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]

I tried it and it works.

eventually however you may need to use:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com...s.js"></script>

all in one line. it should not make any difference but you never know. What error do you get from IE? Do you use ad blockers?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

The problem with the number of Ad Sets is mainly the way how placeholders are replaced. If I would allow for, let's say 10 Ad Sets, tomorrow promptly there will be somebody who wants 11, 20 or 100. The way how Ad Sets are handled, will not allow for an unlimited number, unless to make the product heavy, slow and difficult to manage. Do we really want this?

How many places do we need? Would 10 different places be fine? Definitely? More than 10 places would make the settings overcrowded...

I don't think I'd even need 10. Maybe half a dozen maximum.

You have two already. Why would adding a couple more make the add-on any less cumbersome?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Jaxel

I am unable to get google adsense to work with this...

PHP Code:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-2437104458257480";
/* 8WayRun.Com */
google_ad_slot = "3270884163";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script> 


Your quoted code is showing an extra line before the final script. Find out why (possible an unorintable character such as <Ctrl>+char?). That's probably why it isn't working for you. AdSense code is working just fine for me and 3.82.

[Jaxel]

That code is the exact code it shows in my adsense toolbar.

I changed it to this:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-2437104458257480"; google_ad_slot = "3270884163"; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 60;
//--></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

Seems to be working now.

[djbaxter]

No. You need both parts of the script, not just a piece of it.

[Jaxel]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

No. You need both parts of the script, not just a piece of it.

Huh? both parts are there.

[1adam12]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Click tracking works only with images.

I tried to use a table with a SWF background and a transparent button as foreground, but for some undefined reason it would not work at all, or only on some browsers and others not. So I gave up to wrap a click tracker around other items than just plain images... Any ideas are welcome, though

Is there a bit of code that could be part of the swf that could be used to tell that the click has happened to RBS?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Jaxel

Huh? both parts are there.

Don't play dumb.

When I replied to your previous post, you had half the script commented out.

And if it's working now, it's because in the version now posted you got rid of the non-printing character I mentioned above.

[Jaxel]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Don't play dumb.

When I replied to your previous post, you had half the script commented out.

And if it's working now, it's because in the version now posted you got rid of the non-printing character I mentioned above.

I actually didn't... it was the [PHP] tag on these forums screwing with the display.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I don't think I'd even need 10. Maybe half a dozen maximum.

You have two already. Why would adding a couple more make the add-on any less cumbersome?

New release: Now we have up to 10 locations, although it may be possible to extend the feature to an almost unlimited number. However, for performance reasons and also for easier maintenance and user feedback, it is currently limited. During the upgrade process, also an expired test banner (Shopping Ad) will be disabled, since it may produce blank entries.

The screenshots are not updated yet, since the upgrade is only necessary for handling more than 2 locations.