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

[viper357]

Has anybody got this function to work yet?

Option: Send Mail Before.

I've tried all manner of things but it doesn't seem to work. I initially set it to 14 days, no emails were sent, so I changed it to 7 days and went through each and every banner and reset the notifications, but still no emails have been sent. Is this working for anybody on vb 3.8?

[rhender]

I haven't gotten far and I'm already nervous.

I was about to upload the files within the uploads folder, when I noticed that there was a folder called "admincp" in there.

I don't want to overwrite the "admincp" folder that is already on the server for my forum.

If I upload the RBS "admincp" folder, that would override the current one. That seems like it would screw everything up.

Could anyone tell me what I should do?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by rhender

If I upload the RBS "admincp" folder, that would override the current one. That seems like it would screw everything up.

Could anyone tell me what I should do?

There are basically two ways to do it - a hard way and an easy way. Obviously both require an FTP client such as Filezilla.

• Hard: Dig down into admincp/ and just upload the files you find there. Tedious, and prone to error.
• Easy: Rename the "upload" folder to "forum" (or whatever you have your forum in) and drop it on public_html. FTP doesn't replace identical folders, it just properly adds files to them.

[viper357]

Anyone? No-one?

Originally Posted by viper357

Has anybody got this function to work yet?
I've tried all manner of things but it doesn't seem to work. I initially set it to 14 days, no emails were sent, so I changed it to 7 days and went through each and every banner and reset the notifications, but still no emails have been sent. Is this working for anybody on vb 3.8?

[licensinglinks]

I have recently installed Google AdSense. I notice that the impressions displayed in my AdSense account are significantly less (10 TIMES LESS!!!!) than the impressions the RBS is reporting.

In short, AdSense tells me I've only served a total of 128,000 ad impressions, but RBS tells me that I've delivered way over ONE MILLION ad impressions in total.

I just don't know what to believe!

What's the flipping heck's happening here and how do I fix it???

......or is there nothing wrong with RBS and Google's just ripping me off?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by viper357

Anyone? No-one? (email reminders)

This is a new function which I have only just installed and set for my two newest banners, so I won't know if mine are working for another 90 days.

[rhender]

Hi Videx,

Thanks for the reply.

I do use FileZilla. Can I just put the contents of the RBS' "admincp" into the "admincp" that is already on the server. Is that where those RBS' admin files are supposed to go?

Then I could just put the other files on the root level as well. But still not sure.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by rhender

Can I just put the contents of the RBS' "admincp" into the "admincp" that is already on the server.

This really isn't the place for a complete FTP tutorial, but you can't just drop admincp on admincp because then it will simply make a folder admincp/admincp which is incorrect. You have to do it one of the ways I described earlier.

[rhender]

No, I was asking if I could put the contents (the files inside of the RBS admincp), INTO the admincp folder that is already on the server.

Because if I were to just drag the whole RBS admincp folder over onto the server in Filezilla, a pop up window comes up and says something like "that directory already exists... do you want to overwrite it?"

[rhender]

Ok, well if I don't hear otherwise, I guess that I will just try to change the name of the upload folder to forum and then drop it on the root level of my site, as you described Videx.

I don't have a public_html folder... I'm hosted on GoDaddy. I don't think they use that.

I just call it the root level of my site (where the index.php file lives).

I was thinking that if I started renaming the folders that it may mess up the functionality of the banner system. That's why I was trying to avoid doing that.