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

[Yonatan]

Hey,

Where I can set:

<param name="wmode" value="transparent">

For Flash ads?

Thanks!

[pitzerwm]

This what you would see, at least this is how I use it.

<a  target="_blank" >
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="600" height="80">
  <param name="movie" value="http://www.mydomain.com/NP_600x80_Flash.swf" />
  <param name="quality" value="high" />
  <param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
  <embed src="http://www.mydomain.com/NP_600x80_Flash.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="80" ></embed>
</object>
</a>

[valdet]

Hi Giovanni,

Is it possible to make a small addon, so little thumbnails of image banners show up on admin_rbs_banner_list.php ?

It would be such a huge timesaver, because when you have to go through dozens of banners, having a visual right there would help immensely.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the time you took to build this magnificent plugin. It works flawlessly.

Thanks.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by valdet

Hi Giovanni,

Is it possible to make a small addon, so little thumbnails of image banners show up on admin_rbs_banner_list.php ?

It would be such a huge timesaver, because when you have to go through dozens of banners, having a visual right there would help immensely.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the time you took to build this magnificent plugin. It works flawlessly.

Thanks.

I have added this request to the wish-list.

[Rckcrwlr]

I am embarrassed to post this but I think of myself as a somewhat intelligent person but for some reason, I cannot grasp this.

Please be patient with me and maybe you can find what I am missing....

What are the "Position # Banner Lists" for?
Nth Placeholder...where do I put that?

Maybe it will be easier this way...

I have 4 banners I want to have in the "Below Nav Bar" Location...

What do I do next?

I think if you walk me through it, everything will click.

Let's say that the banners images are on my server at www.myforum.com/banners

The four banners are: abc.gif 123.jpg asdf.gif qwerty.jpg

I hope you can feel my pain and confusion on this.

Thanks,
John

[Disco_Dave]

Originally Posted by Videx

Well at least we have an error message!

Presumably you uploaded the files to the wrong place. If you're going to run a forum you've got to be a lot more careful about that. Try it again.

Hint: Just rename the "upload" folder to "forum" (or whatever your forum folder is named), then drop it on your public_html folder. Saves you having to try to place each file separately.

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Or, you have the files uploaded to the right place, but your web server has no rights to access.

This may happen on Linux, when your FTP account differs from Apache. You may fix this from the shell with root rights and requires a pretty good knowledge how to configure the FTP server.

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Enable the flash wrapper, specify in Image/Flash your swf (as above), in URL the landing page and don't forget the sizes and at least one option: embed or object or both

I'm also having the same problem, I have renamed the folder like the post above but still no joy. I would really like to get this working, If anyone can help.

Dave

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by tricksodave

I'm also having the same problem, I have renamed the folder like the post above but still no joy. I would really like to get this working, If anyone can help.

Dave

Let's do the other way round ... where is your forum located?

Move with FTP to the folder where you find the forum.php file which actually launches your forum (no redirects please).

Then, move into the upload folder of the extracted package (you have it unzipped, right?). Select all files and folders there and copy to the FTP destination. With Filezilla you do this pretty neat and no hassle. For upgrading make sure you "overwrite" the files on destination.

Done

However: If your FTP account rights differ from the Webserver Account, it may not work and then you'll need to do the beatings of your hosting provider

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Rckcrwlr

I am embarrassed to post this but I think of myself as a somewhat intelligent person but for some reason, I cannot grasp this.

Please be patient with me and maybe you can find what I am missing....

What are the "Position # Banner Lists" for?
Nth Placeholder...where do I put that?

Maybe it will be easier this way...

I have 4 banners I want to have in the "Below Nav Bar" Location...

What do I do next?

I think if you walk me through it, everything will click.

Let's say that the banners images are on my server at www.myforum.com/banners

The four banners are: abc.gif 123.jpg asdf.gif qwerty.jpg

I hope you can feel my pain and confusion on this.

Thanks,
John

Please watch the movie in the very first post of this product. It shows you a little around.

[Rckcrwlr]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Please watch the movie in the very first post of this product. It shows you a little around.

Thank you...that did help some. I will let you know how it goes.

John

[Rckcrwlr]

I figured it out... Woo Hoo

Thank you so much

John