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

[LordDB]

Thx, y2ksw! With that Addon, it now does what I want, it autorefreshes! Just got to tweak it a little!

[Videx]

Changed files: rbs_admin.php

So all we have to do to update to 2.3.2 is upload and overwrite this one file.?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bad2dbone

this add on is to confusing to get up had it for about a month and still can't watch the video enough to get it work it's only 3 steps so idk why im having such trouble who knows.......

Can you explain what you are looking for?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by dmm2020

Problem:

For banner positions greater than 10 it does not work. Either the code don't even show at all when I try to put it in my blog OR the raw code shows in the page source but not the ad. Has the >10 mode been tested at all?

Have you changed the relative option in vbulletin options?

[dmm2020]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Have you changed the relative option in vbulletin options?

Yes I have. The input fields to place the ad changes when I made the adjustments, but when I put <!--@vbbanners:10@--> in an ad spot, nothing appears. If I put <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, my header ads appear in that spot.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by dmm2020

With the latest upgrade, the following text in the rbs configuration UI should be changed since the limit really does not apply - might be confusing for some otherwise.

The option for <> 10 locations is unsupported.

Thus it may be confusing, but most users will not try to go over the top 10 anyway. The option allows you, as a perfect insider, to override an inbuilt and suggested value with one you retain necessary no matter what, and since you know what you are doing, the help would not make any sense to you anyway

However, if you have a suggestion how to change the advice, I will happily include it into the documentation and user interface.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by dmm2020

Yes I have. The input fields to place the ad changes when I made the adjustments, but when I put <!--@vbbanners:10@--> in an ad spot, nothing appears. If I put <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, my header ads appear in that spot.

Ok, I didn't try spot 10 but 19 ... so I'll do that now. Hold on

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Ok, I didn't try spot 10 but 19 ... so I'll do that now. Hold on

Ok, I see what probably happened. Having inserted the maximum count you haven't taken in account that the banner locations start from 0, and thus go from 0...(n-1). Since 10 locations are the default, they go from 0...9.

Here we go with testing. If I set 11 postions, I may cover location 10, since that would be perfectly legal. When I later fall back to 10, because I feel I have already enough positions, the side effects begin to show.

1. Set your max locations, e.g. 20: Attachment 130257
2. Setup your template: Attachment 130258
3. Setup a banner
3. Test: Attachment 130259

For me, it worked both for 10 and for 19, and of course with the other banner on top of the map, at position 1

[oddmud]

What does the star (*) mean next to a banner detail in the list of banners? I can't find the answer here or in the .PDF.

EDIT: I'm guessing it mean's expired, but it's still shows them in the "Enabled" list.

EDIT: I'm an idiot.

[dmm2020]

Did you do it in the CMS or blog area? Where it is failing for me is in the blog sidebar, but if I used the default ad manager for vB it comes through just fine.

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Ok, I see what probably happened. Having inserted the maximum count you haven't taken in account that the banner locations start from 0, and thus go from 0...(n-1). Since 10 locations are the default, they go from 0...9.

Here we go with testing. If I set 11 postions, I may cover location 10, since that would be perfectly legal. When I later fall back to 10, because I feel I have already enough positions, the side effects begin to show.

1. Set your max locations, e.g. 20: Attachment 130257
2. Setup your template: Attachment 130258
3. Setup a banner
3. Test: Attachment 130259

For me, it worked both for 10 and for 19, and of course with the other banner on top of the map, at position 1