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

[Scalemotorcars]

Has anyone figured out how to display this on Photopost? Works great with everything else. Maybe some way to add a THIS_SCRIPT to one of the files....

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Scalemotorcars

Has anyone figured out how to display this on Photopost? Works great with everything else. Maybe some way to add a THIS_SCRIPT to one of the files....

Photopost does not use the standard page rendering, thus the banners are entirely skipped from their pages.

[bazookajoe]

Is there a modification that would allow a banner or banners to be placed in specific spots on every page in a thread?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bazookajoe

Is there a modification that would allow a banner or banners to be placed in specific spots on every page in a thread?

not that I know of ... except inbuilt advertising ...

[SWSUSA]

Hi! Prompt how to make two banners in rotation on the homepage?

=======

Привет! Подскажите, как сделать два баннера в ротации на главной странице?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by SWSUSA

Hi! Prompt how to make two banners in rotation on the homepage?

=======

Привет! Подскажите, как сделать два баннера в ротации на главной странице?

You would use one placeholder (location) and 2 entries for that placeholder in the database.

[designguy]

This is similar to what I'm trying to do. I want to put a banner in between every 2nd post so I have the code inserted into the postbit template. Now, here's my problem: The group I'm pulling the banners from only has 3 banners in it. On a long thread, this only fills up the first three locations and then all the rest of the potential spaces are blank. I want these banners to repeat in these spaces down the page, not just show them once on the page. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this with this mod. Is there any way we can get a modification that allows a banner to be repeated on a page without entering multiple instances of the same banner?

-Designguy

Originally Posted by rhody401

It'll do it if you change the postbit code and insert the trigger(s). I have it display with this mod every 5th post, and also after the last post. This is the code I used, which I believe I found from a previous post in this thread:

PHP Code:

BANNER AFTER LAST POST HACK Added this mod to our forum on 3/1/12 

GO TO: Admin Console -> Styles & Templates -> Style Manager -> edit template ->  postbit templates -> postbit_legacy  

......at the END add this, if you want it to display random ad after the LAST post:

<vb:if condition="$post['islastshown']">
 <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div><br />
</vb:if> 


.....at the VERY END add this:  (puts random ad after 5th and 10th posts)

<vb:if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread' AND (($post['postcount'] % 15 == 10) OR $post['postcount'] == 10)">
    <div class="thread_controls">
        <div style="width: 100%; text-align: center">
            <!--@vbbanners:0@-->
        </div>
    </div>
<vb:elseif condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread' AND (($post['postcount'] % 15 == 5) OR $post['postcount'] == 5)" />
    <div class="thread_controls">
        <div style="width: 100%; text-align: center">
            <!--@vbbanners:0@-->
        </div>
    </div>
</vb:if> 


Hope this is helpful! We LOVE the RBS add-on!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by designguy

This is similar to what I'm trying to do. I want to put a banner in between every 2nd post so I have the code inserted into the postbit template. Now, here's my problem: The group I'm pulling the banners from only has 3 banners in it. On a long thread, this only fills up the first three locations and then all the rest of the potential spaces are blank. I want these banners to repeat in these spaces down the page, not just show them once on the page. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this with this mod. Is there any way we can get a modification that allows a banner to be repeated on a page without entering multiple instances of the same banner?

-Designguy

It's a rotating banner plugin and thus the only way to repeat contents is to duplicate banners and give them eventually a different weight because grouping of similar banners is more unlikely.

[nxtgen]

I know this is an older mod but it still works great.. Has anyone else run into the issue of Google marking the links as phishing? My site now shows up as phishing constantly.

[djbaxter]

I'm using it on two forums and have for years. I've never run into that problem at all.

What is the link structure you are using in your ads?