Subject: Ads dont connect

From: "Vishal Kashyap @ [SaiHertz]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:04:39 +0530

Hi ,

Clicking on the advertisements  dont take you to the clients's site or
more information page it simply redirects to the postgresql.org
server.

I dont have any  ads but people paying for it would never like to have it.

-- 
With Best Regards,
Vishal Kashyap.
Lead Software Developer,
http://saihertz.com,
http://vishalkashyap.tk

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 21:56:25 -0400 (AST)

Just tested from here, and the redirects to the client sites work fine ... 
do you have cookies disabled in your browser?/

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, Vishal Kashyap @ [SaiHertz] wrote:

> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: [email-masked]           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664

---

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 03:30:38 -0000

> do you have cookies disabled in your browser?/
 
I don't have cookies enabled, and I always go right back to www.postgresql.org,
if I click on anything. Why not just encode the destination directly in the
URL? e.g. http://ads.postgresql.org/redirect.pl?id=42
 
- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200412021007

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 00:07:55 -0400 (AST)

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>

if we were only running on central site, that would be possible, but not 
possibl with static pages on several dozen mirrors ...

----

---

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 02:53:03 -0000

> possibl with static pages on several dozen mirrors ...
 
But could the default action for the script (in the absence of a detectable
cookie) be to go to a random ad? Seems that would make the most sense.
 
- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200412080954

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 14:25:35 -0000

Greg wrote in December 2004 about the ads on postgresql.org:

===

> cookie) be to go to a random ad? Seems that would make the most sense.

===

Any update on this? I actually saw an ad I was interested in last week, but clicking
on it bounces me back to the main page.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200509061022
https://www.biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 12:02:17 -0300 (ADT)

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, [email-masked] wrote:

> Any update on this? I actually saw an ad I was interested in last week, 
> but clicking on it bounces me back to the main page.

Any update on what?  Without cookies enabled, the click through will go to 
http://www.postgresql.org ... having it to go 'some random site' wouldn't 
be particularly appropriate ...

We could put up a page on http://www.postgresql.org that explains that 
cookies are required for the banner ads, and have it redirect to there 
though ...

----

---

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 15:15:53 -0000

> cookies are required for the banner ads, and have it redirect to there

Any update as in "any fix". I suspect more and more people are blocking
cookies except for known sites, and ones with "ads" in the name are
particularly likely to be shunned.

Perhaps, if no cookies are detected, ads.postgresql.org opens to a simple
page that states that since cookies are not enabled, it cannot tell which
ad you clicked on, but presents a clickable list of all sponsors/ads for the
site, so the user can find the one in question they were interested in.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200509061114
https://www.biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

---

From: Robert Bernier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 11:28:28 -0400

Would it be possible for you to use session ids thus avoiding the whole issue of cookies?

On Tuesday 06 September 2005 11:15, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> > Any update on what?  Without cookies enabled, the click through will go
> > to http://www.postgresql.org ... having it to go 'some random site'
> > wouldn't be particularly appropriate ...
> >
> ad you clicked on, but presents a clickable list of all sponsors/ads for
> the site, so the user can find the one in question they were interested in.

---

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 18:36:00 -0000

> the whole issue of cookies?

The problem is that we have static mirrors. The ads needs to rotate dynamically though,
so (I presume) ads.postgresql.org sends an image and a cookie. When someone clicks
on the link, it uses the cookie to know which image they clicked on. So, sessions
would not help. There are some more advanced tricks that could work (e.g. AJAX) but
probably overkill. Although ads.postgresql.org could in theory also track the IPs
that they send the image too and try and match that way if the cookie was not
found. That should fix it 99% of the time, I would think.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200509061432
https://www.biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:21:11 -0300 (ADT)

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

> The problem is that we have static mirrors. The ads needs to rotate 
> dynamically though, so (I presume) ads.postgresql.org sends an image and 
> a cookie. When someone clicks on the link, it uses the cookie to know 
> which image they clicked on. So, sessions would not help. There are some 
> more advanced tricks that could work (e.g. AJAX) but probably overkill. 
> Although ads.postgresql.org could in theory also track the IPs that they 
> send the image too and try and match that way if the cookie was not 

Except then it has to save the IPs for every hit to every page *in case* 
someone happens to click through ...

----

---

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 02:08:36 -0000

> someone happens to click through ...
  
But aren't they already saved in the apache logs? It would be expensive
to parse them, true, but this would be a rare case for those who are
not accepting cookies. Or at the very least, what if the non-mirror
site (e.g. www.postgresql.org) used a slightly different system that
did not rely on the cookie/image scheme?

Just trying to drum up revenue for our advertisers, after all..  :)

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200510032206
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8