![]() |
User Manual |
Create a file ".htaccess" (or modify if it is already present) and type it in
the next line:
This file should be in the root directory of your site.
Parameters and characteristics of a trade
System
traders
Them 7:
Parameters
out.php
p = [%]
– content percentage (for example out.php?p=60). It is used only together with
the parameter
URL
or c.
p
parameter
has the greater priority, than the scheme of a trade set in the trader’s
settings.
URL =
[URL] -
URL of a content (gallery, the sponsor and etc) the visitor should be sent to.
For example: out.php?url=http: // www.google.com&p=60 - with 60% probability the
visitor is sent to
http://www.google.com
If parameter
p
is not specified in the link, the probability of going to the specified URL is
taken from the trade scheme for the concrete trader or for the traffic type
c = [content_file_name]
– The visitor is sent to an occasional URL from the content file (the name of
the file is indicated WITHOUT extension .dat). For example out.php?c=archive&s=3
- the visitor will be sent to the occasional URL from the file archive.dat with
the probability described in the scheme of the trade ¹3 (more…)
s = [scheme_num]
- the scheme of the trade (for example out.php?s=2). If the parameter
s
is missing, the scheme of the trade set for the concrete trader or for the
traffic type is used. If the parameter
s
is transferred, it has the greater priority, than the scheme of the trade
specified in trader’s settings. If the parameter
p
is set,
the parameter
s
is ignored (parameter
p
has the
greater priority).
More about
trade schemes here…
link = [link_name]
- a link label for the following analysis in the admin zone. For example:
out.php?p=60&link=archive
to = [domain_name]
- it is used to send the visitor to the concrete trader (it is more often
applied to create top-lists on site pages). For example out.php?to=somesite.com
If the trader trader1.com has the trade type of
Disabled
or
Autostopped,
then OUT through the parameter to=trader1.com is redirected to other trader. If
the non-existent trader is specified - the parameter
to is ignored.
g = [group_name]
- it is used for trade by groups. For example out.php?g=group1 - the visitor is
be sent only to traders from group "group1". If the non-existent group is
specified - the parameter g
is ignored.
Statistics
Trade types
Traffic distribution principles
Traffic quality groups.
It is not a secret that there are traders that try to exchange their own poor
traffic with others more qualitative. They simply send Arabs and Chinese in
exchange for Americans and Europeans. Many similar scripts are not able to
discern geographical content of traffic and they don't see any difference
between Chinese and German, everything is same for them… But not for Proton.
By using Proton you can set 3 groups of traffic quality: Bad, Good è Normal
(countries that aren't included in Bad or Good).And that's all! Your further
trade run independent according to these 3 groups. If one of your trader has 90%
of bad traffic and 10% of good and normal (this situation can be real), then in
exchange for his traffic he will get 90% of bad and 10% of good and normal. If
you don't have enough amount of bad traffic for equal exchange, then trade stops
in low numbers that will satisfy YOU, but not your trader.
If you don't want to trade in such way, then you should simply move all
countries in Normal group. Your trade will run in single stream.
Number of trades in outgoing list - defines number of traders in outgoing list.
Use custom rule for outgoing - Only for advanced users. You can enter exact
percent of traffic, that will get trader owing concrete place in outgoing list.
Let's suppose that after all calculations by using any of the equation (depends
on type of trade) our traders have these places:
Trader -------Points
trader1.com 1000
trader2.com 500
trader3.com 490
trader4.com 400
trader5.com 300
.......
trader20.com 1
Standardization of points occurs and every trader in a given period of time (2
min - time of points re-calculation) gets exact percentage of traffic that is
proportional to his points.
But if this scheme doesn't satisfy you, there is another solution. You can enter
percents yourself. To activate this option you should put a tick near "Use
custom rule for outgoing". Then you should enter numbers (not percents) and
click "Submit" button. After this operations you'll see calculated percents of
traffic for every line in outgoing list.
It looks like that we simply take sorted list with traders (Ex: sorted by
production) and put the values of traffic ourselves. Our traders will get
exactly this amount of traffic. So if you decide that most successful trade
occurs only when you give 60% of traffic to the 3rd trader, then you can easily
make this scheme.
Total number of places is 15 (maximum) There are 5 more traders that are waiting
their turn when surfer viewed all 15 traders (it is very rare situation and when
it is met it indicates that surfer is either bot or very experienced human, who
knows that there are not only traders, but also galleries and he simply clicks
all your traders in order to find gallery).
You have only 15 traders that get traffic from at current time, but it doesn't
mean that only 15 traders will get your traffic. Trade scheme always changes,
because someone becomes better and another worse. Members of outgoing list
aren't stable and constantly change.
General Settings |
1. Site and Owner Info |
2. IN Settings |
Default main page
- the Main page of the site by default
Allow to redirect by IP
- To resolve a redirect by IP (Specify
- to set up)
Allow
to redirect by country
- To allow a redirect by the country of the visitor
Allow
to redirect by referrer
- To allow a redirect by the referrer
Allow
to redirect by system language
- To allow a redirect by the system language
Allow
to redirect by User Agent
- To allow a redirect by the user-agent
Use
include (if possible) instead of header: (Location..) for all redirects
- Use the in.php inclusions instead of redirection through the header:
(Location..). When the function is activated during every redirect,
including a redirect to the main page of the site, it’s automatically being
checked if the page you are on is the one removed (other site) or the
internal one(your site) and in the last case this page is included in the
in.php. This function can raise the loading speed of the page.
Comment. When this function is activated an incorrect execution / display
of the included page is possible if any additional inclusions are present in
it (includes), therefore it is recommended to use this function only when
the page contains simple HTML code
Use multiple main pages
– Use the rotation of the main pages. The specified pages will be shown in
cyclic turns every time the visitors enter the specified page again.
3. OUT Settings |
Out
trade type –
choose the trade type for the entire site. More about trade types in section
the General concepts
Allow
to redirect by IP
- To allow a redirect by IP (Specify
- to set up)
Allow
to redirect by country
- To allow a redirect by the visitor’s country
Allow
to redirect by referrer
- To allow a redirect by the referrer
Allow
to redirect by system language
- To allow a redirect by the system language
Allow
to redirect by User-Agent
- To allow a redirect by the user-agent
Allow
another's referrers to call out.php
- Allow the out.php call directly from other sites, except for yours.
This function will be useful, if someone tries to wind your site through
iframes (by inserting the in.php and out.php into the iframe of your site on
his/her pages) or when you want "to add" some traffic on to the site
straight to out.php.
Comment. If this option is set, the traffic which does not belong
to allowed domains is automatically transferred to the filtered
category.
Filtered
traffic includes:
- Filtered traffic includes:
Clicks with illegal referrer
– clicks which have the referrer on out.php belonging to the non-authorized
domains (see the paragraph above). It is set constantly.
Traffic with incorrect/modified cookies
- clicks with wrong / modified cookies. It is used for struggle with cheat.
Proton.php puts an "artful" cookie to the visitor which is checked for
out.php. If this "artful" cookie is not present or it’s incorrect (forged),
it’s possible with a high degree of probability that the visitor is not an
alive one, but some bot that should be filtered
ATTENTION!
Use this option only when the proton.php is inserted on the main page of the
site, otherwise you’ll have all of your traffic filtered.
'no Java '
traffic
- the Traffic with Java script switched off
ATTENTION!
Use this option only then when the proton.php is inserted on the main page,
otherwise you’ll have all of your traffic filtered
Add filtered
traffic to 'BAD' group
- Add filtered traffic to BAD group
Number of clicks to count from user
– the number of clicks counted in from a single visitor
Minimal click time (sec.)
- minimum allowed time between two events of one visitor (in and click,
click and click, in and in)
Comment. Clicks that don’t fulfill these requirements are transferred to
the fast clicks categoryTABLE OF
SPECIALIZED OUT SETTING (the table of specialized out settings)
Where to send
- Where to send the given type of traffic
To trades by circle
- to the trade "by circle"
Send as usual traffic
- send as the usual traffic
Send to trade only
- send only to the trade
To content, if url = specified and to [Traffic URL] if none
- send to the content if the parameter url is present, or to the [Traffic
URL] if this parameter is not present
To [Traffic URL] only
- send to [Traffic URL] only
[Traffic URL]
- URL for the given type of traffic
After visiting all trades,
notrades,
bookmark,
nocookie,
noref,
filtered,
fast clicks
- types of traffic, more in General Concepts…
4. Server overload protection system |
For this purposes “SOP” system was created.
The main thing: you fix for ALL your sites the same path to the file of “stream”. The folder should be available for writing. Originally the folder /temp is chosen, it is present nearly in all *unix platforms.
You fix also a maximum number of cronjobs can be started at once (Max. threads).
When “SOP” system is activated, every time “cron” is going to start the common file will be checked if it is possible for one more cron to start. “SOP” system won’t allow more than Max. threads crons to start. If it is stated in site settings that it’s allowed to start only 3 crons at once and it will check the file of “stream” as the fourth one, this cron won’t start. Mostly it will start during the visit of the next visitor (either in “in.php” or in ssi_in.php). So there’s no losses for statistics and the main advantage is server protection. Hope that it’s quite clear to you.
Some details. Perhaps you have 20 sites in the server working by Proton, there are Max. threads=3 in 19 sites and one has =4. In this case if last site cron checks the file of stream and it is the fourth in a line, cron will start.
Having clicked the button “Show threads”
you can see the number of working “cron” and their time of work.
5. Trade Schemes |
6. Inspector |
7. Stats mailer |
8. Anti Cheat Analysis Settings |
9. Traffic Quality |
10. Trader Checker |
New Trades Settings |
1. General Settings |
Accept
new trades -
allow registration of new traders
Include in Top list
- include new traders in the Top-list
Default status -
the status of new traders
Default ' Set ratio ' (%) - set Ratio for new traders (%)
Default ' Max ratio ' (%)
- maximal Ratio - //-
Default ' Traffic loss' (%)
– Traffic loss - //-
Minimum hits required to start trade
- the minimum number of incoming hits required to start trade
With productivity not less than (%)
- with productivity not less than
õõ
%
Show these settings on the trade form
- show these settings on the form for the registration of new traders
Required fields (Site name, Email, ICQ, Banner URL)
- the fields required to be filled in
Site name max. length
- the maximum length of the site’s description
Allowed frequency new trades submits for each webmaster
– Allowed new sites submit frequency for each webmaster.
2. Rules |
Current header -
the top part on the page is for registration (it is possible to put, for
example, an advertising banner for Webmasters). Any HTML code is allowed.
Current trade rules
- your rules and requirements to traders.
Top lists settings.
5. Top lists
The number of top-lists is unlimited. Every top-list can be sorted by four
parameters and include concrete groups (niches) traders only.
In brackets, next to the name of the group, the number of traders in the
concrete group is indicated. It’s allowed to use several groups in a single
top-list at the same time (choose groups keeping "Ctrl" button pressed).
Òîp-lists
are updated every 15 minutes, but it is possible to update them manually having
clicked on the "
Rebuild Tops
" link.
The list of patterns it’s possible to use during the creation of top-lists is
shown below:
Replace '-' with a serial number, for example '1' or '15'
The link should look approximately so
%%IN--%%
The number of
INs
%%OUT--%%
The number of
OUTs
%%CLICKS--%%
The number of clicks
%%NAME--%%
The
site name
%%DESRIPTION--%%
The description of the site
%%DOMAIN--%%
The domain
%%BANNER_SRC--%%
Banner’s URL
%%DATE%%
Time of the Top-list creation
(topfile.html - created Top-list).
If your page has 'php' extension OR you using
in.php (lin.php) with 'Use include for all redirects' checked in the 'In
settings' - than insert your top list such way:
<?include "tops/topfile.html"?>
6. Rotator |
Server requirements:
You won’t be
able to crop thumbs without GB module.
You won’t be able to impose special effects and texts on thumbs without IM.
Without socket support you won’t be able to grab galleries.
Hereafter, “thumbs” stand for “thumbs and descriptions”.
Step-by-step guide to adjust rotator
Step 1
Enter the rotator menu “Settings->General settings”.1) Gallery URLs are transferred in right format, you refcode won’t be lost in cases with FHGs.
2) The visitor won’t see the real URL of your gallery (in case of base64_encode)) and won’t be able type it manually.
We recommend you always to use urlencode().
In most cases ImageMagic can be found in /usr/local/bin/
Step 2.
Enter the menu “Settings->Thumbs sizes”.
Here the scheme is very simple, we fix the width and height of future thumbs, click “Add group”. You can create as many groups as you like.
Step 3.
Enter the menu “Settings->Niches”.
Nearly the same, we enter niche name and click “Add group”. Number of niches is not limited.
Step 4.
Create templates – menu “Templates”.
Entering the menu for the first time you will see the following:
It means the script have not found any template in the directory
'proton/rotator/templates'. So you need to add at least one template in this directory. For that we enter a file name (any, without extension), e.g. “main” and click “Create template file”.
So start creating output file:
Source file name
– source file name (template).
Output file name
– in fact it’s a site face or a niche page. All output files will be created in
domen root so you are to make special rights for this directory allowing scripts
to save and write data.
Link template
– link template for thumbs and descriptions. The legend:
%URL% |
- gallery URL |
%DESC% |
- gallery description |
%SRC% |
- thumb name and its real location |
%ALT% |
- thumb text |
%AMOUNT% |
- number of pictures and movies in the gallery |
%WIDTH% |
- thumb width in pixels |
%HEIGHT% |
- thumb height in pixels |
%THUMB_INFO% |
- housekeeping information about a thumb, its ID its position on the page, page ID |
Default type
– The following gallery type will be used as default if there is no type
definition in the template.
Default group
- The following group of sizes will be used as default if there is no group
definition in the template.
Default niche
- The following niche will be used as default if there is no niche definition in
the template.
Spots valuation – Spots valuation for the certain template. Valuation is going to be made till the number of clicks on thumbs reach the stated figure. After this thumb rotation is going to be made according to its position.
Template example:
<table><tr> |
The first row of thumbs – template
<!--proton--> - every note of this type will be replaced by a link to a thumb or
gallery description (according to the link template, see above). As there is no
definition of link size, type and niche, so the link is going to be inserted
according to default parameters of size, type and niche for this template. It’s
very convenient when all links on the page are the same (the same size of
thumbs, niche etc.).
The second row – is not sensitive to
spaces and register.
The third row – links will be inserted
according to the stated size{width}x{height}, niche{niche name}.
Additional template features.
1.
There’s a possibility to fix a
personal template for every concrete link. It can be done by macro
template={link template}. For example:
2. Write in “link template”:
And in the main template of the page:
As a result in “link template” macro %skimming% will be replaced by 50. The number of such macros is not limited. You can name them any way you like. The main thing you should keep in mind, names of macros in link template are to be the same as those in main template. In other words if you write in link template:
and in page template you should write:
Register is important! And one more thing. If you use such macros in link templates, they must be present for all thumbs/descriptions in page template. Let me explain this to you. For instance, for the very top example you have not fixed the figure of skimming for any thumb:
As a result in a certain place you will
find
......&link=best&p=%skimming%..... - so
it won’t be replaced. You should take it into account.
Why do we need it? For example:
3.
Placement of new thumbs |
Step 6.
Now we need to add galleries to our database. It can be done in two ways: grab the galleries making a unique thumb (or thumbs) for every gallery – the menu “Grab galleries”, or add ready thumbs using the menu “Manual addition”.
A small reference just in case:
Grabbing – In our very case we use it to
download a gallery to our server in order to make a thumb/thumbs.
Cropping – In our very case it’s a
creation of a small picture (thumb) from a big one (original).
To grab galleries, use the menu “Grab galleries”.
The upper form, “Grab a gallery” is used to grab one gallery. Enter gallery URL (obligatory), description (optional), size group and niche. The size of future thumb can be changed in the process of cropping.
Ignore a gallery which already present… - Ignore a gallery if it’s already present in the database.
The lower form, “Bulk grabbing”. Enter one gallery in the line (as many lines as you want), as an optional feature you can add separated by spacer a description, niche, number of pictures or movies in the gallery. Click “Grab galleries”.
If you check the line Add galleries “Waiting for grabbing” list only… the galleries won’t be grabbed at once but will be added to the list for grabbing. You can examine this list and if necessary start grabbing in the menu of rotator “Waiting for grabbing (xx)”. There is a number of galleries waiting for grabbing in brackets.
The process of grabbing looks in the following way: the selected gallery (text) is downloaded to the server, the text is examined and only links to pictures and movies are selected. The thumbs (not big pictures but only thumbs) are downloaded which are slightly resized and made smaller and displayed on the screen. Having clicked any thumb, the window for cropping appears lower. Then the original big picture is downloaded from the server if it is a picture gallery or a thumb if it is a movie gallery.
Temporally picture is created, which is enough in size for cropping. You select a required part of the picture (the frame size can be changed by a mouse, pressing Shift or Ctrl button, it depends on your comp.) and press “Crop image”. Then the thumb is made of the original picture and saved in “pt” folder in the domain root.
Automatic and semi-automatic grabbing.
- Grabbing several galleries at once.
Enter the rotator menu “Waiting for grabbing()”:
In the upper part there is a list of galleries waiting for grabbing. Choosing the gallery (on the left) it can be grabbed manually.
In the lower part there are parameters for automatic and semiautomatic grabbing.
Number of galleries to grab – number of
galleries to grab for one time. At least server will try to grab them as it
depend on you server and on the server where the galleries are hosted.
Number of thumbs per gallery – required
number of thumbs to be created for each gallery.
Size group – thumb size
Niche – thumb niche
Grab and crop type – choose the type of
grabbing – automatic or semi-automatic.
Using semiautomatic grabbing only a required number of thumbs will be created and you are to choose the best thumb or thumbs. Using automatic type all created thumbs will be saved in your database.
I recommend you to use semi-automatic type as here you can filter unsuitable thumbs though it takes more time.
Add text label for movie galleries – If
you switch on this function it will add text label for movie galleries (or a
picture, it depends on the file you’ve chosen during manual cropping).
You can examine statistics and change
gallery information in the menu “Thumb stats”.
There is no need to place any trackers on the page with thumbs. Thumb CTR is calculated as the ratio of clicks on this very thumb in comparison with total clicks on the thumbs on this page.
Redesign of output files is made once in every 10 minutes, in five minutes (5, 15, 25, etc.)
The process of rotation
Rotation of output file has two main stages which are changed automatically.
The stage of rotation is shown in the rotator menu Settings->Templates: Stage. The first stage – “Spots Valuation” – valuating the clickability of particular spots for thumbs and descriptions. The thumbs in this stage are shown in a random way.
The second stage “Rotation” – thumb and description rotation with correction to the particular spots clickability – the most popular thumbs and descriptions are inserted in the most clickable spots (if the option Discard spots CTR information and insert thumbs top-down according popularity is switched on in rotator main settings, thumbs will be inserted top-down according to popularity, spot popularity is not taken into account).
The stages are changed automatically when we reach the required number of clicks for out put file (Spots validation).
Add new thumbs to rotation.
All new thumbs having been added to the database have the “pending” status. When the rotator starts working for the first time it will take a required number of “pending” thumbs necessary for this template. Their status will be changed to “new” at once. As soon as stated time entered in rotator settings (Settings->Rotator settings) will past or a stated number of clicks on the thumbs (it depends on what you’ve chosen) the status of these thumbs will be changed to “active” and again according to the same settings a stated number of thumbs will be moved from “pending” to “new”.
New thumbs are inserted in the page according to macro new=xx (see above).
Details. Let’s imagine that it is stated in the template that the number of “new” thumbs on the page should be 20 and rotator settings fixed to “add 5 new thumbs a day”. As a result rotator will add 20 new thumbs a day.
Another example. There are 5 spots in the template for new thumbs but in rotator settings fixed to “add 30 new thumbs a day”. As a result every day 30 “pending” thumbs will change their status to “new” and these 30 thumbs will be displayed in these 5 spots on the page.
The principle is very simple – always a maximum number of new thumbs will be inserted.
7. Content files |
To send the visitor to those or another galleries on the site, use the parameter c = {file name, without expansion} for example:
8. Manual restoration of a database |
9. Recommendations on adjustment of a script |
The script is initially set so that to support maximally “clean" trade. That means that fast clicks, noref, filtered and nocookie traffic does not reach traders and goes to galleries or to specified URLs. Authors of the script do not recommend to change these settings.
Number of clicks to count from user - recommended values - from 5 up to 10 clicks. Having set a too small value (for example 3) you receive too MUCH of notcounted traffic (not included) and therefore the productivity of traders will be strongly distorted. Having set a too large value you conversely allow the trade’s productivity to be influenced by casual events (it happens that one visitor clicks 70 and more times; when the volume of the trade is small, this concrete visitor will greatly distort real productivity of the trader he comes from).
In order to learn approximately the amount of traffic that is transferred to
notcounted on setting one or another value of clicks counted in, use the
statistics " Surfers activity " - choose the required depth of statistics (the
number of clicks) - for example 9 - and in the table in line 10 + and in the
column Clicks generated you can see the traffic percentage made by clicks
beginning from the 10th.
Minimal click time (sec.) - it is recommended to set within the limits of 1-5
seconds. In the "Fast clicks" statistics you can see the speed of your traffic
clicking.
Filtered traffic includes: - Set checkbox ONLY then, when the proton.php file is
set on the main page of the site (generally - on the page the visitor gets to
when entering your site, including all your main/index pages).
Otherwise ALL traffic will be defined as filtered and will be transferred
following the default settings for the filtered traffic (that is set by default
either to galleries or to google.com).
You won’t find anything about what is put in the cookie and how its validity is
checked.
If there are
still any questions concerning the use of Proton-TM
or you have found a mistake / description discrepancy -
please inform us about it on the
support forum ASAP
Thank you for your cooperation!
© 2004-2005 Proton-TM.com