Making square ads...

"Come on Daddyo - don't be a square!"

If you've signed up with ny sponsors yet, you'll probably have seen a section in their ad tools called "odd shaped banners". Here you'll find a selection of graphics at all kinds of crazy sizes. Some of them will likely be square banners. These ads can work really well because they stand out, and look that little bit different from the horizontal variety. But what about if you want to make your OWN square ads? It's actually quite easy - read on.

Controlling the height of tables...

As you've probably gathered with HTML, if you want to get anything fancy done with layout - using tables is the best way to go about it. Setting the WIDTH of a table is relatively straight forward - but you'll have problems setting the height to an exact number (as you'll need to do to get a SQUARE shape). I believe you can do it using style sheets or Java, but the method I'm going to show you is very easy.

First - check out my example here:

http://www.topniche.com/newbie-booster/resources/square-ads/example-1.html

This rather un-inspiring creation is a simple table which I've modified so you can set the width and height of it. The key to adding this is to use a trick that graphics pros have been using for years: spacer.gif

http://www.topniche.com/newbie-booster/resources/square-ads/spacer.gif

This is a tiny gif image which you can set to any size you like in the HTML code itself. Normally, stretching graphics in the HTML is a bad idea, but with simple GIFs of one color - it's fine. Save that GIF for use on your own sites - or make your own. If you're using a background other than black - use your graphics editor to make the GIF transparent.

Save the code you'll find in the source as a template:

<TABLE BORDER=0 width=100 bgcolor=#757575 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0>
<TR>
<TD colspan=2 ALIGN=center><img src=spacer.gif height=1 width=100></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN=center width=1><img src=spacer.gif height=100 width=1 ></TD>
<TD ALIGN=center>
<FONT FACE="Arial, Helvetica" SIZE=2>Yep! <BR><BR> <BR>This is a table!</FONT>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

That's the base for all your SQUARE table ads. Remember that it won't work without the spacer.gif in the same folder as the page with the table on it. The part that says "This is a table!" is where we'll put the ad.

Basic text square ads...

These things can fit in anywhere: to the left or right of a banner, UP next to your logo, or some other place where there's just extra wasted space. Why not add in a sponsor's site you've never promoted before, in some blank space across your sites? It could mean extra cash for nothing. Here's an example square ad I made for All Petite:

http://www.topniche.com/newbie-booster/resources/square-ads/example-2.html

You can make a simple graphic background GIF like this one:

http://www.topniche.com/newbie-booster/resources/square-ads/back.gif

... to get the effect I have used here. This can make the ad look a lot more interesting / eye-catching. Just keep the colors light, and 'pastel' - so that they don't obscure the all-important text.

More advanced square ads...

Once you get good at manipulating these things - try putting the entire ad table inside of yet another table - so you can set the border color too. AND - try adding in a tiny graphic:

http://www.topniche.com/newbie-booster/resources/square-ads/example-3.html

Tiny pictures, or thumbs, are ideal here. As you can see from the ad above - I've created something with will load almost instantly - AND which does a pretty god job of showing the surfers what's on the tour. If you use REALLY bright colors - you won't have any trouble drawing their eye in to your ad.

IMPORTANT: You'll notice that my table has been growing from one example to the next. To do this, you must enlarge the table WIDTH, and the width of the 1st spacer.gif, and the HEIGHT of the second spacer.gif. Those values must all be the same. View the source of each example to see what I'm talking about. You can make a square ad as small or as large as you like by altering those values.

PLAY with the text, the images, and the size of the ad - see what you can come up with. As I mentioned, these things are 100% slow-modem friendly.

Now build some kinky assed ads.

TOM ^"^

ICQ 12616560
Email tom@tomsnewbiebooster.com

Enter TOM'S NEWBIE BOOSTER

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