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 bazookajoe

I just upgraded from vb3.8 to vb4.2.1 and the rotating banner mod is not working. Is this mod compatible with the vb4 advertising system? I much prefer using this than the built in banner ad system.
Suggestions?

Yes, but most probably your styles got updated and overwritten.

Originally Posted by Forensic

Lots of people using 4.2.x in here. I am still on 4.2.1 myself.
did you add

<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>

to the vb advertising in admincp?
Have you disabled all other plugins first?
Can't make many suggestions without more details.

This is the code for showing all the banners from location 0.

Originally Posted by bazookajoe

Thanks for the quick reply! I didnt add that code...whats that supposed to do?

I haven't disabled any banner or advertising plugins as there aren't any except for the vb4 (with suite) advertising.

Upgrading from 3.x to 4.x has essentially destroyed any customisation of styles. with the above code in one or all of the advertising sections, your banners should be up again.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Forensic

Two questions,
Can I display a single banner from within a large group of banners using the banner Id?
1. Is there a way to display a single group of banners in forum home and selective forums without maintaining redundant groups of banners?

2. I have our banners set to show everywhere. I can't use the Forums selection as it removes it from forum home and I can't select forum home because it removes it from forums.

3. If I can show a single banner I believe I can use an IF/Else statement to show a single banner for a forum id otherwise show the rotation.

1. No. But you can duplicate a banner setting and have it (1) on forum home and (2) on certain forum sections as well.
2. Then you would not select anything (nor home neither single sections) and that's it.
3. You can show a single banner only if you have one banner per each location. However this product is intended to show as many banners as you have for a single location at a near to random frequency. Aditionally, you may define a weight and thus show some banners less or more frequently.

[bazookajoe]

Got it ..thanks!

Will posting this code as an ad work on any banner ad location like postbits? Do you have to post it in each section?

[New Joe]

Originally Posted by New Joe

Setting this up for the vb sidebar.
I have one block in the sidebar with say 6 clickable banners.
My co admin who does the banners wrote me this::


I think he means as I said, we have one main block within the sidebar with around 6 banners in it, each one goes to a different url when clicked, we need to have each one tracked separately.

Any ideas?

[bazookajoe]

Is there a way to disable banners just on the CMS Articles pages?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by New Joe

Setting this up for the vb sidebar.
I have one block in the sidebar with say 6 clickable banners.
My co admin who does the banners wrote me this::


I think he means as I said, we have one main block within the sidebar with around 6 banners in it, each one goes to a different url when clicked, we need to have each one tracked separately.

Any ideas?

you would insert 6 lines like this:

<!--@vbbanners:0@--><br />
<!--@vbbanners:0@--><br />
<!--@vbbanners:0@--><br />
<!--@vbbanners:0@--><br />
<!--@vbbanners:0@--><br />
<!--@vbbanners:0@-->

and then insert at least 6 banners in location 0 and you are done. Each banner is tracked separately and the number of banners in your database decide how randomly these banners appear in the given space. If you have 6 or less banners available, the just would flip in the given space (sidebar I guess).

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bazookajoe

Got it ..thanks!


Will posting this code as an ad work on any banner ad location like postbits? Do you have to post it in each section?

For postbits you must change the placeholder format in the options, since the vbulletin editor removes html tags. However before going on that adventure I suggest to try first other options, such as the standard ad locations, some of which show in the first and last post of a thread.

Also, having too many banners on one page may penalize you inadvertedly (Google allows up to 3 on each page).

[Toorak Times]

Giovanni, it is identifying the standard ad locations that has me tricked.

I have successfully fluked putting 2 ads in Position 0 a while ago, gone now, but it just wont sink into my head how the RBS interfaces with the standard ad locations.

I'm trying to write an advertising rate and was thinking of limiting each to 5 rotations but putting this down in a way I can sell is doing my head in mate, its mainly trying to decide what shape ad goes where...

[bzcomputers]

A couple days ago I was trying to debug an error I had in vB (ended up non-related to this mod). But in debugging I disabled this mod through the admincp for a few minutes, found out it was not the issue, reenabled it and since then it has not worked. All occurrences of the position code are now just displaying the code.

Prior to disabling / re-enabling it had been working fine for well over 18 months (as long as I had it installed).

Any idea of what might have occurred and why it seems it is just not re-enabling?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bzcomputers

A couple days ago I was trying to debug an error I had in vB (ended up non-related to this mod). But in debugging I disabled this mod through the admincp for a few minutes, found out it was not the issue, reenabled it and since then it has not worked. All occurrences of the position code are now just displaying the code.

Prior to disabling / re-enabling it had been working fine for well over 18 months (as long as I had it installed).

Any idea of what might have occurred and why it seems it is just not re-enabling?

Magic?

I never heared about such an issue ... however it can be a (post) cache issue, if the banners are embedded in posts or CMS widgets, forum blocks and so stuff. The cache can be cleaned partially from the Maintenance area in ACP. For the post cache it needs a query.