Cumulus PHP-GD Banner

steve · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 7:18 am

steve70 wrote:

Which is... How do I add the banner as my forum sig?

I thought I answered that question above?

Edit your signature in the user control panel to include the following:

Code:

[img]http://path.to.your.banner.php[/img]

If the part that you're stuck on is getting the code on to your web site - have you read the instructions that come with the code?

All you need to configure in Cumulus is to get it to upload a realtime.txt file to your web site. Do you have a working web site?

It's hard to help when you don't explain what you've done already and which parts of the various instructions you don't understand. The banner script is an 'add-on' to a working Cumulus web site (although as a minimum it only needs the realtime.txt file part of that).

I'm guessing from what you say that you don't already have Cumulus uploading to a web site? If that's the case, have a look at the help file ('Creating a Web Site') and in the wiki - http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/Website_setup

steve70 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:59 am

steve wrote:

steve70 wrote:

Which is... How do I add the banner as my forum sig?

I thought I answered that question above?

Edit your signature in the user control panel to include the following:

Code:

[img]http://path.to.your.banner.php[/img]

If the part that you're stuck on is getting the code on to your web site - have you read the instructions that come with the code?

All you need to configure in Cumulus is to get it to upload a realtime.txt file to your web site. Do you have a working web site?

It's hard to help when you don't explain what you've done already and which parts of the various instructions you don't understand. The banner script is an 'add-on' to a working Cumulus web site (although as a minimum it only needs the realtime.txt file part of that).

I'm guessing from what you say that you don't already have Cumulus uploading to a web site? If that's the case, have a look at the help file ('Creating a Web Site') and in the wiki - http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/Website_setup

Sorry if I wasn't clear.
I have web space but no working web site.
So far I have uploaded banner.php and realtime.txt and get this.

Cumulus is obviously not uploading any data to it so I'll check out that link on how to create a web site.

Thanks for you help

steve · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 9:16 am

If you just want a realtime.txt for your banner, you can avoid most of the setup instructions. Just fill in your ftp details (Host name/directory/username/password) and don't tick 'auto update', tick the three realtime boxes. The sometimes tricky part is working out what to put in the 'directory' box.

steve70 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 9:53 am

I've just found out what I was doing wrong.

I hadn't realised that realtime.txt should just be a blank txt file. I'd downloaded realtimelog-2.0.txt thinking it was the realtime.txt file and renamed it as such and it obviously confused things.
Then I tried uploading a blank .txt file and it now works.
All I need to do now is work out how to use the nice fonts.

Thanks again Steve

steve · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 9:59 am

steve70 wrote:

I've just found out what I was doing wrong.

I hadn't realised that realtime.txt should just be a blank txt file.

Well... actually realtime.txt is a file containing all kinds of data, like this: http://sanday.org.uk/weather/realtime.txt

Cumulus re-creates it on your PC, and uploads it to your web site periodically, if configured to do so.

steve70 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:32 am

steve wrote:

steve70 wrote:

I've just found out what I was doing wrong.

I hadn't realised that realtime.txt should just be a blank txt file.

Well... actually realtime.txt is a file containing all kinds of data, like this: http://sanday.org.uk/weather/realtime.txt

Cumulus re-creates it on your PC, and uploads it to your web site periodically, if configured to do so.

So I don't need to upload a file called realtime.txt? Cumulus does it?

steve · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:51 am

steve70 wrote:

So I don't need to upload a file called realtime.txt? Cumulus does it?

Yes, that's right. The realtime.txt file contains a snapshot of the current data. Cumulus creates the file periodically with new values and uploads it, so that banner.php (or anything else which uses realtime.txt) can read the latest data.

steve70 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:54 pm

Well I've managed to successfully create my banner but now I find out that the forum I want to use it on doesn't support .php extensions.
Is there a way to change it to .png?

Thanks

steve · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:07 pm

If you changed the extension to a .png, then you would have to configure your web server so that it treated .png files as .php (there's no getting away from the fact that it's a PHP script, which generates a PNG image) and I don't think that would work very well as the server then wouldn't be able to serve real .png files. The whole point of it is that it generates a new image on the fly every time it's invoked, so that whenever someone looks at it, they get the current data.

I suppose you might be able to arrange for it to be invoked periodically by some means, and cache the resulting image in a file, but I don't know exactly how you might do that.

steve70 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:22 pm

Ah, that all sounds rather complicated.
Guess I've done all this for nothing.

At least I've learnt a bit :lol:

Thanks for you time

steve · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:28 pm

steve70 wrote:

Ah, that all sounds rather complicated.

I think that what you actually need is something that doesn't use PHP or run on a server at all; you need something that runs on your PC to generate the image, which Cumulus then uploads. Cumulus could actually generate a banner image itself. It's something I could look into.

steve70 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 5:33 pm

steve wrote:

I think that what you actually need is something that doesn't use PHP or run on a server at all; you need something that runs on your PC to generate the image, which Cumulus then uploads. Cumulus could actually generate a banner image itself. It's something I could look into.

That would be very useful

steve70 · **Posted:** Sat Aug 20, 2011 9:49 pm

Looking back, the OP and creator of this banner has his configured as .png which is what I want.

http://cumulus.tnetweather.com/banner3.png

I'll PM him if I get no replies as to how to achieve this.

beteljuice · **Posted:** Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:10 am

If you have a linux / apache server then you can modify (or create) .htaccess file

# You can add the following to the .htaccess file in your Apache Web Server.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?banner.png$ /banner.php [L]

This example tells an incoming request to 'use' banner.php instead of banner.png

miki41254 · **Posted:** Sat Sep 03, 2011 7:44 pm

Hi all, my webserver (Linux) support FreeType.

If i choose:
$SITE['fontdir'] = "fonts/";
$SITE['usettf'] = "yes";

The result is "the image could not be displayed because it contains errors".

Error logs (from webserver):

[Sat Sep 03 21:15:24 2011] [error] [client 79.41.55.217] PHP Warning: imagettfbbox(): any2eucjp(): something happen in /web/htdocs/www.telesemeteo.it/home/banner.php on line 384

[Sat Sep 03 21:15:24 2011] [error] [client 79.41.55.217] PHP Warning: imagettftext(): any2eucjp(): something happen in /web/htdocs/www.telesemeteo.it/home/banner.php on line 443

can someone help me?
Mick

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