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

[cbehan]

"Manage Ads" has managed to insert the code into the correct templates.

ad_global_below_navbar

<div id="ad_global_below_navbar"><vb:if condition="!is_member_of($bbuserinfo, 28)"><div style="text-align:center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div><vb:if condition="$adsshown[] = 1"></vb:if></vb:if></div>

It sounds to me like there's an issue with the product....or more likely my understanding/setup.

[boodog]

Does anyone have any info on the email that this sends to customers when a banner expires? I assume that it does send one, but I don't see where it can be edited. Any info?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by valdet

It's been a long time since I used this mod and with new changes and features I cannot get this to work on my vB 3.6.7 version.

I have tried every imaginable thing and the templates are returning only the raw code of placeholder name.

Here are the screenshots of my settings:

Banner Settings:


General settings:


and Template code on my navbar template


I have vBSEO and I used custom placeholder name to avoid HTML cleanup issue.

At beginning nothing was even showing up. Once I changed hook locations for plugin Banner Insertion from global_complete to parse_templates, only the raw placeholder code is shown and not the actual banner as in:

#reklama:0#
#reklama:1#

Can someone advise how to get around this problem and make it work with 3.6.7 version?

I am using image banner and need to have click tracking feature enabled.

Many thanks for your time.

You can't change the hook location. global_complete is the place where all happens, thus changing the hook will not work.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by cbehan

"Manage Ads" has managed to insert the code into the correct templates.

ad_global_below_navbar

<div id="ad_global_below_navbar"><vb:if condition="!is_member_of($bbuserinfo, 28)"><div style="text-align:center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div><vb:if condition="$adsshown[] = 1"></vb:if></vb:if></div>


It sounds to me like there's an issue with the product....or more likely my understanding/setup.

You can choose usergroups from the banner settings. Cleanup:

<div id="ad_global_below_navbar"><div style="text-align:center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div></div>

A better way is to put the banner into the template ad_navbar_below and cleanup even more, because ad_global_below_navbar is shown only at certain additionel conditions. The combination of both makes it difficult to understand what makes the banner show.

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

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by boodog

Does anyone have any info on the email that this sends to customers when a banner expires? I assume that it does send one, but I don't see where it can be edited. Any info?

You may change the email text in your phrases/translations. Please search for phrase variable rbs_expired_banner.

[cbehan]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

You can choose usergroups from the banner settings. Cleanup:

<div id="ad_global_below_navbar"><div style="text-align:center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div></div>

A better way is to put the banner into the template ad_navbar_below and cleanup even more, because ad_global_below_navbar is shown only at certain additionel conditions. The combination of both makes it difficult to understand what makes the banner show.

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

I tried this too and I still get nothing on any page of my site.

I should mention I'm running the full suite if that makes a difference.

Also, the reason I wanted to use the built-in ad management for usergroup management is because I have 20 usergroups on my site, one of which is for subscribers who pay to not view ads....and via the built-in ad management the "exclusion" can be controlled on a location by location basis, not on each banner like in your product.

To manage it on your product, I need to put a list of 19 usergroup numbers in each and every banner I place on the site.

It's not that I can't do that...it just seems ineffecient from a management as well as coding standpoint.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by cbehan

I tried this too and I still get nothing on any page of my site.

I should mention I'm running the full suite if that makes a difference.

Also, the reason I wanted to use the built-in ad management for usergroup management is because I have 20 usergroups on my site, one of which is for subscribers who pay to not view ads....and via the built-in ad management the "exclusion" can be controlled on a location by location basis, not on each banner like in your product.

To manage it on your product, I need to put a list of 19 usergroup numbers in each and every banner I place on the site.

It's not that I can't do that...it just seems ineffecient from a management as well as coding standpoint.

Please try to use a different template just to see if it generally works. It makes no difference to the vbulletin version or suite, we use it on all versions from 3.6.5 onwards and for sure on all 3.8.x and 4.x.x versions.

It may be an additional feature about user group exclusions, though. Not much code to add and a little change in the queries

[cbehan]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Please try to use a different template just to see if it generally works. It makes no difference to the vbulletin version or suite, we use it on all versions from 3.6.5 onwards and for sure on all 3.8.x and 4.x.x versions.

It may be an additional feature about user group exclusions, though. Not much code to add and a little change in the queries

First off, thank you very much for all the help.

Here's what I've tried.
I moved to the default template with no customizations and placed <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> directly into ad_navbar_below, but still got nothing.

I think reinstalled the product overwriting the previous install, and I'm still getting nothing.

I'm at a loss.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by cbehan

First off, thank you very much for all the help.

Here's what I've tried.
I moved to the default template with no customizations and placed <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> directly into ad_navbar_below, but still got nothing.

I think reinstalled the product overwriting the previous install, and I'm still getting nothing.

I'm at a loss.

In the default template, the rendered page source shows still one or more <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, or is it all gone?

[cbehan]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

In the default template, the rendered page source shows still one or more <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, or is it all gone?

In both templates, the code is inserted into the template, but on the rendered source it's nowhere to be found.