I want my pages to serve my own banner ad

[usends-dot-com]

Hi all: I want each of my pages to display a banner ad... but this would be my banner ad, that I will create (as opposed to an ad that's served by Google or some other third party).

I know I could just drag an image box onto each of my pages and place the banner ad graphic.  But I want it to be a little more sophisticated than that, for this reason: my site has about 400 pages.  I may edit the banner ad in the future, and I don't want to have to edit 400 pages every time I make a change to the ad.

So my initial thought is:

• Create the ad (let's call it "banner.svg").
• Upload the svg to a server somewhere.
• Edit each of my Weebly pages, such that they request and display "banner.svg".
• Then whenever I make a change to the ad, I just upload it to the server (replacing the old file), and then my Weebly pages start displaying the revised version of the ad.

So, my questions are: is there a way to accomplish this using Weebly's platform?  And is there a better way to do it than what I described?  Thanks!

[Bernadette3]

Hm.. This sounds like an Adam question. Do you not want to put the ad in the footer? 

[bobafett]

@usends-dot-com:  I believe you can do that....Once you have fixed the URL of the ad, make sure that you keep the same name for your image file.

[usends-dot-com]

@Bernadette: I was thinking to put the ad more towards the top of the page. But if that's not possible in Weebly, then how do I put it in the footer?

[usends-dot-com]

@bobafett: OK, so do I just drag an "Embed Code" box onto my page, and then type in the html to fetch that image?

[bobafett]

@usends-dot-com{ Yup

[usends-dot-com]

@bobafett: Is it possible to host the banner ad file somewhere on my Weebly webspace? I'm thinking no, because it seems like I don't have control over the filenames of images I place on Weebly pages. If not, then do you have any suggestions where I could host the image file?

[Bernadette3]

@bobafett would @usends-dot-com be able to put the images on a hidden page and then grab the url from the page source? The only photo host site I can think of off the top of my head is imgur.com although I'm sure Google Photos. 

[bobafett]

@Bernadette;  I did not think like that. but I am sure it is possible.  I was thinking more like inserting the image in css file and then get the image address.  But your idea might be easier.

[Bernadette3]

Also, to edit the footer click anywhere in the area. You may need to choose a template first, but you can add/remove elements once you start editing. Make sure to Save to keep the changes.

[usends-dot-com · Accepted solution]

@bobafett, @Bernadette, thanks for your help. I wanted to share the solution that I chose: I created a cheap webhosting site at NearlyFreeSpeech.net and uploaded my banner ad there. Then I placed the code on each of my Weebly pages to fetch that image.

The key is that I have control over the filenames on that webhost. So in the future I can edit my banner ad, overwrite the file on the server, and then my Weebly pages will display the revised banner.

I wasn't able to do this using an image on a hidden Weebly page, or Google Photos, or Imgur, because none of those sites let me keep control over my image filenames -- instead those sites all automatically assign some unique, random filename to each of my uploads... meaning I can't just overwrite an old image that I want to replace.

If anyone has any better ways to accomplish this, I'd love to hear your ideas.