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

[ecky]

I accidentally deleted the default 2 google ads that came with this plugin. Instead of re-installing from scratch and just in case I possibly break a working installation, would it be possible to please post the configuration settings so I can reinstall google ads manually into the admin control panel?

Thanks

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Scooterpig

Sorry to be a pest but am wanting the banners to display on all pages yet for me it's not working. if I read the settings correctly for each banner, it says that if I don't check any sections of the forum it will display on all sections, yet we only have it displaying on Forumhome.

Am I therefore required to add the code elsewhere other than Forumhome tog et it to show on all pages please?

Thank you..

If you put a placeholder in the header or footer template, it will show up on all pages. If you have used only the forumhome template, it will show only on forumhome, of course

Some great places are the templates beginning with ad_, such as ad_navbar_below.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by ecky

I accidentally deleted the default 2 google ads that came with this plugin. Instead of re-installing from scratch and just in case I possibly break a working installation, would it be possible to please post the configuration settings so I can reinstall google ads manually into the admin control panel?

Thanks

Just backup your rbs_banners table, take note of your RBS Options (vbulletin options) if you have made any changes there and reinstall. Eventually you will have to export the translations as well, if you have changed it. Then reapply the RBS Options if necessary and you are done.

RBS is safe to reinstall, but of course it may need to do some additional work, if you have multiple language support and changed options.

I will not give the queries in order to insert the default banners, because doing so it would be very unsafe.

[ecky]

Sorry, this has went way over my head.

I've already updated to v2.2.6 and know nothing about tables and queries. I have about 8 adverts rotating exactly as they should and I'm concerned that I would lose all this data.

I expected a simple way to restart google ads again would be just to edit them in the same manner in which I added my own custom adverts to the banner options via the admin control panel?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by ecky

Sorry, this has went way over my head.

I've already updated to v2.2.6 and know nothing about tables and queries. I have about 8 adverts rotating exactly as they should and I'm concerned that I would lose all this data.

I expected a simple way to restart google ads again would be just to edit them in the same manner in which I added my own custom adverts to the banner options via the admin control panel?

Well, you may create 2 new banners and paste:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
google_ad_client = "pub-8477879996596626";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as";
google_ad_type = "text";
google_ad_channel = "";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

and

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-8477879996596626";
google_ad_slot = "8172517593";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

in the "Text" field. Don't forget the title and the expiration date/time

[ecky]

Exactly what I was looking for, this works perfectly.
Thank you very much!:up:

[Sports Investor]

Nice and easy Mod.

I had to duplicate one of the default ads to get it working, but it works like a charm now. I can even put the code in the advertisement areas that are already available.

Thanks!

[MNbiker]

Just installed on our 4.02 site w/CMS. Had it working perfectly in less than 30 minutes.

Great Mod!

-Steve

p.s. Thanks for the Flash tutorial and documentation.

[Drache]

looks nice. does this have the ability to count views and clicks? for example auto change to next banner once it's been viewed 1000times. and counts the click rate as well?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Drache

looks nice. does this have the ability to count views and clicks? for example auto change to next banner once it's been viewed 1000times. and counts the click rate as well?

It counts views and for certain banner types (pure images and flash with wrapper), the clicks as well. It allows also to limit the number of impressions and clicks (if clicks can be counted).

You may also limit the time and forums, and show banners only to a certain group of users.

However, it does not show banners progressively (attend one banner's viewing limits).