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 nick221

Installed mod fine. I can place banners no problem. It's my understanding that I can have as many banners as I want say in Horizontal (0) Banner list and they will all rotate in one after the other. If this is correct it doesn't work for me. Any ideas to help me figure it out?

They will rotate randomly and they do

You may check this if you disable the ones you have already seen. If they don't show you probably haven't setup the right rule.

You may need to use refresh on yourself, but on a life site the banners rotate very well and almost evenly.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by strudinox

I'm not sure if my question has been answered somewhere in the previous 80+ pages, but is there a way to add more locations?

It was answered in the way that each single location can be reused for N banners and rarely you would find enough occasions to use all 10 banner locations together

[strudinox]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

It was answered in the way that each single location can be reused for N banners and rarely you would find enough occasions to use all 10 banner locations together

Yeah, I understand that for 99% of sites out there. I'm putting together a site where I need many more. Would adding more locations be hard to incorporate?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by strudinox

Yeah, I understand that for 99% of sites out there. I'm putting together a site where I need many more. Would adding more locations be hard to incorporate?

Pretty much ... it will need several additions in many places and in the end it will slow down the process of parsing the banners into the pages.

You are free to do these changes for your own ... I don't like to sound cynical but 10 locations are really enough if you use them together with all other imaginable filters (usergroups, sections, date/time) I agree with you, if you skip these settings and make it a location based setup. But you can reuse one location, for example, to show in each of your forum sections a different and dedicated banner set. Most banner software is location based, and this means you have to create for each banner a location. Here, you can use one location for many different banners and the scope can be different.

[strudinox]

Thanks for your reply. If it requires that many changes to the code, then I won't worry about it. The reason I need so many is I planned to use this mod for an additional use alongside advertizing while using custom placement via the code tag.

Maybe creating additional locations can be an additional future in the future?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by strudinox

Thanks for your reply. If it requires that many changes to the code, then I won't worry about it. The reason I need so many is I planned to use this mod for an additional use alongside advertizing while using custom placement via the code tag.

Maybe creating additional locations can be an additional future in the future?

I see that you would need at most 2 locations. 1 location for the site advertising and another for the code tag. Since you can define a different banner for each forum section and still use the same location (tag code), each code tag would require just as many banners of that section in the database as you probably may show on a single page. Say you have 10 posts and 5 code tags per page, you may use location 0 five times on the same page and setup 5 different (or same) banners for that forum section, and you are done. If you need the same scheme on another section but different banners, you just filter that section with another 5 banners. And in the same time you have still 9 locations to fit your site advertising much the same way

[strudinox]

Ohhh, that makes sense, I didn't know you could use the same code tag with the same ID multiple times on the same page. In that case, 9 locations should be plenty! Thanks for your help on this one

[valdet]

Hi Giovanni,

I am trying to have my banners (for guests only) between the first and second post of my threads. However it is not showing the banners at all

Here is the code I am using on postbit_legacy:

<if condition="$show['guest']">
<if condition="(($post[postcount] % $vboptions[maxposts] == 1) and !$GLOBALS['vbulletin']->GPC['ajax'])">

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr><br />
<td align="center">
#reklama:2#
</td>
</tr>
</table>

</if>
</if>

I have the same custom code/ placeholder (#reklama:2#) working just fine in navbar template, but it is showing blank in postbit_legacy.

Any hints how to make this work ?

Thanks for your time.

[y2ksw]

Maybe:

($post[postcount] % $vboptions[maxposts]) == 1

makes the difference? I believe without extra parentesis it operates as if:

$post[postcount] % ($vboptions[maxposts] == 1)

The expression may fail due to a division by 0 and thus never execute ...

[valdet]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Maybe:

($post[postcount] % $vboptions[maxposts]) == 1

makes the difference? I believe without extra parentesis it operates as if:

$post[postcount] % ($vboptions[maxposts] == 1)

The expression may fail due to a division by 0 and thus never execute ...

The conditional statement which I posted works in every other case. It is working for rotating banners through a simpler mt_rand () plugin. Though I like your solution better, due to tracking capabilities and better banners management.

Here's a sample link with banner (through mt_rand() plugin) between first and second post.

http://www.insurance-forums.net/foru...-t30355-3.html

Note the banner, on navbar is produced by your product but the one between first and second posts is the other plugin. If you have time to check, in that link, I left the placeholder between the banner and the Quick Register form. You will notice it is returning a blank.


I may be wrong so please correct if I am doing so, but my assumption is that the limitation that it should only be run on global_complete hook is maybe causing to stop displaying in postbit_legacy.


Thanks,
Val.