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

[jskoh]

hi, can i check if i need to put two banner in a style below the nav bar. how should the code goes? i tried put the code in this way but it does work.

<!--@vbbanners:0@--><!--@vbbanners:1@-->

[salvador21]

No.

I think you just put two Google ad scripts instead of one in the text field for you banner position.

You could put <br /> between the ads for one on top of the other depending on the width of the banners and width of your forum, but this would happen automatically if the forum is not as wide as two banners.

No need to add anything different to templates.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Scooterpig

Am trying to move our banners over to the center of the logo line but not having any luck whatsoever.

Can you please explain what the positions option mean as have no idea sorry?

Thanks..

I'm sorry, too. This is a style problem and I am unable to help you there.

If you get an 'X' on the logo line at the desired location, you also may show a banner there

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by jskoh

hi, can i check if i need to put two banner in a style below the nav bar. how should the code goes? i tried put the code in this way but it does work.

<!--@vbbanners:0@--><!--@vbbanners:1@-->

If you use just two of the same:

<!--@vbbanners:0@--><!--@vbbanners:0@-->

and have at least 2 location: 0 banners in your database, they will show there one beneath each other. The more banners you have in the db, the more they vary

[abqtj]

I think I'm a little lost and have a few questions

-Do I put the <!--@vbbanners:0@--> code in the Advertising/Manage Ads part of the Admin CP?

-in the Rotating Banner System portion of the Admin CP, the URL field is the destination of when someone clicks a banner...and the Image/Flash is the actual URL of where the banner is hosted? Do I need to put the full url? Or if it's in, say, images/ads/SAMPLE.gif, is that enough?

-When I'm placing banners, if I want all of them in one location on my site, do I use Horizontal (0) for the upper right banner, above the navbar?

Thanks and sorry for the questions, I'm usually not this lost with mods. I like this one and it looks like most are having great success with it.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by abqtj

I think I'm a little lost and have a few questions

-Do I put the <!--@vbbanners:0@--> code in the Advertising/Manage Ads part of the Admin CP?

-in the Rotating Banner System portion of the Admin CP, the URL field is the destination of when someone clicks a banner...and the Image/Flash is the actual URL of where the banner is hosted? Do I need to put the full url? Or if it's in, say, images/ads/SAMPLE.gif, is that enough?

-When I'm placing banners, if I want all of them in one location on my site, do I use Horizontal (0) for the upper right banner, above the navbar?

Thanks and sorry for the questions, I'm usually not this lost with mods. I like this one and it looks like most are having great success with it.

This mod allows you to show banners at a place you decide. The available "locations" 0 to 9 are merely intended as banner types, such as horizontal, vertical, square, flash, text, scripts or whatever you may need. Usually you will use at most 2 "locations" for all of your banners. On most of my sites, I use only 1 location.

You may put <!--@vbbanners:0@--> to <!--@vbbanners:9@--> literally everywhere in your styles. The plugin replaces these codes at the end of the page rendering process. If more codes of the same "location" are available, more banners of the same "location" are inserted from the database. However, the mod makes sure that on a single page, only one of the same banner appears. If there are more placeholders on a page than banners in the database, the rest of the banner locations are wiped.

If you use the banners only in your forum, you may use relative HTTP paths. However, on some systems or browsers it may not work, and in any case I'd suggest to use always full paths. File system paths are not considered valid (such as /var/www/htdocs/forum/banners/abc.gif or d:\vhosts\mysite.tld\httpdocs\forum\banners\abc.gi f).

You choose the physical banner location by adding a <!--@vbbanners:0@--> in the template you retain most useful for showing a banner. This mod has no "fixed location" injection system: it does not make changes to styles. It just replaces a placeholder.

In the options, you may change the placeholder. If you change it to, for example: @vbbanners:%d@, then you may add @vbbanners:0@ for a "location" 0 banner even in a normal message, signature or private message from the frontend (unless HTML is enabled in your forum sections). Together with other rules, your signature will then contain always the appropriate banner wherever you move, without having to setup specific rules in all the different places.

Most of the times, we think about how to give a signature, a message or a forum page a rule. With this mod, you set a banner rule instead. If I have a moderator who has a banner placeholder in their signature, they may show motorcycle banners in one place and software banners in another place, without having to worry about the placeholder - which always remains the same.

With this post I have tried to reformulate the help and to make a resume of all the FAQ of this thread. Unfortunately - in all these years - I haven't found yet an universally valid formula to explain how this mod works. But it does work and it does it well

[pmk_1992]

only 2 default google banner is working
when i try add other banners they are all not work

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pmk_1992

only 2 default google banner is working
when i try add other banners they are all not work

Please try your banners on a blank html page first. If they don't work there, they won't in rotating banners either

Then, duplicate one of the default banners and make your changes, it's a good way to get introduced and discover its power.

[pmk_1992]

great
i duplicate one of default then make change
it working now:up:
thank so much

[Scooterpig]

Sorry to be a pest but am wanting the banners to display on all pages yet for me it's not working. if I read the settings correctly for each banner, it says that if I don't check any sections of the forum it will display on all sections, yet we only have it displaying on Forumhome.

Am I therefore required to add the code elsewhere other than Forumhome tog et it to show on all pages please?

Thank you..