Miscellaneous Hacks - 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

[J-P]

I am having a hell of a time with this.

I followed the directions outlined in the tutorial and it partly works, but I have to create new templates which are not included...

Anyone out there have a COMPLETE walk through / set up? or willing to install and set up to spec?

www.invertplanet.com/forum/

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by J-P

I am having a hell of a time with this.

I followed the directions outlined in the tutorial and it partly works, but I have to create new templates which are not included...

Anyone out there have a COMPLETE walk through / set up? or willing to install and set up to spec?

www.invertplanet.com/forum/

Why would you create new templates? Try to think simple, inserting a banner placeholder in one of the existing templates is simple.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by MikeWarner

Great mod, but really need it to work with Photopost.

I'm not sure what Photopost does to vbulletin. Maybe you are lucky in finding somebody who has enough time to check it out - I'm in the (un)lucky situation to have no time at all.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by oddmud

When I put a flash banner in position 2, it puts it over top of the menu in the top right. Do you know how to fix this?

ad_global_header2

Looks like a CSS/float issue.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by CUBS

where would these 2 files go when I load the files I know whwre everything else goes

rbs wrapper

rbs,banner php



I know how to do this I think

with these foulders and files
upload

admincp

includes-xml-cron-

but where do I load these .public html-forums- where

rbs wrapper

rbs,banner php

All files and subfolders inside the upload folder go into your forum root.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I think so ... I have no blog installed yet and can't tell at 100%.

Originally Posted by Antonio Pereira

Hi i can put this working with one flash.

I send you a PM.

Best Regards

It works with blogs - at least with the standard location and uncached contents.

[J-P]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Why would you create new templates? Try to think simple, inserting a banner placeholder in one of the existing templates is simple.

In the tutorial, it had templates that were not in my template list on 4.1.0.

BUT, I did get it to place the image where I wanted it As you mentioned I edited the ad_global_header_1. Yay!!

So now I can get images there no problem but my flash object doesn't play.

http://www.invertplanet.com/forum/forum.php

[DieselTruck]

So, I've revisted this mod. I can confirm my image URL is correct, but it isn't showing correctly when I "copy link" by write clicking. I get this when right clicking : http://www.thetruckstop.us/forum/PMD%20Cable

My actual URL in the AdminCP is this:

http://www.thetruckstop.us/forum/ima...s/pmdcable.jpg

I'm running the latest version.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by J-P

In the tutorial, it had templates that were not in my template list on 4.1.0.

BUT, I did get it to place the image where I wanted it As you mentioned I edited the ad_global_header_1. Yay!!

So now I can get images there no problem but my flash object doesn't play.

http://www.invertplanet.com/forum/forum.php

Well, your Flash says: Loading 100%. This means in clear-text, it works, but after loading it does not proceed. I'm unable to tell what your Flash code does. If you need to load external data in your Flash, you maybe run better without a wrapper.

In any case, I am unable to reply to issues which involve Flash and HTML beyond the obvious.

If you have HTML and/or Flash issues, please contact your developer. If testing on a simple HTML page works (as suggested in the help), it must work also in the product. If it doesn't, there is nothing I can do about it.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DieselTruck

So, I've revisted this mod. I can confirm my image URL is correct, but it isn't showing correctly when I "copy link" by write clicking. I get this when right clicking : http://www.thetruckstop.us/forum/PMD%20Cable

My actual URL in the AdminCP is this:

http://www.thetruckstop.us/forum/ima...s/pmdcable.jpg

I'm running the latest version.

Please make the default banners run first. Then try to duplicate and modify one. Eventually watch the Flash help.

The URL is the landing page. If it doesn't work, of course the user shows a 404 page. I don't know what you mean with right clicking. When rendered, the HTML and image behaves just the same as a normal HTML code.