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

[Greek76]

Can't seem to get this to rotate for nothing. I have also clicked vertical for each banner I add. It only shows the first banner and thats it. I know its probably something small that I overlooked but can't seem to figure out what. Thanks! Great mod btw..

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Greek76

Can't seem to get this to rotate for nothing. I have also clicked vertical for each banner I add. It only shows the first banner and thats it. I know its probably something small that I overlooked but can't seem to figure out what. Thanks! Great mod btw..

Try to add just another banner (different image) with the same settings as the one you see. Then, adjust the options to your wishes.

I suppose you have only one single banner which can actually show for the given options, and thus you'll see only that. There are many factors which may limit a banner to show in certain places. When starting, best practice is not to select any option and work with the basic default options. Also keeping the samples is a great help.

[Greek76]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Try to add just another banner (different image) with the same settings as the one you see. Then, adjust the options to your wishes.

I suppose you have only one single banner which can actually show for the given options, and thus you'll see only that. There are many factors which may limit a banner to show in certain places. When starting, best practice is not to select any option and work with the basic default options. Also keeping the samples is a great help.

I figured it out. It was the time and dates..

[SVTCobraLTD]

To upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.1.0 I just reupload all the contents of the download? It will not replace my current information will it?

[zorag]

It would be FAR better if this mod could work with multiple banner locations using specific custom code zones like this:

@vbbanners_468x60_header@
@vbbanners_728x90_footer@
@vbbanners_125x125_zone1@
@vbbanners_125x125_zone2@

etc.. etc..

You would then just enter the codes into the Style Manager/Ad Location Templates for the areas throughout the forum. Maybe add a Type category in the create banner page which over rules the @vbbanners@ code allowing users to enter custom code as above.

Just my 2c - would be much more powerful !!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by SVTCobraLTD

To upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.1.0 I just reupload all the contents of the download? It will not replace my current information will it?

The data in the database remains untouched

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by zorag

It would be FAR better if this mod could work with multiple banner locations using specific custom code zones like this:

@vbbanners_468x60_header@
@vbbanners_728x90_footer@
@vbbanners_125x125_zone1@
@vbbanners_125x125_zone2@

etc.. etc..

You would then just enter the codes into the Style Manager/Ad Location Templates for the areas throughout the forum. Maybe add a Type category in the create banner page which over rules the @vbbanners@ code allowing users to enter custom code as above.

Just my 2c - would be much more powerful !!

I'm sure it would, but then it won't be a simple tool any more, since the infinite number of possible areas would not allow to use the standard options, nor understand on the fly where what is shown.

For the moment I believe the winning applications are those which remain simple to maintain and address a large number of users. Such an addition would create very small benefits to most of the users, but add a great number of additional problems.

I have a limited extension in mind and scheduled, though, for up to 10 different locations, which is about the upper limit I would ever suggest to use, and which would just fit into the vBulletin options

[iJoe]

I installed the language file and it's all gone italian Any way of reverting it back to english?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by iJoe

I installed the language file and it's all gone italian Any way of reverting it back to english?

Reinstall the product.

If you have data stored you would not like to loose, make a backup of the rbs_banner table first, reinstall and then restore this table.

Anyway it shouldn't go all italian unless you have installed and chosen to use Italian as the default language ...

[bwcbob]

Mine is now Italian to!!!

Reinstalled 3 times, rebuilt the only language, ENGLISH, on the forum... still shows up in Italian... The phrases in the ENGLISH section are well.... english...