I have just installed RBS and whilst I can set up banners, view them and link to the external site, I have a couple of issues which may be down to my lack of understanding of the configuration (Page screenshots are here (clip1, clip2, clip3):

1. The clicks counter does not seem to be working. Impressions appears to count correctly but clicks remain zero even though I have been clicking the ad to get to the link.

This is the code in the Text box "<a href="http://www.divingincidents.com" target="_blank"> <img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2216291/TDF_Test_Images/disms-logo-60px-high_image2_number.png"></a>"

I would like to know how the mod chooses which ad to show as I have 3 ads in the test environment I have set up and they don't appear to cycle through, but appear to be random)

2. When I click on the Banner Stats link at the top of the banner config file, I get the following displayed

which isn't a good thing!

VBSEO is not installed in the test environment. Does it need to be?

Any help would be appreciated as I hope to have the system live at the end of the month for advertisers.

Many thanks

Gareth

1.a. The click counter does work only with images, or specifically crafted scripts. How click tracking works, you may see best by setting up an image banner and view your HTML source code.
1.b. Banners are shown randomly, but if you have more than one banner for the same location, and more than one of the same location on a single page, the algorithm will never show two of the same banners on that page.

2.a. Please make sure you have your .htaccess file setup correctly, too. This message clearly shows you are attempting to route a script through vbseo.php instead of allowing direct calls. On the other hand, you may route this script through vbseo, but must then enable vbseo. It is not true you haven't vbseo installed; you have and it is disabled or not perfectly uninstalled :)

2.b. If you use vbseo, make sure you read the manual about vbseo, too ;)

PS: In order to setup an image banner, don't use the Text box, but the Image and URL fields ;)

Is there any way I can stop it counting spiders/bots? If I sell 10,000 impressions to a customer it's totally unfair if 9,000 are displayed to bots. :(

If any of your advertisers are dumb enough to count impressions - or even clicks - then they deserve what they get. Seriously, that's no way to gauge the effectiveness of an ad campaign these days.

In that case, how is anyone supposed to put a price on something that can't be measured accurately?

What's your method of allowing customers to measure their ad campaigns?

There is no way to tell which connection is a bot and who not, and in any way, it would not be in the scope of this product. If you need to inform your customers, you will have to filter your logs (not even forum visitors) and elaborate a prospect, which allows you then to tell about the real numbers.

Today, you would count more on clicks than impressions, and exclude direct accesses (which are counted in banner stats). This will give you a very reliable insight into the banner activity.

To make it even more efficient, you would pass an affiliate code to your customer, who would then count the number of visitors who have actually logged into or browsed their site, which is then the most precise information one can get, and the banner stats are then merely a check for you in order to get paid ;)

True clicks are a good measure. A better solution are affiliation codes, where the customer will pay you when a specific event happens at their site (login, contacts, site navigation etc).

Right, the sponsor would have to check their own logs to see how much traffic came from you. In our case the ads are local, so one person saying "I heard about you on the website" is worth a million clicks. I also encourage them to offer discounts for mentioning us. Or coupons.

Our main marketing tool is the Unique Visitor count. This may include a few bots, but it gives a figure representing the general activity of the site.

Banners are fairly useless these days (though still necessary) and modern sponsors know it . Even those without ad blockers tend to just ignore them. So we do our best to try to start discussions and write articles about sponsors. Not always easy to do on an open discussion board where people will not hesitate to tell everyone exactly what they thought about things. :)

First, this is a great bit of work, very impressed indead :)

Now,

I have installed this onto www.clanram.com and everything is working fine.

I have done the same onto www.refrigeration-engineer.com and I can get everything working other than the forum side bar?

everything is exactly the same as clanram.com but the banners are not showing up. Any help would be great, thanks

Forgot to mention, using 4.2, thanks

Hi..

i have .swf file in the vbbanners, the banner works, then i click the banner, it open 2 tab:

1. the banner link <- link that i put in the configuration
2. the banner .swf file

very strange, someone experience the same problem?

Maybe a (server) time problem?

Probably a browser issue, but could be also a banner problem, depending on the code it executes. Do you use the Flash wrapper?

its on the same server and the other banners at the top show up fine?

maybe a spelling error? or a missing template modification? or not enough banners available?

what do you mean, not enough banners available? ta

I can take the code, put it into the www.clanram.com site and it works fine?

if you use, say location 0, for 5 times in all pages and have only 1 banner for location 0, only 1 is shown and the other locations silently discarded.

do you have vbSEO and the HTML cleaning option enabled? that one could also not show some or all banners.

Assuming both servers have all the same mods, next I would suspect a server config issue. Like all those security settings. If they're shared servers just write your host and describe the problem. In fact why not switch off all other mods for testing.

It wouldn't hurt to enable the banners and give us a link.

hello.. yes i use flash wrapper.

very strange, i already try IE, firefox, and chrome, got same problem, and i already remove the link in the .swf file, still got the same problem.

and one more thing, why everytime i open a banner detail in the admincp, then i save it, the banner start time and end time always plus +6 to +7 hours more? if i open and save the banner again without touching anything, the start and end time always change.

We have discussed this a few posts ago ... from about here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=2147

Could you send me please the link to the SWF here or via PM?

Nope, I use seperate location.

Hi, your mod is working below the nav links but not working in the forum side bar, see here http://www.refrigeration-engineer.com/forums/forum.php

ta in the forum side bar where the module head is RE Suporters, I have it in there but nothing showing. I am not useing vbSEO

hi..

i already PM you the link.

thanks alot

I'm 200% sure you are doing it wrong but I can't guess where. If you can't work it out, please let me know (via PM), how to access your forums.

It opens just one tab, no matter how often I try :)

hello..

strange.. in here i just try it, open 2 tab, i ask my friend to try it, got same result, 1st click the banner open 1 tab, 2nd click the banner open 2 tab (without refreshing the page).

Y2 I am interested in getting the banners to refresh every x amount of seconds and have looked at your post https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=989

I use vbSEO on my website.

I have two test banners at position 0 that are located in a subdirectory /banner_ads

I used adminCP > advertising > manage ads > rbs0 below navbar and have it to show below the navbar with the following code <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>

The banners show up fine and will change when I click different pages.

I attempted to use your rbs_iframe.php and uploaded it to the root directory where the other rbs files are. I am not sure where to put the html code
to make it work.

I tried putting that code in place of <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>
for the rbs0 below navbar in manage ads but couldn't get the ads to swap.

I could see the page refreshing as it should but it only displayed one ad instead of swapping, it also showed this right below the ad, SEO by vbSEO 3.6.0

Where should I put the html code? Will it work putting it into the ad management system or does it have to be placed in the template itself? Also should I edit the php file since I am using vbSEO to read <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>

thanks
tim

BUG: Too many visits are counted!

The RBS system has more than twice as many visits as the AD Manager. Are there in version 2.3.1 include a bug in the visits?
I do not like to update completely on the line that puts the BUG?

Great Mod. Thanks for sharing it. Just send some money :-).

From the install instructions:


If I do that the vB folders 'admincp' and 'includes' will be overwritten. What am I not understanding?

You are using Windows Explorer and this is what it says. You should use an FTP client instead, namely FileZilla or similar.

We have discussed this lately. It isn't a bug. Your AD manager is what? Google Analytics?

RBS counts impressions and this is, really all impressions. Even from bots and spiders and half loaded pages and mobile devices and scripts.

If you have plugins which load the pages again at each visit, this will make 2x impressions, while probably your AD manager is aware of, vBulletin isn't.

Let me explain: If you have a script which underlines certain words in order to link them to keywords, the script may load a second copy of the same page. And that counts, too. I know of some scripts they do exactly that.

I am using an FTP client - Cyberduck.

I actually never tried to place the files/folders into the root directory because I just assumed it would ask me to overwrite the existing folders that have the same name. Are you saying it wont prompt me to do that?

I suggest to try to upload the files into a new folder where it cannot make any damage. For no reason will I assume any responsibility about using an FTP client. This kind of operation should be the Alpha and Omega an Internet service user should have in their DNA. If you haven't, please excercise, but not with my plugin and not your forums! :)

I can understand y2ksw's reluctance to encourage you to play with FTP, but in fact it is designed to merge directories, not overwrite them. e.g. When updating vb, I just change the name of the "upload' folder to "forum" and drop it on my public_html folder in Filezilla. No need to go scrounging around in multiple sub-folders this way.

I'm just wondering if anyone has managed to use this mod on vb4.2 pl3 and made it work.... I tried, but nothing showing....

I checked it many times, but nothing worked till now...

any idea???