How to Decide on a good location
to install Revive Adserver
This article explains how to pick a good location for the installation of your new Revive Adserver system, with tips for future growth and scalability.
Introduction
Often, new users of the Revive Adserver software will simply create a sub folder in their default website folder, and install the Revive Adserver software there. While this is technically just fine, it could lead to problems later on when the system needs to grow and scale.
Even when you don’t anticipate huge growth at first, you could still set up the system so that it is easy to scale up if the need arises, without having to make changes to your existing ad zone invocation codes.
This article lists a few tips from the developers, hopefully enabling you to select a smart location on your server and the corresponding web address for your new ad server.
Good: Installing in a folder
Most people will almost automatically decide to put Revive Adserver in a sub directory under their website. So if the site is on www.example.com, they put the ad server in a folder like www.example.com/revive/ .
This appears to be an obvious choice, and it’s not even all that bad. We strongly recommend using some kind of generic folder name instead of the word ‘revive’. Something like www.example.com/adserver/ is better.
Whatever you do, don’t include the version number in the folder (even though that version number is often included in the folder name in the downloadable file from the Revive Adserver website). After all, as soon as you’re going to update the next version, the version number in the folder name no longer makes sense.
Better: Installing on a sub domain
If your hosting plan or server enables you to use a sub domain for your Revive Adserver installation, we strongly encourage you to make use of that.
For example, if your main site is hosted at www.example.com, a smart location for the ad server could be something like revive.example.com or even better adserver.example.com.
Once your site starts to grow in terms of visitors and page views, you might get into a situation where you need to move the ad server to another server. Having it running on a sub domain will mean that such a migration will be relatively easy to perform, because you will not have to change anything on your existing zone invocation codes on the website.
Best: Installing on a sub domain, and in a folder
Consider combining the use of a sub domain and a folder. This gives you the most flexibility and it makes future software updates a lot easier.
If your main website is running at www.example.com, you could have your Revive Adserver installed at adserver.example.com/live/ . The world ‘live’ refers to the fact that the folder is being used for your live system, and should make it easier to recognize the importance of the folder.
You can then decide to move the location for the storage and serving of the banner images to adserver.example.com/images. There is a separate article explaining how to do this, for example right after you’re completed the initial installation.
Having your ad server in a sub directory also makes updates very easy to perform in the future.
Articles about How to Use Revive Adserver
Websites
Check out the Hosted edition of Revive Adserver
Keen to start using the Revive Adserver software, but not so keen to download and install it on your own server? Revive Adserver Hosted edition might be just right for you!
