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 boodog

Thanks Videx. I have an automated script running on my server that makes daily database backups for me. My hosting company help me set it up. So far I've not had a failure so I've never needed to do a restore. So I assume those tables are in my backup. I thought maybe it'd be easier to back up just the banner tables in case something goes wrong with my upgrade. Sadly, I have little knowledge of database related things.

You are fine with this daily backup. In worst case you would ask your hosting provider to restore those one or two tables. There is however no event I could recall that critical. With upgrading (no reinstall) the product there is no logical way to loose any data and backup is just a precaution you already have on a daily basis.

[boodog]

Thanks, Giovanni! I got it upgraded ok, but cannot find the public banner statistics link which is supposed to be below the navbuttons. It's not there. Have I done something wrong? I'd like my customers to be able to see their banner stats.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by boodog

Thanks, Giovanni! I got it upgraded ok, but cannot find the public banner statistics link which is supposed to be below the navbuttons. It's not there. Have I done something wrong? I'd like my customers to be able to see their banner stats.

You need also to replace all files of the product. If the files are not replaced, the new features are not visible.

A few FTP servers don't allow to replace files on the fly, thus you need an FTP client which finds out that flaw and makes a delete-copy instead. You will have to flag the destination files to "overwrite".

[boodog]

Thanks Giovanni! I have made a contribution to you via PayPal. I hope others will too. Your hard work with this product is very much appreciated.

[Gripi]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Click tracking does not work with scripts unless they are specifically crafted. The help file and the option itself says:

Click Tracking: If this option is enabled, a script counts the number of clicks on standard images. This option has no effect on scripts.

oh okey.. sorry i miss that part in the help file.

and is it possible to make 1 banner to have more than 1 position?

without having to create the duplicate, will be nice if yes

thanks once again

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Gripi

oh okey.. sorry i miss that part in the help file.

and is it possible to make 1 banner to have more than 1 position?

without having to create the duplicate, will be nice if yes

thanks once again

Nope, sorry.

If you craft a script specifically, you may duplicate the banners, but refer to one click tracker only. However, this will work only with scripts

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by boodog

Thanks Giovanni! I have made a contribution to you via PayPal. I hope others will too. Your hard work with this product is very much appreciated.

Thank you very much!

[boodog]

You're welcome! The stats page for customers is a really nice upgrade.

[Toorak Times]

Hi Guys,

Just uploaded, thanks. Will get it happening over the next couple of days. I'll send you Oz love to your paypal

[attroll]

I have been running flash banners without a problem for over a year with this add on. Recently I had one customer send me a flash banner that will not display with this add on. It does display if I view the flash banner in the browser by itself. But when I insert the flash banner in the add on, it will not display. It does not display but where it is suppose to display I can click and it will take me to the url that I specified for the banner in the setup. I have other flash banners that display without any problems.

Has anyone else run into this problem?

I would really appreciate any help, please.

I tried to attached the flash banner here but it says invalid file.