Getting Started

Anti-AdBlocker(tm) has been designed to be as easy to install on your server as possible.

The script consists of a single file called index.php which you upload to a publicly accessible location of your web server.

(Note: there is an optional file included called linksconfig.php, which is needed by those users who have php configured in safe mode. Most users won't need to use it, and the program will tell you during setup if you need to upload this file to your server.)

 For example, let's say your web site domain is webprivacy.com and you have a banner advertisment located on your site that points to the following address:

http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=jdvVtK/Y2cg&offerid=50252.10000173&type=4&subid=0

This URL contains words that are banned by Norton Internet Security 2004.  This means that this ad will be blocked by Norton and that visitors to your site who are using Norton will see a blank space where your ad should be.  In order to avoid this you will want to create an alias URL that that contains no banned words and points to the URL above.  For our tutorial example, this new URL should look like:

http://www.webprivacy.com/aab/index.php/mcaffee1

Your first step would be to create a directory called 'aab' in your root www directory and upload the file index.php into that directory.  (The name of the directory is not itself important. We call ours 'aab'.  Feel free to name yours whatever you like.)

Once you've uploaded the file, simply visit that URL to complete the setup.  The first time you access the script, you will be presented with a setup page which explains the configuration process further.

The setup page should look as follows:

Anti-AdBlocker also has the ability to track the number of uinique visitors to your site.  This is not necessary to the anti-ad blocking features of the program, so if this feature is not needed or you have another way of tracking site usage statistics you can choose to disable this feature.

Whether you choose to use a MySQL database or a text file database, don't forget to create a directory named 'adblockerdata' (no quotes) in the same directory that you placed index.php in.  If you do forget, the program will try to create one itself using ftp, but in many cases ftp support is disabled on web servers and the program will give you an error message.  The permissions on this directory will need to be set to 777 (read/write/execute access) so that the program can use this folder to store a database configuraion file (in the case of MySQL) or text database entries (in the case of a text file database.)  Ask your sytem administrator if you need help setting the permissions.

If you decide to use a MySQL database you need to use the administrative interface that your web host provides to create a database on your web server. If you are not familiar with the process of creating a database you should contact the tech support for your web host. Once the database has been created, enter the name of the database, your database hostname, and your username and password into the designated fields on the setup page. Again, your web host's tech support should be able to easily supply that information.

Once you have sucessfully set up the Anti-AdBlocker program you should see a page will allow you to create a new alias for each of your ads:

In the field marked "Alias Name" you should enter the new name for the ad which Norton is blocking.  In our example, where you want to create an alias URL that looks like:

http://www.webprivacy.com/aab/index.php/mcaffee1

you should enter "mcaffee1" (without quotes) into the field marked "Alias Name".

Then in the field marked "Redirect to URL" you should enter the URL to your ad which is being blocked by Norton. In the case of our example that URL would be:

http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=jdvVtK/Y2cg&offerid=50252.10000173&type=4&subid=0

Then click save and the program will add your URL alias to the database and display a success page like the following:

The bottom field will contain your new URL alias.  Copy and paste this URL into your html source code in place of your old, previously blocked link.  For example:

should be changed to:

Keep in mind that, as in the above example, there may be several links that need to be changed for each ad.  Our McAffee ad has one link to the McAffee site and two links for the images in the ad.  In this example I'm going to rename each of these blocked links as mcaffee1, mcaffee2, and mcaffee3.  Just click on the "Create New Alias" link at the top of the Anti-AdBlocker page and repeat the steps we just followed to create our first URL alias.

The result should look like:

It's also important to remember that Norton will remove any ads whose height and width match the following standard banner or display ad sizes :

120 x 240

120 x 90

468 x 60

234 x 60

120 x 60

125 x 125

You must make sure to remove them if they appear in your image tags.  These attributes are safe to remove and don't have any effect on the look or functionality of your site.

After removing the height and width tags the final result should look like:

Save the changes you have made to your html source code and re-upload it to your server.  Your ads are now fully functional, viewable and clickable to all of your web sites visitors, including those who have ad blocking turned on in their copy of Norton Internet Security 2004.