Pondering to program a very old-school ad system for my blog. Like VERY old-school. A directory with banner ads as static graphic files, PNG only. A plugin for Jekyll to randomly select banner ads when regenerating the site. That's all. No cookies, no tracking, no targeting, no JavaScript, no nothing. Just banner ads with a clickable URL. Bring back the old web :)
@jwildeboer i just came across my old static html site yesterday & wonder why not doing stuff like that any more. In the throes of arsing around with Wordpress themes, each of which seems to be a more all-encompassing wysiwyg world of its own than the last ... when really what i'm after are rather tiny details that i just haven't worked out how to modify in the phps.
my instinct says diy is always simpler in the end ... just as that html site came from frustration with dreamweaver ...
The target URL is the filename minus png. So no landing pages or stuff. You send me tcpid.org.png and it creates an ad that links tcpid.org. That's it. Only one "ad" per target. The ad server is a simple git repo where you can send me your "ads" as pull request. So others can just git pull the current ad selection straight into their static pages :) I am more than half-serious now. This starts to make sense.
So more a banner exchange system, not really an ad server. I need to go for a walk and think a bit more. With git hooks I could automate checks to make sure every incoming "ad" goes to a page without cookies/trackers and that the PNG isn't filled with surprises etc.
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