By Lee Sykes
December 2006
In these 6 video tutorials we demonstrate working with the Vendors in DotNetNuke.
The Vendors section in DotNetNuke allows you to add various banner advertisements to your portal as well as implement affiliate tracking.
The banners module allows you to display static or animated images, HTML text links, or use script (such as incorporating Google Adsense advertisements).
You can place a single banner module on a page and configure it to change between each of the banner types. This allows you to easily incorporate Google Adsense, HTML text links and banner images together in one banner area on your page. (You can see an example of the banners module in action on
www.skinningtoolkit.com)
The affiliate section of DotNetNuke can be used to track the click through rate you receive from advertisements on other websites, for example if you are using Google Adwords. Even if you do not display advertisements on your DotNetNuke portal, the affiliates section is a must use tool for tracking the ROI (Return-On-Investment) from the promotion of your website.
These 6 video tutorials (61mins) walk you through each of these elements in turn, as well as provide advanced techniques for grouping ads and displaying various ad types to avoid ‘ad blindness’ from the visitors of your website.
We also recommend that you read:
How to make money from your DotNetNuke website to get the most from this tutorial.
The videos cover:
Video 1 - Introduction to Vendors
- Introduction
- The difference between host and admin vendors
- How to add a new vendor
- How to search and filter the vendors
- Viewing the emails sent by DotNetNuke
- How to edit the email templates
- Editing the vendor details to add banners and affiliate links
- Other details / Logo
Time Length: 9min 14secs
Video 2 - Adding banner advertisements
- Authorized
- Vendor classification
- Banner advertising
- How to add a banner
- The various banner types
- Using banner groups
- Uploading the banner image (file)
- URL link type
- Width and height
- Text / Script
- URL
- CPM / Cost
- Impressions
- Start and End date
- Criteria: Or / And
Time Length: 10min 20secs
Video 3 - Editing, Updating, Deleting, Configuring banners
- How to edit and preview a banner
- How to delete and copy a banner
- How to email the banner status to vendor
- Demonstration of setting different banner groups
- How to enable banners to display within a skin
Time Length: 9min 57secs
Video 4 - Skinning and banners, banners module
- How to configure a skin to display banner advertisements
- The workaround to the edit preview banner bug in admin vendors
- Adding the banners module to the page
- Configuring the banners module
- Banner Source: Host and Site
- Banner type
- Using banner groups
- Banner count
- Orientation
- How to display several banners at once horizontally and vertically
- Using border width, border color, cell padding, row height and column width
- Disabling the container around the banner module
Time Length: 10min 15secs
Video 5 - Text, skyscraper, Google Adsense, configuration and display options
- How to add a text link advertisement to the vendors
- How to set the link to display in the advertisement
- How to set the URL link for the text advertisement
- How to add a skyscraper banner
- How to display text advertisements in the banners module
- Configuring the banners module to display 3 text ads vertically
- How to display several banner types at once
- Configuring the banners module to display 3 ads vertically comprising of a skyscraper and text ads
- How to add Google Adsense to a vendor
- Using the script banner type
- Displaying text ads, skyscraper ads and Google Adsense from one banner module
Time Length: 11min 52secs
Video 6 - Vendors and Affiliates
- Affiliate referrals
- How to use affiliates to track the number of click-throughs from an advertisement and to track the number of users that register on your portal
- How to add a new affiliate
- Start and end date
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- Send notification
- Using the affiliate id URL
- Demonstration of click-throughs and registration
- How to view the stats for an affiliate link and view the associated costs
Time Length: 9min 10secs
Total Time Length: 60min 48secs
Reference material for the videos
Google Adsense:
Google Adwords:
Examples of the various banner sizes:
