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

[oxygenthief]

Hello. I'm currently running 3.8.3. Will this work?
Thanks

[Hammertime]

Originally Posted by session-one

so the function of this mod is to rotate banners right, so display random banners? The stuff in the ACP is very confusing :/

Indeed.

Ridiculously difficult to manage.

I remember a time where all you had to do was select the location, copy and paste the html from your affiliate into a box and separate each banner with a "|".

Wtf is all this about putting a separate URL for destination and image location? Ridiculous. I like to visit my affiliate site, copy the code and paste it in, job done. This is too much but I suppose it has it's uses for some.


Uninstalled.

[unknown03]

I installed this mod and it works perfectly in Firefox and Google Chrome. However, in IE8 and Opera the banners show but are not clickable! WTF?!

I checked my code and have been googling all morning but cannot find a solution as to why it won't work for those browsers

Edit: figured it out, turns out when i put the code in for the postbit template, I accidentally didn't close a ">"

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Hammertime

Indeed.

Ridiculously difficult to manage.

I remember a time where all you had to do was select the location, copy and paste the html from your affiliate into a box and separate each banner with a "|".

Wtf is all this about putting a separate URL for destination and image location? Ridiculous. I like to visit my affiliate site, copy the code and paste it in, job done. This is too much but I suppose it has it's uses for some.


Uninstalled.

You can still do that if all you want to do is display banners in specific locations, and you don't need this mod or any other to do that: Just use the ad templates or hard code it.

But if you want to use rotating banners (did you notice that part in the title?), you'll need this mod or something like it. It works and it works well.

[kingharrison]

I had this mod working correctly in 4.02, but I recently upgaded to 4.05 and no matter what I try I cannot get it work. I tried to find a trouble shooting section, but your website seems down.

What is the best way to figure out what is going wrong? Thanks!

[webhead11]

Not able to show ads using 4.05. Default new install and followed directions... Any suggestions? Do I need to insert <!--@vbbanners:%d@--> in a particular template? As I understand it, the default install should show ads in the forums without the need to use the above code in any templates.

[Videx]

Yes, you have to call the banners somehow. I just use the vb ad manager to put RBS above the footer. Ad HTML:

PHP Code:

<div style="text-align:center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> 


[webhead11]

Great! Works now - Thanks!!

[kingharrison]

i have inserted the code and it still doesnt work. i can put in text near the call and that shows up correctly. any idea what i could be doing wrong?

[Videx]

Since the only info you gave us is that you just recently updated from 402 to 405, I would guess you either moved or deleted your ads. RBS itself works fine in 405 here; no changes required after updating.

Can you actually see the ad if you just point a browser to it?