We are finally going to tackle the problem of running banners on your portal. Start by logging in to your admin center. Click Bannermaster in the menu on the left.

First let's see what's already here. Click Campaigns ... List. You'll see some campaigns listed here. They are just examples, so feel free to play around with them. Click the links in the right column to see what they do.

Edit allows you to change the set up of the banner campaign. You can change the banner you are using, the redirect URL, the person who owns the campaign, how the campaign is being run (by clicks, by date, by impressions).

Delete does just what it says. Click that link and that banner campaign disappears from your database. If you suspect that it is only a temporary suspension, use Disable instead.

Groups allows you to assign the campaign to multiple groups. We'll get into what this means later.

Disable does just as it says - it removes the banner from the current rotation. The information you've entered about the campaign remains in your Bannermaster database, however. Use this for temporary suspensions.

Stats shows you information about how the banner campaign is performing: total number of clicks and click-through rate. It should also show you the banner currently being used in the campaign. If you have a broken image here, the graphic is missing! It's a good idea to check here after entering your information before putting the banner into an active rotation.

Play around a bit here until you are comfortable with what the links do. Then you can delete these dummy accounts. Notice that clicking the Delete link is final - you are not asked to verify your decision. So let's be careful out there when we're playing with our mousies!

Now let's add an account for yourself. This is where you'll run your affiliate banners. So click Accounts ... Add. Assign yourself a login ID and password. You probably don't need to fill out the rest for yourself, but take a look at the fields so you are prepared to work with the people who will want to advertise with your most excellent portal.

Now, open up Notepad and develop a document with the banner filenames and redirect URLs you are going to be using. Once you've got that done, upload your banner files to the server. Now let's start making some money.

In the Bannermaster control panel, click Campaigns ... Add. A campaign is a single banner that you run on your site. Give your campaign a name that helps you remember exactly what it is and put that in the Campaign Name box.

In the drop down list for accounts, select the name you gave your account.

Choose a target.

In the Redirect URL box, paste the link that is associated with the campaign. (In other words, the URL that visitors should be taken to if they click your banner.)

In the Alt text box, place a short statement about the banner for people who surf with images turned off.

In the Under Text box, place a short statement to appear immediately below the banner. It can be as simple as "Click Here!"

Leave the radio button for Image selected at Banner Type.

In the Banner box, put the full URL to the banner image file you uploaded earlier. It's important to put the full URL. For some reason, Netscape has trouble pulling images without it, especially if you call your banners with javascript instead of the plugin. Since you'll have to do that on any pages not generated by Hyperseek, this is an important consideration.

Skip down to the Size box and enter the dimensions of your banner (in pixels). If you aren't sure, open the banner in your browser. Right-click it and choose Properties. It should show you the dimensions. Most standard banners are 468 x 60.

Under Account Parameters, choose a Campaign Type (clicks, impressions, date, or exchange). Then fill in the corresponding box beneath. So if you choose Clicks, you could put 500 in the box next to Max Clicks.

Now you can add more banners following the same procedure. When you are done adding banners, go back to the Bannermaster control panel. In the group manager, choose Default and click GO. Check the boxes next to the banner campaigns you want to activate and then click Update Group Record. After you click, the script will return you to the same page, so to get back to Bannermaster, you'll need to use the link in the lefthand menu.

You can also target certain banners to certain sections of your web site. At the main Bannermaster control panel, click Define Groups. On the next screen, click Create Groups from your Search Engine Categories. Once it indicates that it has done this, go over to the left column and click Bannermaster. Your group listing will now show a group for every category you have in your portal. You can now assign banners individually for each group. If you don't assign anything for a group, banners will be pulled from the default group. For more ways to target which banners are shown, be sure to read Bannermaster 201.

You should do one last thing. Go back over to the left hand column and click Options. At the bottom of the Program Configuration page, click Bannermaster Options. You need to define a panic image and URL. This is what will be shown if nothing else is defined. It probably currently shows a pre-loaded banner that solicits advertisers and an URL. If you want to leave this, you'll need to make a couple changes. First, correct the path to the image so that it shows the full URL (including the http:// etc.). Second, in order to let someone sign up to advertise in your banner rotation, you just need to supply them with the URL to the signup page. This information is wrong in the current documentation, but here is the URL for PortalHelp:

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