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

[ofir24]

i didn't say it's not working, cause it's working, but some option doesn't work, example:
i try: "ad thread last post content" look for ads on the thread, nothing.

[metalguy639]

Here is a simple way to add your banners in a CMS widget.

You will need to create a PHP Execution by doing the following:

Step 1:

1. In the admincp go to vBulletin CMS>Widgets
2. Click on "Create New Widget" at the bottom.
3. Choose "PHP Direct Execution" in the Widget Type drop down at the top.
4. Give your widget a title - do not make it too long as your box will be whatever size you have in your CMS.
5. Now click the "Save" button.

Step 2:

1. Go to vBulletin CMS>Widgets and select the widget you just made.
2. Click on the "Configure" link all the way to the right.
3. Delete all the test inside the box when it pops up.
4. Place this code in the box:

$templater = vB_Template::create('banner_sidebar');
$output = $templater->render();

5. Now click the "Save" button.

Step 3:

1. Go to Styles & Templates>Style Manager click the drop down box on the right side and choose "Add New Template".
2. In the "Title" box put "banner_sidebar" without the quotes.
3. Now in the large box below place your code for your banners like you would any other template. For instance I put this:

<div align="center">@vbbanners:4@</div><br />
<div align="center">@vbbanners:5@</div><br />
<div align="center">@vbbanners:6@</div><br />
<div align="center">@vbbanners:7@</div><br />
<div align="center">@vbbanners:8@</div><br />
<div align="center">@vbbanners:9@</div>

I'm using vBSEO so that is why it may look different from yours.

4. Now click the "Save" button.

Step 4:

1. Enter your banner info using the positions that you put code to in your new template and save the banners.

[metalguy639]

Originally Posted by wampforum

Ok I'm stumped!! I have been running this mod fine for months.
But now I have a problem. I currently run a single ad placement in the header just below the log in as well as the 2 default VB ads under navbar and footer.
What I wish to do is place a rotational ad into a cms widget. I can get the widget to work fine when using:
<!--@vbbanners:0@--> But adding banners to another list and using that instead won't work.
It seems I have the nth placeholder in options set to <!--@vbbanners:0@--> so it wont show anything else I assume?
Reading this thread it seems that should be <!--@vbbanners:%@--> instead but changing that makes the ads in the header disappear.
So It seems I can only show ads in <!--@vbbanners:0@--> with that same code as the nth placeholder.
What am I doing wrong? I use the <!--@vbbanners:0@--> code in the ad location template

Help?!!

Originally Posted by Big-Pete

I can't get this to show up in a CMS widget, Do i need to use a static html widget? and do i just put @vbbanners:%d@ in it??

I have vbseo installed, I've changed the place holder as per the PDF but still can't get it to work.

Originally Posted by vikris

One of the greatest addons!!! I have several questions though:

1. Will it be in the future more than 10 positions?

2. Some of the ads are displaying also in the forums (specifically header and footer) how to remove that? I like the ads to be displayed only on CMS page.

3. Maybe this question is out of the thread, but I have to ask: Is there a way to setup a widget on the main CMS to show friendly sites with small graphic and link to them?

Thanks a lot again!

Regards,

vikris

Originally Posted by dweber

I would like to add a place holder into a static HTML Widget box on the "Front Page" but am a newbie.

Could anyone give me a sample line of HTML code to insert the placeholder (@vbanners@) into?

Thanks in advance.

See this post: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1542

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by ofir24

i didn't say it's not working, cause it's working, but some option doesn't work, example:
i try: "ad thread last post content" look for ads on the thread, nothing.

Some options need additional work to do, which however have nothing to do with my plugin.

For example, the inbuilt ad locations of vbulletin require you to define additional rules from within Advertising, else they will not show at all. In these definitions you would use then the RBS placeholders instead of other HTML and everything works out just fine

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by metalguy639

Here is a simple way to add your banners in a CMS widget. (...)

Very nice! :up:

[djbaxter]

I need to exclude the banners from a specific mobile style. What's the simplest way to do this?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I need to exclude the banners from a specific mobile style. What's the simplest way to do this?

If your banner locations are defined in the Master style, probably it will need moving them into the single styles.

I imagine however, you are using the advertising ... then maybe selecting the style will help.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If your banner locations are defined in the Master style, probably it will need moving them into the single styles.

I imagine however, you are using the advertising ... then maybe selecting the style will help.

Selecting the style isn't helpful because you can only select one. I only want to EXCLUDE one.

But this worked. I edited the RBS Banner Insertion plugin as follows:

I inserted

/** don't display banners for Mobile 2 style **/
if (STYLEID!=134) {

at the top of the "Banner Insertion" plugin and

}

at the very bottom.

May I suggest that an option to exclude certain styles might be added in a new version?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

May I suggest that an option to exclude certain styles might be added in a new version?

I don't think so ...

I would have made for each style an ad, instead, if I really had to, or rather not used the ad system at all and modified the relative templates in a way that I could do without it. As a matter of fact, using the ad system slows down the forums quite a bit ... it is useful and simple, but not a long term solution for heavily loaded systems

[y2ksw]

@all

I soon will review the code and add a few features. Is there anything you may wish to add?