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 1adam12

Is there a bit of code that could be part of the swf that could be used to tell that the click has happened to RBS?

You may include a call to http://www.domain.tld/.../rbs_banner.php?id=N to your SWF in order to notify a click, where N is the numerical ID of the banner. Of course, this requires to recompile the SWF. After clicking this link, it will redirect to the URL specified in Manage Banners.

It actually sounds like a good solution

[djbaxter]

Database error after upgrade when selecting either Horizontal Banner List or Vertical Banner List in Admin CP:

SELECT id, name, enabled, impressions, clicks, m_expired 
    FROM rbs_banners
    WHERE vertical=1 
    ORDER BY id;

MySQL Error   : Unknown column 'vertical' in 'where clause'

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Database error after upgrade when selecting either Horizontal Banner List or Vertical Banner List in Admin CP:

SELECT id, name, enabled, impressions, clicks, m_expired 
    FROM rbs_banners
    WHERE vertical=1 
    ORDER BY id;
 
MySQL Error   : Unknown column 'vertical' in 'where clause'

Thanks.

Fixed in 2.2.1

[1adam12]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

You may include a call to http://www.domain.tld/.../rbs_banner.php?id=N to your SWF in order to notify a click, where N is the numerical ID of the banner. Of course, this requires to recompile the SWF. After clicking this link, it will redirect to the URL specified in Manage Banners.

It actually sounds like a good solution

Nice! That's great. I'll have the flash monkey person try that and report back.

[1adam12]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

You may include a call to http://www.domain.tld/.../rbs_banner.php?id=N to your SWF in order to notify a click, where N is the numerical ID of the banner. Of course, this requires to recompile the SWF. After clicking this link, it will redirect to the URL specified in Manage Banners.

It actually sounds like a good solution

It works! You should probably add this to your documentation. Thanks for the quick help!

[all-in]

How can you find out how many banners can be used at the present time? Also how can you increase that amount? I found this, but not sure if it means anything @vbbanners_vertical@<p> . Thanks

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by all-in

How can you find out how many banners can be used at the present time? Also how can you increase that amount? I found this, but not sure if it means anything @vbbanners_vertical@<p> . Thanks

You could read the thread...

[all-in]

Really...you dont say....lol. I did read the thread, but must have overlooked that part. Thanks for the help.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by 1adam12

It works! You should probably add this to your documentation. Thanks for the quick help!

You are welcome

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by all-in

How can you find out how many banners can be used at the present time? Also how can you increase that amount? I found this, but not sure if it means anything @vbbanners_vertical@<p> . Thanks

With version 2.1.x the limit is bound to 2 different locations, with 2.2.x the limit is bound to 10 different locations, and the number of visible items in your database.

Thus you may have as many banners on a single page as you wish, as long as no banner has to be loaded more than once, because the banner system will show each entry not more than once on a single page.

In other words, if you wish to show 100 banners at each page, you need at least 100 entries capable to show up, and of course, 100 placeholders in your template.