simple ad rotator

JD_

// Connect to the database.
$db = mysql_connect($dbServer, $dbUserName, $dbPassword) or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db($dbDatabase, $db) or die(mysql_error()); 

echo "<span class=\"ads\">";

$random_row = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("select * from YOUR_TABLE order by rand() limit 1"));

$query = "SELECT * FROM domains order by rand() limit 5"; // The Query
$query_result = mysql_query ($query) or die('SQL Query Failed - Query Action');
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc ($query_result))
{ 

echo " <a href=\"http://$row[domain]\" title=\"$row[description]\">$row[anchor]</a> | ";

its a simple ad rotator however its going to go on about 160 domains , average of 5-6 page sites that get about average traffic is this a good idea?

there will be about the same number of domains in the database.

i also was going to add an update statement to count the impressions. are there any ways of improving this code or the strain on mysql if there is one?

sfullman

You have a line which i don't understand:

$random_row = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("select * from YOUR_TABLE order by rand() limit 1"));

is this the ads table? it doesn't relate to anything else. Looks like you're looping through domains.

using order by rand() is fine as long as you're not talking about 100s of thousands of records.

I suggest you have a table of ads, and then a 1-many table of keywords for those ads.
then have another table of domains, and a 1-many table of keywords for those domains.
finally, joining these tables gives you similar keywords and this focuses the ads you can show. It woudl also reduce server load. Hope my answer's helpful.

Sam