Quick post today letting you know about an upgrade we've made to our search feature within Activeboard. Previously, there was a delay between when a comment was created and when it could be searched. This delay could be a few days, or as long as a few weeks! This is obviously not ideal, so we fixed it!

With the new search functions, you can search (and find!) a post/comment immediately after submitting it. This will help your users find the most up to date content, and improve your overall forum experience.

Happy searching!

Today we are excited to announce the launch Beta 1 of our Mobile Activeboard application. You need to have a gold ActiveBoard subscription to use the mobile site.

We are excited to support the following devices

• Apple iOS 3.2-5.0 beta
• Android 2.1-2.3:
• Android Honeycomb
• Windows Phone 7
• Blackberry 6.0
• Blackberry Playbook
• Palm WebOS (1.4-2.0)
• Palm WebOS 3.0
• Firebox Mobile (Beta)
• Opera Mobile 11.0
• Kindle 3

To launch the mobile site, simply visit your favourite ActiveBoard from any mobile browser.

You can always visit the Standard ActiveBoard site by clicking the "Full Site" Button from the Mobile ActiveBoard menu. This will load the standard site by default on your phone. (You can switch back to the mobile site by clicking on the "Mobile Site" link at the bottom of any ActiveBoard).

You can also test out the mobile interface from any browser by appending mobile.spark to the URL.

For example, if the URL to your forum is http://adbutler.activeboard.com, you can visit the mobile site by visiting http://adbutler.activeboard.com/mobile.spark

While the standard ActiveBoard interface currently has more features, mobile ActiveBoard is a great way to engage with users online from a mobile device -- our developers are continuing to add more features to the mobile version.

Index:
(1) What is a Flash banner?
(2) How do I make my Flash banner into a button?
(2.1) How-To Clickable with ActionScript3.0
(3) How do I tell if my banner is clickable?
(4) Flash Banners in Ad Butler
(5) Additional Reading


NOTE: All example file paths and URLs are for demonstration purposes and I don't recommend you stick them into address bars expecting something to happen.


(1) What is a Flash banner?

Flash banners are different than ordinary .gif, .jpeg, or .png banners. Flash is a programming language, and every flash banner is a small application that is run by a flash-plugin installed in your browser. Typically a Flash banner is an entirely "clickable" area, that when clicked on will redirect the user viewing the banner to the advertisers desired destination.


(2) How do I make my Flash banner into a button?

One way of doing this is to create an invisible button over top of your entire Flash animation.

I will start this example from scratch.
(example done using Adobe Flash CS3 Pro, using Actionscript 1.0/2.0)

a) open up your flash file
b) add a new layer to the file, "on top" of the other layer(s)
c) select the Rectangle Tool from the vertical toolbar on the left side of your window
d) in the properties of the tool, change the stroke and fill alpha to 0%
e) draw the invisible rectangle over your entire scene
f) right click inside the rectangle and select the option "Convert to Symbol..."
g) select the "Button" option and name the button "clickTAG"
h) right click inside the rectangle (now a button), select "Actions"
i) make sure that your current selection is the button clickTAG, then copy-paste the following script:

on(release) {
 if (clickTAG.substr(0,4) == 'http') {
 getURL(clickTAG, "_blank");
 }
}

j) close the action box, and export the animation as a movie by going... File > Export > Export Movie...

So you want to find out if what you just did worked? See the section (3) below.

(2.1) How-To Clickable with ActionScript3.0

The steps for creating the banner itself are fairly similar to section (2).

Once you have created a button, add the following script to the actions for that button:

import flash.net.navigateToURL;
import flash.net.URLRequest;

// adding a mouse click event listener to "yourButton"
// which calls the function "handleMouseClick" when triggered
yourButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, handleMouseClick);

// the function which redirects you to a new page
function handleMouseClick(event:MouseEvent):void
{
	var url:String = '';
	for (var paramName in root.loaderInfo.parameters)
	{
		// detect any "clickTAG" case just in case something nonstandard is used
		// ex. clickTag, clicktag, ClickTag, etc
		if (paramName.toLowerCase() == "clicktag")
		{
			url = root.loaderInfo.parameters[paramName];
			break;
		}
	}
	// ensure that it's actually a URL we're navigating to
	if (url.substr(0,4)=="http")
	{
		navigateToURL(new URLRequest(url), "_blank");
	}
}

To test this, see section (3) below.


(3) How do I tell if my banner is clickable?

The easiest and most effective way of testing your Flash banner in a stand-alone fashion is to manually pass it a URL and see if it redirects correctly when clicked upon.

There are two ways of doing this. You can either access the banner directly from your computer using a local directory path, or put the banner on a website.

A local path test might look like:
C:\testdirectory\test.swf?clickTAG=http://www.google.com

A website url would look like this:
http://www.mydomain.com/banner/test.swf?clickTAG=http://www.google.com

For the rest of this example I will use the test website.


To test this, stick the following URL into your browser address bar and hit enter:

http://www.mydomain.com/banner/test.swf?clickTAG=http://www.google.com

Now, if you click on the resulting Flash animation which is displayed in your browser, you will be redirected to Google. If you are NOT redirected, something is wrong with your banner button or your clickTAG script. Take careful note of the result of clicking on your banner.

-No redirect at all usually means the button has no clickTAG script at all.
-Different website than http://www.google.com usually means the banner is redirecting statically and NOT using the clickTAG parameter.
-A HTTP error, usually 404, usually means that the clickTAG script is incorrect and it is probably trying to redirect to a relative link.
For example, a relative link error in this case might look like: http://www.mydomain.com/banner/http://www.google.com -- which is clearly an invalid URL.


(4) Flash Banners in Ad Butler

The following are the general steps to adding a flash banner to a set or campaign in Ad Butler. I will use the example location from above.

Begin by navigating to the set or campaign you want to add a flash banner to.

1) click on "Add New..."
2) specify a name for the banner, "my flash banner test"
3) select "Flash (.swf)" from the Banner Type list
4) specify a destination (Destination URL): http://www.google.com
5) specify the flash location (Flash URL): http://www.mydomain.com/banner/test.swf (or if you are using the Media Library, choose from there)
6) click on Generate Script

This will create the flash object code necessary to create your flash banner on a website with the correct dimensions and clickTAG.

<object width="728" height="90" id="movie">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.mydomain.com/banner/test.swf?clickTAG=<*tracking_link*>">
<embed src="http://www.mydomain.com/banner/test.swf?clickTAG=<*tracking_link*>" quality="high" width="728" height="90" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
</object>

You may note the "<*tracking_link*>" that shows up twice in the generated Raw HTML/Script box. This is used by Ad Butler when serving your ads, and is replaced by the specified destination URL.
If you want clicks to be tracked, it is important that you do not change the Raw HTML/Script unless you know what you are doing.

7) save the banner

Note: If your banner passed the tests in section (3), you should be done and the banner ready to rotate and track clicks.


(5) Additional Reading

Adobe's Official Resource for flash ads:
http://www.adobe.com/resources/richmedia/tracking/designers_guide/

Best practices for flash advertising:
1) http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/flash8_bestpractices_10.html
2) http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/UsingFlash/WSd60f23110762d6b883b18f10cb1fe1af6-7b25.html

Tracking URL Outline

The following is a brief description of what tracking URLs are and how they work:

Every banner has it's own unique tracking URL, roughly as follows:
http://servedbyadbutler.com/redirect.spark?banID=XXXXX;CID=YYYYY;setID=ZZZZZ
To track clicks on banners, you'll need to enter the banner ID (banID), the campaign ID (CID), and the set ID (setID).

Each Flash and Raw HTML/Script banner has a bit of text and a link [click here] beneath the content of the ad that looks like the following:
"NOTE: For information and help tracking click-thrus, click here."

Clicking on that link will take you to a guide, pre-loaded with the appropriate tracking URL.
ex. Going to a banner in a campaign gives the following:
http://servedbyadbutler.com/redirect.spark?banID=519143350;CID=49714;setID=ZZZZZ

Note: At this time, a setID is required to properly track the clicks and where they came from. 

Banner Setup

1. Navigate to the advertiser whose banner you will be creating.
   
   Note: If no such advertiser exists, create them with -- remember that the email and password don't need to be exact, and can be changed later.
2. Create a campaign for the multi-clickable banner and the dummy banners, then navigate into the campaign.
3. Create the actual banner you intend to serve normally.
4. Create as many additional dummy banners as you require (for each link in addition to the main tracking link).
5. Navigate to each dummy banner you have created, copy the banner # of each one, and keep track of them. (make sure to mark which is which)
   
   While doing so, copy the campaign # from one of them, and also keep track of it.
6. Now navigate back to the actual banner to serve again, and modify it as follows:
   
   • For each tracking link needed, put <*tracking_link*>;banID=AAA;CID=BBB in, where AAA is the appropriate banner # from the previous step, and BBB is the campaign #.
7. Now you can assign the banner to as many sets as required.

Live Example

I like using colors in examples, as they're easy to distinguish so I'll do so here as well.

In this example, I have created 3 dummy banners and the actual banner I want to serve in a campaign. I then assigned them to two separate sets.

Below is the test HTML I used. Note the banID and CID fields of each tracking link correspond to the appropriate dummy banner.

<a href="<*tracking_link*>"> main </a>
<hr>
<a href="<*tracking_link*>;banID=519157250;CID=53123"> blue </a>
<hr>
<a href="<*tracking_link*>;banID=519157249;CID=53123"> red </a>
<hr>
<a href="<*tracking_link*>;banID=519157248;CID=53123"> green </a>
<hr>

To test them out, I clicked on a bunch of the links in each set from a test website which served only those two ads. As expected, all of the clicks and views were tracked properly for the campaign!

Additionally the statistics for the test sets I created were also recorded properly.

The advertiser's campaign statistics

The set specific statistics

One of the new features we're excited to unveil for ActiveBoard is the new Emoticon Management Console! From here, you can track your custom emoticon usage, and access the new ordering feature we've made available. 

Usage Statistics

 First off, lets dig into the usage statistics. Each time a post or private message uses a certain emoticon, the use is recorded and added to the total uses. The total number of uses to date can be seen under the Forum/Private Message Uses column. Additionally, each time an emoticon is used in a chat message, the use is recorded and can be seen under the Chat Uses column.

So what do you do with all this information? Well, once you get a sense of which emoticons are the most popular, then you might decide to order them in a specific way. This brings us to the next big feature: "favorite" emoticons!

Favorite Emoticons & Ordering

Each custom emoticon now falls under one of two categories: favorite or regular. Favorite emoticons will be displayed before regular ones whenever they're split into multiple pages. Lets take a look at how this can be set up.

First, lets get to the management console. Open up the administration panel from your ActiveBoard, and go to Settings->Posting->Custom Emoticons and click configure. Now click on the "Manage" tab to open up the management console. Adding emoticons to your favorites is very straight forward! Simply select the emoticons you wish to add, and click the "Add to Favorites" button (see screenshot).

Now, once you have several emoticons set to favorite, you can further order them by specifying an internal order. To change this, simply enter new values into the "Order" field, and click "Save". Your custom emoticons will now be displayed according to the order specified (1 = first, 2 = second etc). You can use this feature to push popular emoticons to the front of the list, to avoid unnecessary searching through page after page of unused emoticons. The following screenshot show's the admin panel settings.

 Finally, the result! The favorite emoticons have been pushed to the front of the list so that they're easy for users to get at.

 We're currently working on a ton of great stuff, but we're always looking for other ways to improve our products! So please don't hesitate to submit a feature request via email (general@sparklit.com), support request, or through the "Make a Suggestion" link in the tabs at the top on your Administration Panel.