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 LCN2007

I am able to see the images in a browser if I navigate to them.

we don't have to add any html correct should just be the path to the images right?

Maybe you will need the full http://... to the images in order to make them run. Also make sure the images don't require web authentication, else they are not visible to guests.

[JonSidneyB]

Will this allow lets say 20 banners on the main forum page but inside of one of the boards only 5 of the banners appear in rotation.

Targeting banners to a section of the board?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by JonSidneyB

Will this allow lets say 20 banners on the main forum page but inside of one of the boards only 5 of the banners appear in rotation.

Targeting banners to a section of the board?

Yes.

You will have to create 20 banner records for the home page and additional 5 banner records for the specific section.

If you would have 20 global banner records (no filters) and additional 5 banner records for the specific section, the specific section will rotate also the globally visible banners in addition to the section banners.

[JonSidneyB]

Reading now. I see that it will support 10 locations. So that would be The main forum plus 9 of the boards.

Can this be made to do more?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by JonSidneyB

Reading now. I see that it will support 10 locations. So that would be The main forum plus 9 of the boards.

Can this be made to do more?

It doesn't mean that

A location is merely a group of banner types, such as horizontal and vertical, text and graphical banners. You may apply many filters to each of these groups.

I am using this plugin on a commercial site and I actually use 3 locations only. 10 locations are really over the top.

You may have, for example, location 0 banners in the logo, between messages and at the bottom of all of your pages, but you may show only part of all banners in specific forum sections and/or to specific usergroups.

If you think about 10 locations, on a large board you have literally milions of different possibilities to show a single banner.

[iadventure]

I can get position 0 to show great, but when I try 1 or 2 etc. it doesn't show...

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by iadventure

I can get position 0 to show great, but when I try 1 or 2 etc. it doesn't show...

You will also need to add somewhere the <!--@vbbanners:1@--> and <!--@vbbanners:2@--> placeholders in your templates

[FlyB]

Hi,

I'm a noob to all this i've been trying to make your hack work for days now and i finally succed. i'd like to thank you, this feature is super and i'm very exited about it

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by FlyB

Hi,

I'm a noob to all this i've been trying to make your hack work for days now and i finally succed. i'd like to thank you, this feature is super and i'm very exited about it

You are welcome

[kiawah75]

This is a great mod thanks for your work on it. I have successfully put the ads on three different places on the page ie. header, footer and under the threads.

I am having a problem having any of the banners showing up within a thread or posts, has anyone else had the same problem? I also cannot get the vertical ads to display. I have copied positions that are working.

My last problem is that this line shows up just above the Whats going on? section of the forum:
ad_forum_below_threadlist

Anybody know how to get rid of it, it maybe not be related to the mod.

I am a newbee so it is probably just me.

I am using the latest version and 4.02