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

[MIAPLAYA]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Did you try the default banners and did they work? Have you inserted a placeholder into the templates? BTW, the check on Forum Home overrides the forum selections.

I did try the default banners and got nothing there either. I also treid with that check box on and off. As for inserting a placeholder in the templates I saw a reference made to that but nothing in the Installation Instructions on altering the template. Sorry I'm coming from the phpBB world which was drastically different obviously. This is what I followed:

Installing the Rotating Banner System software is simple. First, upload all files and folders you find in the upload folder to your forum home (where you find the index.php file of your forum).




Then login to your vBulletin board, and install a new product. Browse for the product's XML file (product-rbs.xml), and select the overwrite radio button, if you make an upgrade or want to replace an existing installation.




After clicking on the Import button one new table is created: [prefix]rbs_banners. Also a few default banners will be inserted. These records can be deleted or overwritten. If you leave them inserted and enabled, our advertising will be shown to your forum users, and we receive a little fee for each click your users make. It is a simple way to passively contribute to keep this software constantly updated.




Please note that the lang-it-rbs.xml file is intended to use only on boards where the Italian language is installed and used as default.

Did I miss a step somewhere else in the chm?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by ilanur

very nice, but what about a weighted impression option? i need to set a percentage of impressions above the total.. i don't know if iexlained it well.. hope you understood

If you need to show a banner let's say at 2:1 weight, insert the first banner twice, and voil? ...

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by MIAPLAYA

I did try the default banners and got nothing there either. I also treid with that check box on and off. As for inserting a placeholder in the templates I saw a reference made to that but nothing in the Installation Instructions on altering the template. Sorry I'm coming from the phpBB world which was drastically different obviously. This is what I followed:



Did I miss a step somewhere else in the chm?

First you need to get the default banners run. For example, insert in one template e.g at the bottom of the navbar, a placeholder

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->

until the banner shows up. Once it is shown, you can try other options and templates. Once you are confident how it works, all the rest will be glass-clear

[MIAPLAYA]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

First you need to get the default banners run. For example, insert in one template e.g at the bottom of the navbar, a placeholder

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->

until the banner shows up. Once it is shown, you can try other options and templates. Once you are confident how it works, all the rest will be glass-clear

That's what I was missing. Banners are up and rotating. Thanks!

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If you need to show a banner let's say at 2:1 weight, insert the first banner twice, and voil? ...

Yes, that's what I did from the start. Works great.

[jkcerda]

umm, need to check it out

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by jkcerda

umm, need to check it out

umm, thanks for sharing

[pitzerwm]

I haven't installed this yet, just read all of the posts, sounds great and something that will solve my problems on my Forum. So I'm on the way to install.

I also have a HTML site, is there an easy way to add this to the pages of a HTML site? autocareforum.com

Thanks, for all of your work and obvious patience with us VB challenged souls.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pitzerwm

I haven't installed this yet, just read all of the posts, sounds great and something that will solve my problems on my Forum. So I'm on the way to install.

I also have a HTML site, is there an easy way to add this to the pages of a HTML site? autocareforum.com

Thanks, for all of your work and obvious patience with us VB challenged souls.

There is no easy way to install this on a simple HTML page. You may try to include a specifically created php script via IFRAME, though.

[pitzerwm]

Ok, I am a noobie, and I think that I installed it as per instructions, and I do have a sample/default banner at the bottom of my page/forum. What I can't seem to find is where to add more banners. I am the admin as well as the janitor.

Where exactly do I find that last screen shot.

Thanks