So over the last several months, John Chow and I have been working together to get his new TTZ Media website set up, and also to get the Ad Banner system set up.

My role in this project was the coding of the whole thing. I started coding the XML API reception system that would parse the XML feed from Shopping.com’s API. After a few banners were created, we moved onto the Adcode generation panel, which by the way is better than Google’s Adsense Code Generator. With extensive use of AJAX, there are 0 page refreshes needed to start and finish getting the ad code you want. All the controls, refreshing is done in Javascript and AJAX. Here are some screenshots of it - more screenshots can be seen at the portfolio page of Synchronous Design & Marketing (which is my new design firm based out of Vancouver BC, and soon to operate in San Jose, Costa Rica).

This ad code generation system, in my opinion, is the most robust one out there. I’ve seen adcode generation platforms all over the place but nothing tops mine.

1. Through a very intuitive CSS/DIV based design, I can expand the sizes of the ads to virtually unlimited number of different sizes.
2. Pretty much every piece of text can be changed in color. Even the link color/hover color can be changed. The background color is flexible too, even though I wouldn’t recommend it as all of the shopping.com thumbnails have a white background.
3. You can change the font face of the ad banner.
4. The adcode is as clean as Google’s Javascript embed code. Some ad codes out there are so messy and hard to read. This code is rather easy to modify on your own without having to come back to the adcode page.
5. The ads give options to enter whatever keyword you would like, so that you have complete control over what kind of ads you show.
6. There is a very easy-to-use ad template saver and loader (once again AJAX, so no page refreshes!!!), as well as an ad channel saver and loader (again, all AJAX). If you’re not sure what AJAX is, please read this article on where to apply AJAX.

Additional features of the banner system include a very intuitive click/view tracking system as well as a click fraud prevention scheme that utilizes IP tracking, Cookie collection and more, while the payment module calculates the payout for the affiliates in a very flexible way that John Chow wanted.

The beta testing for the banner ads were done with some 40+ affiliates, and was successful other than the times when the server went down due to some MySQL engine problems. Of course, the word “Success” is an important one here - the whole point of the beta was to optimize the code so it runs faster and leaner. Now the affiliate marketing system has opened up to the public.

The TTZMedia.com website itself serves as a catalog running off Shopping.com’s XML API. Go to the site at www.ttzmedia.com and see for yourself. You can apply for an affiliate marketing account there as well. The TTZ Media website is still being developed - mainly the front page still needs some more work although the framework is set up, and other cosmetics will change slightly. But the bulk of the programming is done.

This project received lots of help from Paul Butler at its latter stages. I sub-contracted him as a server administrator to help with my poor Linux skills. He helped me set up the necessary extensions in PHP as well as other tweaks on the server required to make this project a success.

Added - Looks like Tyler Cruz did his own review of the TTZ Media system already!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Cool Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.