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

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by jskoh

hi.. does this mod work well with flash? i install this plugin. however, i input the script and the url, the flash didnt have the url link to it.

If you insert the flash in the image field, it works half and half. The Flash needs to have the right link inside, else it won't work.

If you prefer to use the code, you also will need to cover the flash with a transparent gif, as shown here. Then you may use a different link, but still you will have to code each Flash banner manually.

<div>
    <div style="z-index: -1; position: absolute; height: 468px; width: 60px;">
        <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="468" height="60">
            <param name="movie" value="images/banners/yourflash.swf" />
            <param name="quality" value="high" />
            <param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
            <embed src="images/banners/yourflash.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="468" height="60" ></embed>
        </object>
    </div>
    <div style="z-index: 10; position: absolute; width: 468px; height: 60px;">
        <a href="http://www.domain.tld/yourlink" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="60" src="img/transparent.gif" width="468" /></a>
    </div>
</div>

[MaR?]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

New release: Now we have up to 10 locations, although it may be possible to extend the feature to an almost unlimited number. However, for performance reasons and also for easier maintenance and user feedback, it is currently limited. During the upgrade process, also an expired test banner (Shopping Ad) will be disabled, since it may produce blank entries.

The screenshots are not updated yet, since the upgrade is only necessary for handling more than 2 locations.

GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by MaR?

GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!

Phew, I'm glad you appreciate

[pauldack]

Love this mod, now have it running on all of my sites.

Once modification I'd really love to see is to change the option 'Define here the target window' to be configurable per banner. Some banners I want to open a new tab\window and some banners I want to point to locartion on same site.

Any chance of this in a future release please?

[jskoh]

i find that the "reset" doesnt really work well.. when i hit on the reset button. it doesnt reset the ads.

and del button, when i hit the del button, like deleted ID 1, and ID 1 will nv appear again.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pauldack

Love this mod, now have it running on all of my sites.

Once modification I'd really love to see is to change the option 'Define here the target window' to be configurable per banner. Some banners I want to open a new tab\window and some banners I want to point to locartion on same site.

Any chance of this in a future release please?

I believe this cannot be done anyway. Neither vBulletin nor the banner system are aware on which browser window they are shown - you may show vbulletin forums on a popup window if you like.

But if you have a way to decide which browser windows are what, you just insert the placeholder in the appropriate template and the banner should look up (if the whole thing is also connected to vbulletin).

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by jskoh

i find that the "reset" doesnt really work well.. when i hit on the reset button. it doesnt reset the ads.

and del button, when i hit the del button, like deleted ID 1, and ID 1 will nv appear again.

The reset button works only for changes you have made before saving. It is not a history button to retrieve changes once you have saved. If you need such a thing, it possible to restore the rbs_banners table from a recent backup.

When you delete an ad, the same ID is never used again for a precise reason: the ID field is a counter field and increments (adds 1) to each new entry, no matter how many have existed before. If I would reuse ID's, a link to an old banner may still work and falsify the statistics.

And by the way, I would really appreciate if you would keep banners 1 and 2 in place, since they are proven to run and provide me a minimal income (like about 10 $cents daily fom all installations) in order to maintain this plugin.

[imk]

GRRRRRRRR i can't get it to work

ive uploaded and installed the plugin

added a banner and put the code within a template in my header and still nothing


heres my forum

http://manlystuff.com/forum/index.php

i donno why its not working man.....i have the 2.1 version

am i using the correct code?

[imk]

<!--@vbbanners:%d@-->
ALSO i see nothing under the options setting?

[y2ksw]

If you have the placeholder code in the home page and the product is enabled, there should no placeholder to be found, and in fact there isn't any. This means it does work, but your rules do not fit the condition to show up in home.

Can you please enable one of the standard (first two) banners and check them out before setting up rules, please Those two are guaranteed to run, and if they aren't, something else isn't working as supposed to. Once you get them run, you may try your own