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

[RaceJunkie]

How do you know where each template will show an ad?

ad_board_after_forums =
ad_showthread_firstpost_start =

Has any one compiled a list of the templates with there positions?

[CybaGirl]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

So now, if you have a flash banner and want to wrap it, the swf file URL goes into the Image/ Flash field, and the landing page is URL, and in addition you will click on Flash Banner: yes, and insert the flash dimensions.

If you want click tracking, you enable it as well, which will direct the users to the phantomatic rbs_banner.php?id=xxx script on your site, which is then redirecting to your landing page.

Hi and thanks for getting back to me as well as your in depth reply.

When static images are used there is no issue with two browser windows opening at the same time.

The two browser windows opening at the same time with one window showing the banner and the other window showing the website only happens when using a swf file.

Here is what I have in the banner config page.



So is there something I am still missing here?

As surely two browser windows are not suppose to open at the same time when clicking on a swf banner.

Thanks.

[motorola]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If it is Java script, yes.

You see how this has to be setup with the two default banners coming with the product.

I deleted these banners. Can you please explain here on more time ? How can I have 2 or more banners to show up randomly, not one under the other.

Thank you

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by RaceJunkie

How do you know where each template will show an ad?

ad_board_after_forums =
ad_showthread_firstpost_start =

Has any one compiled a list of the templates with there positions?

Please read the first post and the help file. There are no template lists.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by CybaGirl

Hi and thanks for getting back to me as well as your in depth reply.

When static images are used there is no issue with two browser windows opening at the same time.

The two browser windows opening at the same time with one window showing the banner and the other window showing the website only happens when using a swf file.

Here is what I have in the banner config page.



So is there something I am still missing here?

As surely two browser windows are not suppose to open at the same time when clicking on a swf banner.

Thanks.

Please check first what the swf file does by itself. I believe it does something it shouldn't do.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by motorola

I deleted these banners. Can you please explain here on more time ? How can I have 2 or more banners to show up randomly, not one under the other.

Thank you

I bet you did delete

Please read the help files and eventually watch the help video in the first post to get an idea what you can do with this product. If you can't get it running, please reinstall the product and try the default banners first - they are guaranteed to work

[CybaGirl]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Please check first what the swf file does by itself. I believe it does something it shouldn't do.

Sorry what do you mean?

Here is a direct link to the swf file.

http://www.kawariders.com.au/images/banners/jds.swf

There is no URL link added to this file.

Thanks.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by CybaGirl

Sorry what do you mean?

Here is a direct link to the swf file.

http://www.kawariders.com.au/images/banners/jds.swf

There is no URL link added to this file.

Thanks.

Ok, this file shows a banner and it works perfectly well. I tried it in a production environment.

At this point, it may be a browser issue ...

Or do you iframe the banners?

[Drache]

This is the plugin i've been waiting for.
Thanks

But can i request some more features?

Maybe like impressions cap per day per banner? And 1/24hours freg capping maybe? Would be great to have country filter too.

Sorry if i am asking too much but just my suggestion.

[motorola]

Finally I managed to understand how this mod works .

I have one more question : I need to know if this mod will not affect my affiliate urls ?

I right-clicked on the banner and then I click Copy Link Location and I saw my destination url is http://www.domain.com/forum/rbs_bann...id=12&userid=1, instead of my affiliate url. It's okay like this or will affect the tracking?