[SOLVED] Category specific banner ad targeting (story.php / story_center.tpl)

[teachwny]

I've searched the forums, tried a whole bunch of little hacks, but I have yet to find a solution for the idea I want to implement.

I'm not much of a coder, so I thought maybe someone from the forum could help. Here's an example of what I want to do.

Category 1 - Birds
Category 2 - Cats
Category 3 - Dogs

Let's say I have a site with categories on many different types of pets. I don't, but maybe that's a good idea? Who knows! Anyway, when a person clicks on a story from the Birds category, say "Bird attacks owner with tiny machete", I want a bird-specific ad to show up on the story page.

It would look like this.

Story

Bird Food Ad

Comments


Now, let's say the person surfed over to the story "Cat saves local fireman from tree", which is in the Cats category. Now I want a cat specific banner ad to pop up.

I know I could throw an adsense block right there and I know where to put it in story_center.tpl, so the location is not an issue. I'm more interested in targeting some affiliate programs with this idea.

I've tried writing some conditional {if} statements in story_center.tpl after {$the_story}, but I'm having no luck with getting any category variables to play along with my ruse.

For example:

{if $category_id eq '1' }
ad code
{/if}

Did not produce the desired result. I've tried $category_name, $category_safe_name, $link_category_id, and a few others.

Hopefully, someone understood my meager dream of targeted ads and will come to my rescue.

Thanks!

[chuckroast]

I haven't tried this and have no idea if this would work but I would try something this in link_summary.tpl

{if $pagename eq "story"}
{if $cat_array[thecat].dogs}
<----Advertisement about dogs----->
{/if}{/if}

{if $pagename eq "story"}
{if $cat_array[thecat].birds}
<---Advertisement about birds------>
{/if}{/if}

and so on...

[Yankidank]

I'm not familiar with Chucks method, but I wrote up working code for 1.0 in the wiki a week ago:
Pligg Categories

[chuckroast]

Yeah, you can probably also do it like

{if $pagename eq "story"}
{if $request_category eq "dogs"}
<----Advertisement about dogs----->
{/if}{/if}

{if $pagename eq "story"}
{if $request_category eq "birds"}
<---Advertisement about birds------>
{/if}{/if}

and so on...

[teachwny]

I tried both of those methods but they didn't work. I tried the code (both variations) in link_summary and story_center, but so far no combination has produced the desired result. I tried double quotes and single quotes around the category name and I tried using the category_safe_name, but no luck.

Can you give me a specific idea of where to place the code? I will gladly make a donation to the pligg cause if you can help me with this trick!

Thanks!

[chuckroast]

I just tried this on my site and it works. Using category ID numbers. Lets say the category dogs has the Id number of 2

{if $pagename eq "story"}
{if $category_id eq "2"}
<----Advertisement about dogs----->
{/if}{/if}

Repete for each category.

Then put the code in link_summary.tpl just above
{checkActionsTpl location="tpl_link_summary_end"}

Good Luck

[teachwny]

Originally Posted by chuckroast

I just tried this on my site and it works. Using category ID numbers. Lets say the category dogs has the Id number of 2

{if $pagename eq "story"}
{if $category_id eq "2"}
<----Advertisement about dogs----->
{/if}{/if}

Repete for each category.

Then put the code in link_summary.tpl just above
{checkActionsTpl location="tpl_link_summary_end"}

Good Luck

Perfect! This is exactly what I needed. You can go ahead and do a [SOLVED] on this one.