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

[Flyte]

We had this mod working fine with 4.0.2
We upgraded to 4.0.3 and now when enabled our CMS crashes and we are getting the following error message:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function rbs_url_sanity() in /home/content/92/5987292/html/mx/forum/includes/functions.php(6811) : eval()'d code on line 62

Please help....thanks!

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Flyte

We had this mod working fine with 4.0.2
We upgraded to 4.0.3 and now when enabled our CMS crashes and we are getting the following error message:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function rbs_url_sanity() in /home/content/92/5987292/html/mx/forum/includes/functions.php(6811) : eval()'d code on line 62

Please help....thanks!

It's working fine in 4.03 for me. However, I currently have the CMS disabled - it's possible that's the problem. See if the error goes away if you disable CMS (as a way of tracking down where the error is occurring).

Also check:

1. that all files for this add-on still exist on your server - I'd recommend you just re-upload everything to be sure

2. that an add-on installed later is not conflicting with this one

[Flyte]

Okay, I will check that and report back to you....Thank you for your timely response.

[mobe00]

i cant get this mod to work..no ads shows up . all the settings done as instructions is told ..i add this code to below_navbar template

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

i have two adds which is set to position 0. The url to the images is correct. but nothing happens...what can be wrong ?
start date is from yesterday and end date is in july on both ads.

[Flyte]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

It's working fine in 4.03 for me. However, I currently have the CMS disabled - it's possible that's the problem. See if the error goes away if you disable CMS (as a way of tracking down where the error is occurring).

Also check:

1. that all files for this add-on still exist on your server - I'd recommend you just re-upload everything to be sure

2. that an add-on installed later is not conflicting with this one

yep I was missing files!! Thanks for telling me to check that! Works great.

[Flyte]

Okay, so everything seems to be working fine except I can't figure out how to get the banners to 'refresh' and change without a total page refresh.
I would like to set it so the banners all change and refresh every 2-4 seconds.
Can someone tell me how to enable / set this please?

Thank You!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Flyte

Okay, so everything seems to be working fine except I can't figure out how to get the banners to 'refresh' and change without a total page refresh.
I would like to set it so the banners all change and refresh every 2-4 seconds.
Can someone tell me how to enable / set this please?

Thank You!

If you need this functionallity, you will have to paste your own Java Script with timing and banner visualizzation in the text box in order to achieve this function. Maybe also an iframe to a specifically built banner page may work. Or a Flash banner which rotates banners in a different manner.

[Flyte]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If you need this functionallity, you will have to paste your own Java Script with timing and banner visualizzation in the text box in order to achieve this function. Maybe also an iframe to a specifically built banner page may work. Or a Flash banner which rotates banners in a different manner.

I hate to sound lazy...but do you know anyone that already has this script because I am not exactly sure how to do this myself.

Thanks!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Flyte

I hate to sound lazy...but do you know anyone that already has this script because I am not exactly sure how to do this myself.

Thanks!

I'm unable to tell you how to solve issues which go beyond PHP coding. I can imagine how it should be done, but know nothing special about Java. If I had to do it myself, I probably would ask (and pay) somebody to make me a Flash wrapper which rotates banners the way I like most

[mobe00]

Originally Posted by mobe00

i cant get this mod to work..no ads shows up . all the settings done as instructions is told ..i add this code to below_navbar template

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


i have two adds which is set to position 0. The url to the images is correct. but nothing happens...what can be wrong ?
start date is from yesterday and end date is in july on both ads.

*bump* anyone knows why i cant get it to work ? im clueless..did all what the instructions told as far as i know