Your script contains two banner related functions: A typical banner exchange plus the ability to sell or share credits for banner views across your website. While these features seem to be blurred and indeed you can consider them as a single entity if you wish, however depending on your strategy you may wish to use just one or both. Here is a broad definition of how they can be used:
Banner Lite provides 468x60 banner displays across your website. You can choose to offer incentives for people to click banners using the "Banner Blowout" function which awards additional credits for the visit.
You can offer new members free banner credits for joining as well as for introducing new affiliates. You can also set how many banners a free member can add to the system.
Pro members receive a settable allocation of banner lite hits each month. And you can set a minimum and maximum number of hits taken from pro members when someone clicks a banner showing the banner blowout feature (if enabled).
While banner lite only allows members to use their credits for468 x 60 banner displays (+ blowout) across your site the banner exchange allows your members to place code for banners on their site to earn credits. It is not limited to 468 x 60, a standard set of prepared sizes comes with the banner exchange by default but it is possible to create any size banner you wish.
So if your members wish to add a Skyscraper ad to their pages or a box or the standard 468 x 60 they can. Any impressions they generate go toward credits they can use to display banners on other members sites. Using a ratio similar to the traffic exchange you can set how many credits they earn.
# of Banners Displayed
The number of banners displayed per page.
Simple Banner Protection
Set this to Yes and the software will check that an image is being added for the banner. As banners generate many thousands of impressions fast it could cause a problem if the image is replaced with a link. Not only would it look ugly but the link would receive many thousands of hits, useless hits. Whether done in error or maliciously it can cause problems. Leave this set to Yes to avoid problems.
Approve Banners
Receive an email for each new banner that needs to be approved. Set this to yes to enable banner approvals.
Banner Blowout Code
This is the code to be used on your exchange where you want the banner blowout feature to operate. For example if you want to offer your members extra credit for clicking banners while surfing add this code to the "SurfBar Banner Show" entry in the Promotional Configuration screen. NOte Banner Blowout is only available for display on your website (cannot be used by members to earn extra credits) and is only available for 468x60 sized banners.
Set the account signup and affiliate referral incentives for free members. Also set free member banner impression ratios and the number of banners they can add to the system.
Pro Banners - The number of banners select level of pro membership receives each month.
Pro Blowout - Whether this level of membership offers the Blowout feature (a great method for increasing click throughs).
Pro Max Banners - The maximum number of banners this membership can add to the system
Pro Bnr Ratio Left and Pro Bnr Ratio Right - use these to set the ratio used for earning credits for text and banner impressions. For example if you set a left ratio number of 5 and a right ratio number of 3 then your members will earn 3 text credits for every 5 impressions they send to the exchange.
Not to be confused with cPanels IP-DENY function this feature blocks an individual IP address from trying to generate thousands of text impressions to artificially boost their credits.
