers the option to automatically show the slider we use on this site to promote that people can advertise on it. It's worked very well for us.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 21, 2011 IP
  16. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #16
    That would be great for us as we don't have any tools to promote our site to potential advertisers, or even increase awareness that they can do that on our site. The small "black on grey" Buy This Link box I showed in the pic above hasn't been noticed by anybody yet.

    Thanks .. :)

    Regards,
    Doug

    ps: we're moving ahead with the Sphinx install and I have a tech guy following your instructions for VB4 ... ;)
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 21, 2011 IP
  17. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #17
    Hi Sean ... :)

    In refererence to this article you wrote ..

    Do you think it would make any difference to our use of MemCache? I guess the other way to phrase it ... would making this change HURT what we're doing?

    Thanks ...

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 22, 2011 IP
  18. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

    Messages:
    38,333
    Likes Received:
    2,613
    Best Answers:
    462
    Trophy Points:
    710
    Digital Goods:
    29
    #18
    It would make it faster. Although memcache is fast to begin with, there's no point in not making it even faster.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 22, 2011 IP
  19. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #19
    Never too much of a good thing is a good thing .. :D

    I'll make the change ... :)

    I've been also tinkering away on a lot of your recommendations under articles for optimizing vBulletin. Some neat stuff I got working and a few that I'm not sure about why they aren't, but I've been posting in the appropriate forum to seek some answers. Sure have been learning a lot ...

    Now if I could just figure out how to get advertisers to realize they can find customers on our site and how to do it, I'd be rocking.. :D

    Regards,
    Doug
     
    Badgerdog, Mar 22, 2011 IP
  20. Badgerdog

    Badgerdog Peon

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #20
    Interesting .... :confused:

    I removed the MemCache optimization change for now, as it actually seemed to slow down the effectiveness of MemCache on our site, when used with vB Optimize. (see pic)

    I don't know whether it's just coincidental to something else happening, or a direct result of the change to class_datastore.php, however, I've temporarily replaced the modded file with the 4.04 vBulletin original file, just to see if the datastore usage rises again.

    Regards,
    Doug
     

    Attached Files:

    Badgerdog, Mar 23, 2011 IP
Page 1 of 2