The Advertising Admin Tool is where you manage all advertisements, including creating new ad types and approving ads submitted (bought) by the users.
There are six parts to the Advertising Admin Tool; by default it shows you the ad judging page, since once ads are set up that will be the most-used page.
All six pages have links to the other five at the top of the page.
The six parts are described below.
The Judge Submissions page is where you approve or disapprove of individual ads purchased by your users. If there are no ads waiting to be approved, the message ``No ads recently submitted'' appears. You can control whether or not you see only paid ads or both paid and unpaid ads on this page using the variable ads_judge_unpaid.
If there are ads waiting for approval, they are shown in a two-column table.
The left-hand column shows the ad, as it would appear once it is approved.
The right-hand column contains the information about the ad, and controls for approving or disapproving the ad. The information displayed is the sponsor, or user who purchased the ad, and the number of impressions purchased and their cost.
To approve the ad, select ``Approve'' from the drop-down box; to disapprove, select ``Disapprove'', and to postpone the decision leave it at ``Choose Action''. If desired, an approval or disapproval message can be entered into the text box labelled ``Message''; this will be sent to the sponsor when you approve or disapprove the ad.
The Ad Listing page displays all ads in the system and their status in a table. Just above the table is a summary of the number of active ads and impressions currently in the system.
The ad list is a table with five columns and a row for each ad.
The first column is the title of the ad, taken from the text entered in the title field when the ad was created. It links to a preview of the ad.
The second column is the nickname of the ad's sponsor. It links to the sponsor's ad list page.
The third column is the ad's status. Possible status entries are: Unjudged, Approved, Completed, Disapproved, Active, and Inactive.
The fourth column contains an edit link for each ad. See appendix A.15.4 for a description of the ad edit form.
The fifth column contains the number of impressions remaining before the ad is removed from the normal rotation. Example ads are indicated in this column with ``(example)'' instead of a number.
The Template Listing page displays all templates present in the system and provides links to edit them and the examples associated with them.
The template list is a table with five columns and a row for each template.
The first column is the name of the template.
The second column has a link to edit the template itself, which is a block of the same name as the template name in the first column. See section 4.14 for details on what special blocks can be used within the templates.
The third column has a link to edit the example ad that is used to show prospective advertisers what that ad type will look like. See appendix A.15.5 for a description of the example ad edit form.
The fourth column has a link to preview the example ad, if one exists.
The fifth column is the number of ads created using each template. The example ads count towards this number, so each template should have at least one in this column, unless the template has just been created and the example ad hasn't yet.
The New Advertisement page displays the ad edit form, blank so you can create a new ad. When editing an existing ad, the form is filled in with that ad's current values.
The fields, from the top down, have the following effects:
The Edit Example Ad page allows you to create or edit an example ad for each template. Example ads are required before an ad template can be activated and real ads can be created using it.
When first loaded, this page only shows a drop-down box with all ad templates listed. You must select the ad template you wish to work with and press ``Get''; Scoop will then build the appropriate form. Each ad template may or may not have a given field, so Scoop cannot draw the form until it knows what template to use.
Once you have fetched the form for an ad template, you can fill in the fields available.
Below the form is a link to edit the ad template itself, and the HTML of the ad template is displayed just below that.
The Edit Ad Properties page allows you to set up an ad template, including how much it costs, what the maximum number of characters in a given field is, and so on.
When first loaded, this page only shows a drop-down box with all ad templates listed. You must select the ad template you wish to work with and press ``Get''; Scoop will then build the appropriate form. Each ad template may or may not have a given field, so Scoop cannot draw the form until it knows what template to use.
Once you have fetched the form, the following fields appear: