A (Hopefully) Simple Banner/Newsbox Guide

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Bwerith
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A (Hopefully) Simple Banner/Newsbox Guide

Post by Bwerith »

Hi! I don't know if this is the right place to post this, or much of anything really (as I should have gone to sleep about three hours ago), but I've made a (hopefully) simplified version of the banner and newsbox guides.

My reasons for doing this...? Well, I wanted to gather together everything I'd learned about banners and newsboxes in one place, since they are both managed with the Edit Banners page, after all. And there were some bits of info that I thought were quite useful, that weren't in any of the guides, but did show up in various posts in the forums. And there were a couple of spots in the other guides that made me blink in confusion a few times (for example, I was wondering for a while about what bbcode was, and why I would ever have to learn about it, and what did it have to do with banners anyway?)

So, here is my guide. Hopefully I haven't made any mistakes or put in any incorrect information. (If I have, please tell me!)




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A (Hopefully) Simple Banner/Newsbox Guide

By Bwerith (based on info gathered from experience, browsing the Keenspace Forums, Faub's guide, Ping Teo's tutorial, and Kisai's additional notes).


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Step 1: Draw It

First off, draw whatever picture you want for your banner/newsbox. This is essentially advertising for your comic; its purpose is to make people want to visit your site. Whether you choose to showcase your artwork, or your style of humour, or whether you try to arouse peoples' curiosity, is up to you.


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Step 2: Save It

Make sure to save it as one of the allowed file types (JPG, GIF, animated GIF, PNG), and in one of the supported image sizes:
468x60 (standard banner that will show up in the Guide)
200x40 (small banner)
88x31 (button)
100x100 (avatar)
150x300 (newsbox)

If your image is a slightly different size, even one pixel different, this will cause problems. Your banner/newsbox may not show up at all, or it might be resized strangely. So, make sure your image is the right size, before you do anything else.

Also, when you save your banner/newsbox, you'll want the file size to be as small as possible. This is to make sure it loads quickly, so that even people with slow connections will actually see your banner before moving on to another page.

File size guidelines:
468x60: 50 kb (under 10 kb is better)
200x40: 30 kb (under 10 kb is better)
88x31: 10 kb (under 6 kb is better)
100x100: 12 kb (under 6 kb is better)
150x300: 100 kb (under 40 kb is better)

When it comes to file size, smaller is always better. Try using fewer colours, or a lower quality image. Fiddle around with different file types to see which results in the smallest file size.


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Step 3: Upload It

Use your favourite FTP program to put your banner/newsbox in the "images" folder of your keenspace site.

Now you can display your banner/newsbox image on your own site. Yay! Isn't it pretty?

But you probably want it to appear on other sites as well, for example in your signature in the forums, or in other peoples' newsboxes. In order to do this, you need to complete a few more steps....


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Step 4: Put It In The Guide

Log in to your keenspace account (a.k.a. your SiteAdmin Control Panel). Go to the Edit "your-comic-name-here" Banners page. Go to the text-input box called "Banner Path". Then enter this:
/public_html/images/

Then, after the backslash, type in the file name of your banner/newsbox. For example, if you saved your banner on your site as "big-banner.gif", then the text box should now contain the following:
/public_html/images/big-banner.gif

(Just so you know, this is the UNIX path of your banner.)

Then, press the "Add" button.

Now comes the hard part: waiting. It will take a long time, maybe an hour, maybe several hours, maybe days, before your banner/newsbox image will be added to the guide. But keep checking the "Edit Banners" page, and eventually your image will appear there.

If you upload a standard-sized banner, 468x60, it will ALSO automatically appear in the Keenspace Guide comic listings, along with the basic information about your comic. But it will take a longer time, maybe several days, to show up here.

You might be wondering what this guide stuff has to do with displaying your banner. Well, that's what the next few steps are for....


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Step 5: Extra Newsbox Stuff

This step is for people who have made a 150x300 newsbox image. If you are just doing an ordinary banner, you can skip to Step 6.

Once your newsbox image is showing up in the "Edit Banners" page, go to the "Edit your-comic-name-here" page. Your newsbox image should appear at the very bottom of this page. Click on the little button to select your image, then click "Make Newsbox".

After you do this, your newsbox image will randomly appear on other peoples' websites... but only if they have put a newsbox on their page by using the ***newsbox*** tag.

If you are advertising your comic with a newsbox image, you should probably be supporting other peoples' comics as well. So, add a newsbox somewhere on your site's main index page, where visitors can see it and click on it.

If your comic is not updated for seven or more days, I think, your newsbox image will temporarily stop showing up. This ensures that only recently-updated comics are advertised in the newsboxes.

And if no one ever clicks on the newsbox on your site, then Keenspace will assume that no one is able to see your newsbox at all. In this case, your newsbox image will also stop showing up. I think.

How do you know that your newsbox image is really showing up on other peoples' sites? Well, you could always look at any newsbox and hit Refresh a few hundred times until your image appears. Or, you could ask your friends to tell you if they see it somewhere. Or, you could go to:

http://guide.keenspace.com/newshack.php ... &rating=99

and hit the >> link to cycle through all the available newsbox images. If yours is among them, then you are all set. (There are hundreds of newsbox images, though, so this might take a while.)


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Step 6: Use It In The Forums Or Wherever

Once your banner/newsbox is uploaded to the guide (i.e. once your image shows up on the "Edit Banners" page), you can link to it from sites outside of Keenspace. That means you can use it in forums, or in your livejournal, or in your personal website, or basically anywhere.

In order to do this, you have to find out your banner's ID number. Go to your "Edit Banners" page. There will be a bunch of information there about each one of your banners, such as their image size and file format. However, the very first piece of information for each banner will be its unique Banner ID. Remember this number, because you will have to use it in order to link to your image.

For example, if your banner is saved on your site as my-lovely-banner.jpg, and if its ID number is 1012, then your banner's URL will be:

http://guide.keenspace.com/images/banners/1012.jpg

Now that you've got the URL, you can slap it up wherever you want. Use HTML to add your image to webpages; use BBcode to add it to bulletin boards and forums. Go wild!


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Step 7: Changing And Getting Rid Of Banners

Getting rid of a banner/newsbox is very easy. Simply delete the file from your "images" folder. Wait a few hours or days, and it will magically disappear from the guide.

Changing your banner/newsbox to a new image can also be very easy. Just use FTP to save the new image onto your site, with the exact same name as the old one. The new image will overwrite the old one. It might take a few hours or days for the guide to notice that this has happened, but once it does, the image will be changed automatically.

However, if you want to change the file format or the file name as well as the image, the previous simple procedure will not work. You will have to do this instead:

Start by uploading the new file to your "images" folder. Then, go to your "Edit Banners" page. From here, you have two options:

1: You can add the new image as an entirely new banner. It will have a new banner ID number. Then, delete the old banner from your site. This will result in the loss of the old banner ID number. Your new banner's URL will be different from the old one (since the URL is based on the banner ID number). So you will have to change the links in your forum signature, etc. The guide will eventually notice that the old banner is gone, and will start using the new one; this will take a few hours/days, as usual.

2: You can replace the old banner's UNIX path with the new one. This way, you will keep the same banner ID number. If the file format (GIF, JPG, PNG) is the same as before, your banner's URL will stay the same. However, if the file format is different from before, you will have to remember to update your links. The guide will automatically use the new image after a few hours/days.


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That's it then....
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Post by Phalanx »

That should be a lot easier to understand than the old one... thanks, and good show!
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Post by Bwerith »

You're very welcome! I'm happy to be able to contribute something to Keenspace, instead of just bombarding the Help forums with odd questions all the time Image
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a little bit more

Post by Lemonbar77 »

I've figured everything out that you said except how to find the exact link to put up. I've got my banner ID but just don't know what all goes before it. Surely not the "guide.keenspace" that you put? Is it my site's address? I'm still VERY new to all this. Also, how do I know the BBcode? Thanks so much for the guide...very helpful in getting this far.[/quote]
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Post by Cope »

Well, I think it should be guide.comicgenesis as opposed to guide.keenspace nowadays but otherwise, yes, that's the url you use. You don't link to your own site because the banner won't be hosted on your site; it will be hosted on the Guide.

The BBcode you need to display your banner goes like this (click "quote" to see the code):

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Post by Lemonbar77 »

Thanks so much man! Yeah, the whole comicgenesis vs. keepspace threw me off.
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Post by Bwerith »

Hmmm. I should probably go and change all the mentions of "Keenspace" to "Comic Genesis", shouldn't I?

One of these days... :)
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Post by Phalanx »

Don't forget that the new CGwiki is where you should be directly posting your new guides.

http://cgwiki.comicgenesis.com/index.ph ... ction=edit

Anyone who has an accoutn on the forums should have one on the wiki.
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Post by Bwerith »

It WAS a new guide... in FEBRUARY. :lol:

Thanks for the advice, when I get around to editing it, I will re-post it on the wiki.
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Post by Mercury Hat »

Phalanx wrote:Don't forget that the new CGwiki is where you should be directly posting your new guides.

http://cgwiki.comicgenesis.com/index.ph ... ction=edit

Anyone who has an accoutn on the forums should have one on the wiki.
I lifted Faub's banner guide from Gear and stuck it on the wiki all ready http://cgwiki.comicgenesis.com/index.ph ... ls/Banners . I was going to go back and update it (take out the mention of YDK, etc) but haven't had time yet.

Did you want it moved to be The_Banner_and_Avatar_Guide or is it fine where it is?
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Post by Kilre »

heaps of praise i lay upon you, you who made banner guide simple for idiots like me! praisepraisepraisepraiseprazpraizprayze
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