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

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by salvador21

Where does the rbs_iframe.php file go please?

It would normally go into the forums folder.

[salvador21]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

It would normally go into the forums folder.

Yes, sorry I realised that just after I posted. I was just confused when I saw: ./global.php in the file. I thought that implied this file needed to be in some other directory. Obviously I was wrong.

[wampforum]

hi,
I have installed the add on iframe and wondered if you could help me. I know its unsupported so no worries if not.
We can get the rotator working fine but it wont display properly. The iframe seems to be altering the size of the banner slightly and its throwing the sidebar we placed it in out a bit

[salvador21]

Originally Posted by wampforum

hi,
I have installed the add on iframe and wondered if you could help me. I know its unsupported so no worries if not.
We can get the rotator working fine but it wont display properly. The iframe seems to be altering the size of the banner slightly and its throwing the sidebar we placed it in out a bit

That could be the nature of iFrames, they are different in different browsers. For a start make sure in your CSS {padding=0px;margin=0px} and the same for what the iframe is referencing

[y2ksw]

Yes, it's likely your css styles influence the behaviour of iframes. With no settings, iframes have a border and scrollbars, if needed. These features must be disabled, of course

[myke2008]

could someone tell me how to troubleshoot a ghost ad banner that only appears in Google chrome? I have the below navbar location turned off but there is an ad displayed anyway. and If I turn the location on then there are 2 ads displayed in chrome and only one in firefox and IE.

If you have chrome installed and want to see what I mean you check this page, www.syfydesigns.com

another oddity is that you must be logged in to see the second banner, or ghost banner. So I guess visiting the site will do no good...

I attached a screen capture of the area I am talking about when you use Chrome

[Videx]

You could have given us a test account to log in with. But you're right, as a Guest everything looks normal to me.

[myke2008]

thanks for the response, I have discovered that it is the ad from the footer witch is being displayed at the top of the page in Google Chrome.

I have tried putting the code into both the ad_global_above_footer and the ad_footer_start templates and neither produces the desired effect.

I will just have to find a place for the code that works for FF, IE and GC

[y2ksw]

It's an issue which seems to happen lately to more people ... it has to do with the div tag with no class or style attached and it seems as if Chrome does some magic with simple div tags. Please see here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1398

[jnmann]

Is there a noobie guide here for setting a banner up? I've installed the mod but I'm a little lost with regards to getting started from there :-) The sample ads don't appear to be dsiplaying by default or I could work with those.