When I try to enter a new member I get "File Lock Error. No Such File or Directory"
So how do I advertise my site if I can't use the default banner?
Clicking on the default banner sometimes takes you to the wrong site. Why?
I have paying customers who want to display their ad, but don't want ads appearing on their site
I am getting error 500: Internal Server Error when I try to run the scripts
I sent you an email with my problem, but you didn't reply
The chances are that my spam filter ate your email. Your best bet is to post your problem on the support bulletin board. I guarantee that I will see it there.
When I try to enter a new member I get "File Lock Error. No Such File or Directory"
Go to System Settings and check your data path. Chances are it is incorrect. If you don't know what your data path should be, contact your system administrator.
Why is my default banner never displayed?
It isn't supposed to be displayed except in error conditions. It is provided in order to prevent broken links appearing on member pages.
So how do I advertise my site if I can't use the default banner?
Simple. Set up your own member with the banner that you want to appear, and the appropriate URL. Now give yourself thousands of free credits.
Clicking on the default banner sometimes takes you to the wrong site. Why?
Since it is only an error condition that produces the default image it is very difficult to ensure that the link goes to the correct place, although it depends on the error that causes the default banner to be displayed. See below for why your default banner is appearing at all.
My admin password doesn't work
If you are configuring BannerPlus for the first time you probably jumped the gun and uploaded bpadmin.txt too early. Delete bpadmin.txt and bpvars.txt. Re-upload bpvars.txt and chmod to 777. Go into System Settings and configure BannerPlus. NOW upload bpadmin.txt and chmod to 777. Your password should now be "ecap08" (lower case).
If you have already been using BannerPlus for a while, just delete bpadmin.txt and re-upload a fresh copy from the zip file. Your password will now be re-set to "ecap08".
Note that the contents of bpadmin.txt are encrypted. If you forget your admin password then you will have to go through the steps in the above paragraph to reset it. You cannot simply take a look at what's in bpadmin.txt.
If you are configuring BannerPlus for the first time then there is another common cause of this problem. The links on the two HTML files supplied with the software point to my site. You must change all the links to point to your site before they will work.
I have paying customers who want to display their ad, but don't want ads appearing on their site
Simply set them up as members and give them as many free credits as they have paid for.
It was written for unix and is tested on unix. NT is not supported. However several customers are successfully using BannerPlus on NT without any modification.
Only my default banner is displayed
Check that there are at least two members of the exchange with valid banner URLs, available credits, and who have been verified using the Admin verification function. No member will go into the rotation until verified by the administrator.
If you are using zones, then make sure that there is at least one other member of the same zone.
How many hits per day can BannerPlus handle?
I haven't tested it myself under heavy stress, but it has been reported to me by customers that it works OK with 100,000 hits per day. It is not recommended for volumes significantly in excess of this figure, however the maximum will vary (obviously) depending on your server. A shared (virtual) server will not be able to handle anywhere near the volume of a dedicated server. If you are anticipating or running an exchange with heavy traffic volumes then you should consider using BannerPlus Gold.
I am getting error 500: Internal Server Error when I try to run the scripts
Chances are you haven't followed the installation instructions carefully enough. Make sure that you uploaded all the files as ASCII, not binary. Make sure the perl path in the first line of the scripts is correct for your system. Make sure that you have set all the permissions correctly as described in the readme.txt file. Finally, you MUST run the System Settings option from the admin screen and get all the system variables set up before anything else will work.
How do I password protect my bp/ads directory?
There is a simple tutorial on how to do this at http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/user.html
Some of my member files have no data in them
Check your server error log. This problem is usually caused because the server is not allowing the script to rewrite the member file when it is being updated. The commonest reason for this is disk space shortage. If you are on a shared server, then your own disk usage may be well under your theoretical disk allowance, but that is only a logical, not a physical allowance. In other words, the physical disk can be full even if you have been allocated a couple of Gb and are only using 10Kb. Check with your system administrator on known server problems.