Rotating Banner System
 

With the Rotating Banner System software, you may publish literally anywhere standard banners and advertising, with no restriction but your imagination. Unlike many other products, it allows to show an unlimited amount of banners and advertising, which are randomly shown at the places you choose, and you may refer generically to an Ad by using specific placeholders.

Also the management is straight-forward and simple to use. Forum administrators with maintenance rights may add, edit and delete records from the Administration Control Panel (ACP), one of each representing a banner. After saving the new banner settings, they are immediately visible at your board.

Compatibility: from vBulletin 3.6.5 onwards

By the way, I do also install the hack on your boards, but since I am very, very busy, it may take some time (weeks) until it gets done.


Tutorials:

• How-to create my first banner (Flash).

Updates:

• 2.0.1: Simple click tracker added, HTML help included.
• 2.0.3: Small bug fixes; additional banner list, navigation bar, E-Mail field for banner event notifications and automatic save on scroll setting; absolute URL to rbs_banner.php in order to allow click tracking on non-standard pages; supported languages: English, Italian; Help file clean-up.
• 2.0.5: Small bug fixes; additional details in banner list; email notification for epired banners.
• 2.0.6: vbCMS compatibility bug fix; additional banner lists.
• 2.0.7: Usergroups filter: now it is possible to define a list of usergroups which may show a banner; additional vbCMS compatibility bug fix.
• 2.0.8: Various fixes and most of all, inclusion of the right files: admin_rbs.php, cpnav_rbs.xml :)
• 2.0.9: Extra comma fix in new record creation.
• 2.1.0: Fix for an occasional banner type selection bug, when the sample banners have been deleted or disabled.
• 2.2.0 (Major upgrade): Up to 10 different banner locations. Requires changes to your existing placeholders in your templates, since a more generic format has been chosen. If you don't need more than 2 different locations, you don't need to upgrade. Changed files: rbs_banner.php, admin_rbs.php
• 2.2.1: Minor bug fix in files: admin_rbs_h_banner_list.php, admin_rbs_v_banner_list.php
• 2.2.1: Hotfix for Max Clicks saving bug.
• 2.2.2: More listings and less files. PDF Help. Separate Italian add-ons and help. Duplicate button.
• 2.2.3: Minor bug fixes. Changed files: product-rbs.xml
• 2.2.4: Flash Banner support (beta). Changed files: product-rbs.xml, rbs_wrapper.swf, admin_rbs.php, English Help.
• 2.2.5: Hotfix for vBulletin 4.0.2 compatibility bug.
• 2.2.6: Checking for installed Flash Wrapper rbs_wrapper.swf; A few English FAQ; Help files. Changed files: product-rbs.xml
• 2.3.0 (Major upgrade): New modules: Delete Expired Banners, Disable Expired Banners; Detail Banner Statistics with unique access key for your customers; Updated help; Changed files: all.
• 2.3.1: Hotfix for missing field in rbs_hist table. Changed files: none, just update product.
• 2.3.2: Added: Unsupported option for setting any number of available positions between 1 and big bang. Fixed: Small bug and speed issues. Removed: Italian translation. Italians may now request support at www.vbulletin.it. Changed files: admin_rbs.php.
• 2.3.3: Fix: Copy selected forum ID's during banner duplication. Changed: start and end hours for new banners are set to 0:00 and 23:59 respectively. Changed files: admin_rbs.php.
• 2.3.4: Option: Send Mail Before. This option allows to schedule expiring banners differently. New variables for emails: $rbs_enddate: This variable holds the formatted banner ending date and time based on the standard formats for date and time in vBulletin settings; $rbs_name: This variable holds the banner name. EMail Notifications option description: Added direct links to the email phrases for quick changes. Changed files: rbs_mail_cron.php.
• 2.4.0 (Major upgrade): Removed: Option to enable or disable mailing. Banners with email addresses to notify are handled. Setting to reset mailing in single banners. Now, if mailing should be repeated, you will have to edit the banner from phpMyAdmin. Added: Order links in lists. The initial state is ordered by ID, as before. By clicking the titles, the other voices can be ordered. Clicking twice inverts the order. This works in all lists. Options to prevent counting and reducing thus a tiny bit of load. A new bunch of demo banners for new installations. Demo banners are locked into database in order to avoid 30% of the questions because of the 'experts' deleting them before trying the product. They can be disabled and modified though. The true experts can delete them after all testing from the database by using phpMyAdmin without side effects. Changes: Phrase for emailing about expiring banners, now also with direct links to the phrases. Demo banners. Our old publisher ID is replaced with the new ones, and old demo banners are updated with the new ones, if found. The functions have been exported to includes/functions_rbs.php. This makes the product code smaller and easier to maintain, and runs faster on sites where caching/acceleration is enabled. Changed Files: all *.php
• 2.4.1: Option Likelihood. This new option adds a weight to banners and allows thus to show one banner more often than another. The default weight is 100%. We also make sure that the final date of the default banners falls into a valid range. Changed files: includes/functions_rbs.php and rbs_stats.php.
• 2.4.2: Workaround for update sequence problems.

Hacks and unsupported add-ons:

• Banner Rotator Widget To CMS
• Rotate banners in-place
• Italian Translation

That's really nice, i'll try this soon. Thank you.

Oh, I forgot ... an ACP menu entry is added, of course ;)

What about ad clicks?

If there isn't this option then I see no difference in the 20 other different banner rotating system here on vborg.

Sorry...
Itworx4me

The main difference is the number of banners you may add: any ;)

Ad clicks are coming.

tanks......

nice job...
thanks...

Dont wana sound stupid but ive installed this Mod followed everything to the book and cant get any banners to show up anywhere on the forum, not even your 2 default banners are showing up ?

The only bit i dont fully understand is the Horizontal & Vertical Placeholders, ime not sure if i just leave the Default setting in there or not IE:
any help would be apprecaited.

thanks

To see the mod working, place for example in your sign the placeholder @vbbanners@. After saving all your signed posts and private messages show one of the banners.

The placeholders can appear at any place, in your styles, private messages, posts, forum titles, even inside HTML <button> tags. Wherever you insert @vbbanners@, you get one.

If you have multiple placeholders on a single page, all are filled, up to the last available. If there aren't enough banners in your database, the remaining placeholders are removed. Thus if you have banners in your sign and 10 of your posts in a page, but only 3 active banners, only the first 3 posts will show a banner.

This is a great mod but I use vbadvanced and like to include the banner rotation on my vbadanced pages. Is there way to do that?

Thanks
Will

As long as the pages are attached to vbulletin, you can insert a placeholder at any place in the vBAdvanced templates or pages. Pages which aren't attached to vBulletin may or may not show banners, depending on how they are embedded.

Pages which are rendered by vBAdvanced should work, while IFRAME inclusions or pure HTML pages most probably won't work.

hello,


i use your mod on my side www.haustiere-forum.org at he moment the banner will show on the left side at the forumhome. i will have them in the middle-->which code i must enter in the forumhome template that the are show in the middle of the forum??


sorry for my bad english :)


the mod is great !

Subscribed. We need a simpler mod to do this. But where is this "Vbulletin Banners" product you mention?

edit: Oh heck, I installed it. Seems to be working. But we need some sort of noob instructions for people like me that don't know one template from another.

Is there any way to get the ad banners to have a target of _self or _top or something?

They're spawning in new windows, which I don't want them to do.

Or let me have them just display an image with NO link at all. I am not going to be using this for ad banners, but for forum header images. See here.

I would like it to not have a link at all, but failing that, I don't want it to open in a new window/tab, either. Any ideas?

How can we have this listed on both selected forums and the forum home page? It seems like you can only have one or the other. If you select forum home page "yes" it will not appear on all of the selected pages.
thanks

There are so many places you may show a banner - just play with your phantasy and try ... maybe in the header template? ;)

Teaching template modifications are beyond using of this plugin - if you would like to use any banner system you will have to know a little about templates too - unless you accept to show banners at fixed place, which I tried to avoid categorically :)

You can embed your banner in a HTML block (Text field). In this case it will do exactly what you want, e.g.

<img src="yourimage.gif" border="0" />

or

<a href="yoururl" target="_self"><img src="yourimage.gif" border="0" /></a>

If you don't have selected any forum, neither checked the forum home, it will show on all pages and forums.

If you want to show it on the forum home and on a few forums, you must create 2 records of the same banner, but different settings (one for forum home, the other for specific forums).

Hi, Sounds like a nice mod.

I have been installing and uninstalling a few banner mods with varying level of success.

Before I install, can this mod handle shockwave .swf files?

Thanks in advance.
Volvoholic

It can handle anything you can express in HTML, e.g.

will load the cvs01.swf file at the banner placeholder when inserted in the Text field.

Volvoholic clicks install

Very powerful mod.

Took me a while to find the Banner Rotator manager (its at the bottom of the menu). HTML coding of the body was easy (some HTML required) but if you have coded Google adsense in your website before or done basic web design, it is a breeze.

For the benfit of other newbies like myself.
I Added <center></center> to make the ad centered by editing the header template (Styles & Templates > Style Manager > Select Edit Templates from dropdown menu > find "header" template > add the placeholder @vbbanners@ as shown in the online guide "snapshots".

Question

1. Which template do I edit to place an ad below the Nav Bar? I had a look in the Navbar template. I just don't have the knowlege to be sure if its tht right template and where in the template to place the placeholder.

2. Is there a way to display banners in the Forum Home and specific forums? (Ok - my bad, I read a few posts above and created two banner id's one for Forum Home and one for specific forum)

In the meantime, thank you Y2KSW for this mod. I LIKE IT !!!!

Volvoholic

Join the club. If the author's earlier answer to me is any indication, don't expect him to tell you (it's beyond the scope of this mod).

My last banner rotator does have insertion instructions, so I figure I can dig those out and use them. But if you're thinking of using the same trick, be warned - that author too wrote like we're already supposed to be familiar with template editing.

What I really can't figure out - doesn't 3.7 have hooks in all the common places already? If so, why do we have to manually edit any templates? I mean, as you follow the instructions I just mentioned, you'll be inserting right smack next to existing hooks. Unless I'm missing something.

Hint: In navbar, look for $ad_location. And, presumably, anywhere you want to put an ad in any template you could do the same.?

Search for:
$navbar

Add this below:
<div align="center">@vbbanners@</div><br />

:)

vBulletin attempts to give a hand placing ads, but currently you can fill only a handful of places (style hooks), and by no mean everywhere. Also you need to know how those places are called, and your code needs to be extended each time Jelsoft decides to add a hook somewhere.

Furthermore, you can't use a specifically coded plugin for style hooks in older vbulletin versions. This one (along with other banner systems) runs on 3.6.5 to 3.7.x boards, and does not require a specific style layout.

Nice job - Finally got this installed and working. What would make this a really good mod would be the ability to display the banners in the ACP like this banner rotator mod does:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ghlight=banner

Say I only want to have one banner on the page, but I have 3 or 4 separate banners that I want to rotate on that location, how do I do that? I don't see any settings within the admin area about rotating, etc. Just how many shows before it stops showing. I'll keep looking, but any responses or help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

This mod rotates all your banners by default. Set up 5 banners, all 5 of them rotate.

It has worked out over time, that viewing the banner in-place creates more problems than it solves. I will however think about a link and popup window for one of the next releases.

I am just installing this program and while I am working on it I thought I would make a comment while in progress.

I am failing to see a good system for navigating banners. It actually took a bit to realize I could navigate saved banners with the arrows. For whatever reason they didn't seem to work in the proper manner at first.

The point is, I think it would be nice if, after clicking on "Manage Banners" a list of banners would appear that linked to the edit banner pages.:up:

Then, if I am on the right track, it would be nice to be able to change the order that the ads are displayed in, :) because I am finding that I am building several banners for one advertiser in a row then moving to the next advertiser and fear they may not be a random display.

I realize this system is currently developed for VBulletin, but I would like to use it on other pages too. It may be nice to have a selection in "Forums" which could be used for the banner to respond to. Maybe a tutorial on how to call the script from another page.:)

It would also be nice to know how to insert the tag so that only certain usergroups get the banner.

<if condition="is_member_of($bbuserinfo, 1,2,3,4,6,8,9,10)">
<div> @vbbanners@ </div>
</if>

Gotta second the idea of a sortable list. Once you get much beyond 5 ads it gets really hard to find specific ones.

Is there a way to connect this with the sbscription feature so that advertisers banners are based on the amound of time they signed up for in the vb subscrition page?

Thanks for the tips :)

The banners in fact can be excluded or included by using style conditionals.

The banner overview will come soon, and the subscriptions are a nice idea. Then it would also need a user interface for the service buyer in order to setup the subscription ... can you please elaborate a bit how you would like to see it as a customer?

Nice tool, thanks a lot.

I am using it slightly differently, I have only 2 ad locations I want to show rotating banners, a 235x60 in the header and a 468x60 in the footer.

I use the standard Horizontal placeholder "@vbbanners@" for any header ads, and the "@vbbanners_vertical@" for any footer ads, ticking "vertical" in the ad set-up, even though the ads are not vertical it seems to work.

Cool :-)


www.acorndomains.co.uk

Kudos to you, great hack!! Much better than the previous one I was using which was limited to about 10 banners max.

Installed and using, with a lot more ease than before so thanks :D

Sure.
Ultimately When a potential advertiser clicks on our ADVERTISE WITH US link either in the forum our on our home page, it will go to the subscriptions options page with all the drop down menus.

We might have... 4 options for advertisors, each with its own drop down menu and subscription length options.

Once a vendor selects the option they want, and the length of time they want from the drop down menu, they should be given the opportunity to upload a banner. Either by way of URL or by browsing their computer files. This banner upload feature can be before or after payment. Whatever is easiest for you.

The proceed with payment like normal. Our Merchant is paypal so thats where they go.
Once paid, their banner is inserted in to the rotator and the setting are based on the option and length of time they signed up for.

That would be ideal.
This way
Banners are only up while they pay for the feature. Soon as the subscription is expired or cancelled, the banner comes down, and we ans well as the vendor get a notification.

This way however you would need also vendor handling. As vBulletin works, there is only one vendor: the board owner, and all subscription payments go to one account. Also there is no way to tell the number of items you buy, all vBulletin subscriptions are limited by time only and each additional subscription adds only time.

To make it work for more vendors, the whole payment and subscription should work differently, more like in an auction. Then it would be also more easy to define other criterias, such as how many banners you could insert for the chosen period. Well, if the vendors are listed in a similar table as the banners and the rules are not too many, it should be possible to make it. The payment ID returned to both the board and the buyer will make that a sort of ticket, to allow one or more banner uploads.

The problems I see are the setup which is left to the buyer and the possible implications if they are using scripts, like messing up your pages or installing spyware and worms. Maybe scripts shouldn't be available, right? :)

I have to think a little about it ... ;)

Please keep me posted. I am very interested in this type of product

I am running photoposts classifieds program and for some reason the banner doesn't show in the header there but i can see the code. Any suggestions?

http://www.dezertrangers.com/classifieds

Thanks

I would suggest to replace the @vbbanners@ placeholder (vBulletin Options, bottom) with something like <!-- @banner@ --> (HTML Comment) in order to hide advertising in scripts which eventually don't call the vBulletin standard page closure, and thus jump over the global_complete hook.