A guide on how to set up Revive Adserver on a Linux Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS Server

Revive Adserver is an open-source ad-serving platform that enables you to manage, serve, and track your online advertising campaigns. It is designed to be easy to use, yet powerful enough to handle large volumes of traffic and complex campaigns. With Revive Adserver, you can create multiple ad zones on a website or blog and assign different ads to each zone. You can also set up targeting rules for ads so they are only shown to the right audience. In this tutorial, you will learn how to set up Revive Adserver on an on-premise or cloud hosted – Linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS VPS in a few simple steps.

Requirements

In order to complete this tutorial, the following is a list of items that may be needed or required. Please ensure to have these items available before taking implementation action on this tutorial to ensure success:
1) A desktop, laptop, or server with at least 4GB of RAM, a dual-core processor, and a 50GB + disk
2) The OpenLiteSpeed or LiteSpeed Enterprise server
3) The MariaDB database engine and LSPHP
4) The Revive Adserver installation package for Linux based servers
5) The Linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS disk image file or Debian 11.4 iso image file.

Overview

The following is an overview of the steps covered in this tutorial:
1) Download and install Linux Ubuntu server 22.04 LTS
2) Connect to the server via SSH, update the system repository, and point a hostname to the server
3) Download and install the LOMP stack (LINUX, OPENLITESPEED, MARIADB, LSPHP)
4) Download Revive Adserver and configure a virtual hosting
5) Complete the Revive Adserver post-installation setup wizard

Revive Adserver features

The following is a list of some of the features available in Revive Adserver:
1) Managing multiple advertisers
2) Creating and managing contract campaigns, remnant campaigns, override campaigns, and more
3) Creating, managing, and tracking image and html ad banners
4) Defining multiple websites (no minimum)
5) Configuring zones (spaces where ads should appear on a site)
6) Creating and managing users to help you manage Revive Adserver
7) Detailed reports for visitor requests, impressions, clicks, and conversions

Step 1: Download and install Linux Ubuntu server 22.04 LTS

The first step is to set up a server to run the Revive Adserver software. In this tutorial, we assume you would like to set it up on an on-premise server. Alternatively, you can complete the setup on a cloud-hosted VPS. Open a new browser window and run a simple google search for Linux Ubuntu Server Download. Click on the returned search result for the Ubuntu download page and click Download Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS

Open VMware Fusion or VirtualBox and create a virtual machine. Configure the Ubuntu ISO image file as the boot CD and install the Ubuntu Operating System. (Please watch the video above to learn how to set up the virtual machine). When the virtual machine setup process is complete and if you are using a MacBook or Linux-based desktop, open the terminal app and run the command:

If you use a Windows-based device, download and install the Putty SSH client. Open Putty and enter the IP address of the virtual machine on the Host Name or IP Address field. Set Port to 22 and select SSH as the connection type. Click Open to connect to the virtual machine.

The next step is to update the system repository and point a hostname to the server. Run the following commands:

Copy and paste the configuration below into the file:

Press CONTROL + O, press ENTER then press CONTROL + X to exit out of the file. Restart the virtual machine for the changes to take effect.

Step 2: Download and install the LOMP stack (OpenLiteSpeed, MariaDB and LSPHP)

The next step is to download and install the LOMP stack. Reconnect to the Ubuntu virtual machine and run the following commands to install OpenLiteSpeed Web Server.

Set an administrator password for the OpenLiteSpeed Web Server

The script will prompt you to provide a user name for the administrative user and you can use whatever any user name you would like. Type in a secure password on the password and confirm password prompts, then press ENTER. The script will confirm a successful update. Proceed to run the following command to install essential LSPHP extensions:

Proceed to install the MariaDB database management system by simply running the command:

We recommend running the mysql_secure_installation script to secure the MariaDB database engine. Run the command:

The script will ask a series o questions and the following are some sample responses that you can provide for each question:

Change root password? [Y/n] n
Remove anonymous users [Y/n] Y
Disallow root login remotely [Y/n] Y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y
Reeload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Y

The Revive Adserver requires a database to save system settings and user generated data. Connect to the MariaDB monitor and create a new database:

Step 3: Download Revive Adserver and configure a virtual host

The next step is to download Revive Adserver from the official download page. Open a new browser window and go to revive-adserver.com. Click Download and right-click on the link to download Revive Adsense ZIP file. Click Copy then run the following commands:

Install the unzip package and extract the revive adserver zip file.

Rename the extracted directory to something that is easier to remember:

Delete the revive adserver zip file then change the owner of the public directory as well as the its permission

Next, open a new browser window and go to http://your-server-domain.tld:7080 or http://your-server-ip.com:7080. This will open the OpenLiteSpeed login page. Enter your username and password and click Login. Click Virtual Hosts and delete the default virtual host.

Click Add and set Virtual Host Name to adserver. Set Virtual Host Root to $SERVER_ROOT/adserver and set Config File to $SERVER_ROOT/conf/vhosts/$ADSERVER/vhconf.conf. Set the Enable Scripts / ExtApps option to yes and set the Restrained option to No. Scroll down and click Save

You will see the message ‘file /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/$ADSERVER/vhconf.conf does not exist. Click CLICK TO CREATE to allow OpenLiteSpeed to create the file and click Save.

Now that you have created the Revive Adserver Virtual Host, you need to make a few additional config changes. Click View on the Virtual Host and click the General tab. Click Edit on the General section, set Document Root to $VH_ROOT/public, and click Save. Click Edit on the Index Files section, and enter index.php, index.html in the Index Files field. Set the Auto Index option to Yes and click Save.

Click the Rewrite tab and click Edit on Rewrite Control. Set Enable Rewrite to Yes and Auto Load .htaccess to Yes then click Save to apply changes.

Click Server Configuration and click the External App tab. Click Edit on LiteSpeed SAPI App and set Name to lsphp81. Set Address to uds://tmp/lshttpd/lsphp81.sock and set Command to lsphp81/bin/lsphp then click Save to apply changes.

Click Listeners and click view to the Default Listener. Click Edit on the Address Settings section and set Port to 80. Click Save to apply changes. Click Add on Virtual Host Mappings and click Add. Select adserver from the Virtual Host dropdown and set Domains to *. Click Save to apply changes and restart LiteSpeed for all changes to take effect.

Step 4: Complete the Revive Adserver post-installation set up wizard

The final step is to complete the Revive Adserver post-installation setup wizard. On another browser tab, enter the domain that you have configured for the system, and on the welcome page click I Agree to access the license agreement

On the Database settings page, enter the Database name, database username, and database password created in Step 2 and click Continue.

On the Configuration page, enter an administrator username and password as well as an administrator email address, system language, and system timezone. Click Continue to start the Revive Adserver installation process

Click Continue and you will see the Revive Adserver dashboard and from here you can start using it to server ads and generate income for your business. I hope that this tutorial has been informative and i would like to thank your for reading it.