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]

PS: Would you mind to click installed?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by wAnBoA

I'm using this mod. It's awesome.
Now i have one problem.
Is there a way to have another set of rotating banners for another theme?

If your different theme is assigned to different forums, you may create a banner set which is shown only on those.

Otherwise, you may use the horizontal banners for one theme and the vertical ones for another. Of course, you will not be able to have horizontal and vertical banners, but only one type.

[raznaran]

I don't know what I am doing wrong. Everything seems to work. I get a rectangular border where the banner is supposed to be.

This is what I am using to code the picture. It seems like it should work:

<img src="/images/trollspread2.gif" width="580" height="215" />

The images directory I am referring to is at the same level as /forums.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Richard

[Gigio755]

Originally Posted by Apolo.

Hi Giovanni,

When I clic on Rotating Banner System - Options, all I get to the right is an empty page.

Which should be the contents of that page?

Thank you.

me too.

i have the same exact problem with the Options page in Rotating Banner System (vbulletin 3.7.3 pl1)

i don't understand what can i do to solve this problem

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by raznaran

I don't know what I am doing wrong. Everything seems to work. I get a rectangular border where the banner is supposed to be.

This is what I am using to code the picture. It seems like it should work:

<img src="/images/trollspread2.gif" width="580" height="215" />

The images directory I am referring to is at the same level as /forums.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Richard

Place in fields:

• Name: Tooltip message/title
• URL: destination url
• Image: images/trollspread2.gif or http://www.domain.tld/forums/images/trollspread2.gif
• Text: leave empty

OR

• Name: Banner name
• URL: leave empty
• Image: leave empty
• Text:
  <a href="URL" target="_blank"><img src="images/trollspread2.gif" width="580" height="215" border="0" alt="Tooltip/title"/></a>

If you want click tracking, you must use the first solution.

For images like in your example, the first solution is always reccomended. Use the second format only for banners which can't be expressed as a simple picture, e.g. Google AdSense scripts, Flash animations, Streaming video or similar.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Gigio755

me too.

i have the same exact problem with the Options page in Rotating Banner System (vbulletin 3.7.3 pl1)

i don't understand what can i do to solve this problem

How empty is the page? White?

If you go into the vbulletin Options list and access the options from there, do they show up?

Do you have Settings permissions (admin permissions) ... ? Just guessing.

[raznaran]

Thank you. Thank you. I was obviously confused. Appreciate you getting me straightened out.

I am using the program to rotate two banners. It doesn't always rotate. When I reload the page to test it, it only changes every other time. Occasionally it will do it every reload.

Don't know if that is expected behavior. Might matter if I was using paid ads though.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by raznaran

Thank you. Thank you. I was obviously confused. Appreciate you getting me straightened out.

I am using the program to rotate two banners. It doesn't always rotate. When I reload the page to test it, it only changes every other time. Occasionally it will do it every reload.

Don't know if that is expected behavior. Might matter if I was using paid ads though.

It is choosing the banners randomly from the available, and the overall distribution is pretty even. Over long time, you will see it yourself from the impression count of two or more banners registered in the same moment.

[Apolo.]

Hi,

In my case:

Originally Posted by y2ksw

How empty is the page? White?

No, it is not white. It is blue, like the admin interface, but just blank, no info displayed there.

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If you go into the vbulletin Options list and access the options from there, do they show up?

Yes, that way it works.

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Do you have Settings permissions (admin permissions) ... ? Just guessing.

Yes, indeed.

And yes, I already try to re-upload the files, twice.

Thank you.

[raznaran]

Gotcha. All is well. Thanks again.