Banners
In order to setup banners for your classifieds system, you will need to login to your System Administrator account. You may login by clicking "Login" on the top menu of your classifieds. After you are logged in, you will be presented with the user account screen. On the left hand menu, you should see a link labeled "System Admin". Clicking this link will take you to the admin control panel.
When you enter the admin control panel, you will see a list of links in the left hand column. This section of the manual deals with the "Manage Banners" section of your control panel. After clicking the "Manage Banners" link, you will be presented with a screen which is broken into a few sections.
Only System Admininistrators are able to view this section of the admin panel.
The banner system built into BosClassifieds will allow you to setup banners to be displayed in your categories. You can assign banners to specific banner groups, which will allow you to logically group banners for displaying in the category of your choice. Categories can be setup to display a specific banner, random banners, or a banner group for both the top and the bottom of the category listing.
Creating a new banner
BosClassifieds allows for two different types of banners, internally hosted and externally hosted.
Internal: To create an internal banner, first enter a title for the banner. This title is only used in the admin panel. If you wish to create hover text for the banner, enter it in the supplied box. If you wish the banner to be a link to another web page, enter the url for the link in the supplied box. Make sure you enter a complete url, such as http://www.bosdev.com. And lastly, click the browse button to locate the banner you wish to upload
External: To create an external banner, first enter a title for the banner. Again, this title is only used in the admin panel. If you wish to create hover text for the banner, enter it in the supplied box. If you wish the banner to be a link to another web page, enter the url for the link in the supplied box. Make sure you enter a complete url, such as http://www.bosdev.com. Enter the url to the banner in the supplied box, and if this banner requires a tracking image (such as those used by LinkShare) enter the url for the tracking image in the supplied box. Since this banner is hosted externally, you will also need to enter the dimensions of the banner.
Banner Groups
Banner groups allow you to place many banners in one group, so that you can assign specific banners to display in certain categories. If you wish to create a banner group, type in the name for that group in the box provided and click Proceed. The new banner group will be created, and be ready to have banners assigned to it. To assign banners to the group, click the edit link next to the group name. You will then be presented with a list of all of the current banners in the system. To select a banner, click it's name in the list. To select multiple banners, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the banner names. To delete a banner group, click the delete link next to the groups name. The banners in the group will not be deleted, only the group itself.
After you have banners uploaded, they will appear in the list at the bottom of the screen. From there, you will be able to edit the banner, or delete it. Editing the banner will allow you to change the banners name, url, hover text and image. Deleting the banner will remove it from any banner group it was connected to, and remove it from any categories the banner was assigned to.
Once you have your banners created and groups established, you will then be able to go to the Manage Categories section and assign the banners/groups to the categories you wish to attach them to. Simply click edit next to the category name you wish to assign the categories to, and use the supplied pulldown menus to choose which banner/group to assign to the top and bottom position.