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

[dmm2020]

Originally Posted by Londonladadz

Hi everyone,

I feel like such a noob, I uploaded the files via FTP then went into my admin cp and add/import plugins. However I get this error:
Please upload the files that came with the product before installing or upgrading!

Missing files: (It says nothing here!)

Can anyone point me in the right direction of whats going wrong!

Many Thanks

You likely uploaded the files to the wrong path. Make sure you upload the CONTENTS of uploads to the root, not the folder itself. The path layout in the uploads folder matches the layout for vBulletin so do that and problem should go away. The file upload has to be there in the right place before importing any vBulletin plugin.

[y2ksw]

Additionally, it may be possible that your FTP rights differ from the rights of your web server, thus files may be there but can't be seen by the web server.

[Londonladadz]

I tried uploading the contents files to my webserver using CPanel and got the same error. To confirm I am uploading the files from the admin folder and xml folder to the corresponding folders on my webserver then uploading rbs_banner.php and the stats.php to my forum root directory.

Thanks for the quick replies!

[MySaltyreef]

sorry i am a total noob at this, where do i insert @vbbanners@ if i want it to show at the top of every page?

[attroll]

I have been experiencing a issue with flash banners. When I have a flash banner show up under my navbar and then I click in one of my drop down boxes in the navbar the flash banner appears on top of the drop down box. This cover up the items in the dropdowns. How can I prevent this from happening?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by MySaltyreef

sorry i am a total noob at this, where do i insert @vbbanners@ if i want it to show at the top of every page?

Play around with AdminCP>Advertising>Add new Ad. And be sure to read this entire thread (which you're always supposed to do before installing any mod).

[mdreamer]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If your flash has already the right link, then you fill the Text field with the HTML which shows your banner and leave the other fields empty. In the case you have a Flash banner which internal URL is missing, erroneous or where you may want to track clicking, you would use the Flash wrapper, which embeds the flash file and ignores thus the internal URL, using yours instead.

Hi,

Thank you for your replay. I have 2 questions:
1. If my flash has an internal URL I can't track clicks? do i get this right?
2. I guess when you wrote the Text field you meant the field with the description:
"
TextThis field may hold any kind of script (e.g. Google AdSense) and/or HTML which will be inserted in your pages. Please make sure it works and that all tags are closed properly.
"
When you say "leave the other fields empty" - what fields are you referring to?

Thanks
Maayan Dreamer

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

Ok, here's a screen capture of vbCMS article in Safari 5.05 (latest version) using a MacBook Pro running OSX. Note advert is placed over top of screen content at the top of forum instead of the bottom. (see pic on the left below)

Same screen of same vbCMS article on same machine using Firefox 5.0 places banner from this mod at bottom in footer. (see pic on the right below)

I don't understand where to look to fix it, given in works in one browser and not the other.

Note: does not happen on forum home screens or other screens, just vbCMS ..

Any help would be appreciated ...

Regards,
Doug

.... Safari ....................... FireFox

Any follow up help with this problem that appears under vbCMS?

Thanks

Regards,
Doug

[attroll]

Here is a followup to my post #1375.
I have included two screen shoots showing how the flash banner lies on top of the drop down menu.

I would really appreciate some help.

[Londonladadz]

I've figured out the first issue.

I have a quick question and this this might be nooby, but how would I centre the banner located in ad_navbar_below?

Many Thanks!