What is the AdRotator control and it's uses?

AdRotator is a special control in ASP.NET used to display flashing banner advertisments. The control can display advertisments randomly or sequentially as set by the developer.

Using the AdRotator control

To use the control, drag it from the toolbox. In the properties window you will there are three key properties:

.AdvertisementsFile .KeywordFilter .Target

The advertisement file is an XML file which contains information about the image to be displayed and the page to which the user should be redirected on click.

The following example assumes there are two images named one.gif and two.gif. Below is the XML to correspond with our

example:

<Advertisement>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>
one.gif
</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>
http://www.codepedia.com
</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>
The Web's fastest growing technical encyclopdia
</AlternateText>
<Impressions>
1
</Impressions>
<Keyword>
Visual Basic
</Keyword>
</Ad>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>
two.gif
</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>
http://www.programmersheaven.com
</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>
Where the pro's are 
</AlternateText>
<Impressions>
1
</Impressions>
<Keyword>
Programming
</Keyword>
</Ad>
</Advertisements>

The above tags are explained below:

<ImageUrl>: The image URL that presents the advertisement image.
<NavigateUrl>: The on click redirect URL.
<AlternateText>: Image description/name thats show when the mouse is over the image ( Optional use ).
<Keyword>: Optional parameter that specifies the keyword (category) like books, programming etc.
<Impressions>: A number input that indicates the weight of the advertisment. This can be use to control the order of rotation with respect to other advertisments in the file. Again, this is optional.

Written by Sandeep Mogulla, Webmaster at www.startvbdotnet.com

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