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

[zackw]

Originally Posted by semprot

Open the XML file.. Look at the 351st line (v2.3.4) there is a line looks like this

PHP Code:

$url = $bburl . '/rbs_banner.php?id=' . $rs['id'] . '&userid=' . $rbs_userid; 


Change it to

PHP Code:

$url = $bburl . '/rbs_banner.php?id=' . $rs['id'] . '&userid=' . $rbs_userid; 


And i believe last step is reupload the XML file.

Yes that's what I was looking for! I had searched in all the included files but never looked in the xml itself. I hope this is the only location in code where the URLs are formed or I may have to make this change elsewhere.

Now the developer needs to add this to the source too.

Thanks!

[xtragic]

That video tutorial is horrible. Can someone just make a Youtube vid (with audio) tut for us that are visual?

Also, does this work for 4.1.10/11?

[vantastic]

Originally Posted by xtragic

Also, does this work for 4.1.10/11?

Yep It works on 4.1.11

[webmaster74]

grazzie mille y2ksw!

the mod is just great. I installed it and everybody on my site will love it surely.

I only regret that I can't use specific paramteres with the links, such as rel=nofollow

ciao!

[metalguy639]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

You may use the flash wrapper (yes, it loads most images, too) and define a size (both).

Hi what do you mean by this? I want to resize some banners but none of the banners I'm using are flash based. I tried putting the values into the flash banner sizes and nothing happened.

[addamroy]

Awesome I've been using this, so far so good.

Can i ask a question though?

Is there anyway you can make this addon track clicks even if we don't use an image?

I'd assume if we use an image and a link url, the system will generate a unique link for the ad, that when clicked will add a click to the counter. Is there any way you can have the add-on display this link for us on the manage banner screen so we can put this link into the ad text manually?

The reason I say this is because I use this addon to display text ads, and not banners, but would still be able to track clicks on these ads as well, I believe generating the unique URL for us without requiring an image would be awesome.

[Paul.]

Apparently, this add on has closed my forum.

''This service is unavailable''.
I will remove all the uploaded stuff and hopefully it sorts it?
I can not get on the forum to remove or disable the add on.

nvalid SQL:
SELECT *
FROM rbs_banners
WHERE enabled=1
AND startdate<=1334402508
AND enddate>=1334402508
AND IF(forumhome, 0=0, IF(forumids='', 1, FIND_IN_SET('0', forumids)))
AND IF(maximpressions>0, impressions<maximpressions, 1)
AND IF(clicktrack, maxclicks=0 OR (maxclicks>0 AND clicks<maxclicks), 1);

MySQL Error : Table '321forumdb.rbs_banners' doesn't exist
Error Number : 1146
Request Date : Saturday, April 14th 2012 @ 06:21:48 AM
Error Date : Saturday, April 14th 2012 @ 06:21:49 AM
Script : http://www.EDITED.com/forum/blog.php...rro&m=8&y=1989
Referrer :
IP Address : ed.it.ed.it
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

[addamroy]

Originally Posted by Paul.

Apparently, this add on has closed my forum.

''This service is unavailable''.
I will remove all the uploaded stuff and hopefully it sorts it?
I can not get on the forum to remove or disable the add on.

That's why they say you should backup your database and files prior to installing new modifications Just sayin...

Delete the files you uploaded via FTP and delete the tables from your database created by the addon, that's a start.

[addamroy]

I just noticed that the click tracking URL for image banners is not randomized at all.

A user could essentially take this url, and keep refreshing it in their browser over and over to simulate clicks on someone's ad.

If the URL was randomized before it's loaded, you could eliminate this and could cover up the banner id and user id from the URL.

Is this possible?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Paul.

Apparently, this add on has closed my forum.

''This service is unavailable''.
I will remove all the uploaded stuff and hopefully it sorts it?
I can not get on the forum to remove or disable the add on.

Even if some terrible error is preventing the forum from loading, you should still be able to get to the Admin Control Panel as it doesn't display banners.
http://myforum.com/forum/admincp/index.php