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

[viper357]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

The box for the email addresses is the one. One week before the banner expires, a mail is sent to all recipients in that box.

EDIT: You my change the task accordingly. However, double sending is not supported and never will.

How do I do that? On my installation it sends an email on the day that the banner expires? Where do I set it to 1 week?

[kfyonur]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Yeah, once again a style question

For fixed 998px styles I use for header2, in additional.css:

PHP Code:

.rbs_header_2 {
height: 70px;
left: 515px;
position: absolute;
text-align: right;
top: 35px;
width: 468px;
} 


and in header2:

PHP Code:

<div class="rbs_header_2"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> 


it is working thanx.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by viper357

How do I do that? On my installation it sends an email on the day that the banner expires? Where do I set it to 1 week?

I've requested a feature where we could set the expiration emails to x days. I too had no idea it was actually set to 7 days already. Or supposed to be. In my RBS 233 it says very vaguely:

Mail addresses: Please list here one or more mail addresses to inform about banner events. Separate each email address by a space, e.g.: joe@domain.tld mary@domain.tld

Nothing about expiration or 7 days, just a very cryptic note about "banner events".

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by viper357

How do I do that? On my installation it sends an email on the day that the banner expires? Where do I set it to 1 week?

I've been looking into the code, and as far as I can see, it needs some revision ... on the other hand that's code from 3 years ago.

At this point, would you please suggest what kind of mailing options you would like to see, since I will touch it just that much

[Videx]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

At this point, would you please suggest what kind of mailing options you would like to see, since I will touch it just that much

Thanks for asking.

• Rephrase the adminCP to clearly state these are expiration emails (not "event" emails).
• Include a variable for x days prior (but 7 is fine if you don't). Include in the admincp some text stating the hard coded 7 if that's what it is.
• Include a link to the email text (so we don't have to go digging through Phrases to change it).
• Include at least one variable in the email - the expiration date itself. Maybe also the name of the banner. e.g. "Hi again. Your banner for %BannerName% is expiring on %ExpireDate%."

[viper357]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

At this point, would you please suggest what kind of mailing options you would like to see, since I will touch it just that much

Thank you. I would just like a simple reminder to be emailed to both me and the banner owner stating that it is about to expire, anywhere between 7 days and a month will be fine for me.
p.s. I am on vb 3.8.5

[attroll]

I have been using this plugin for a while now. I love it.
I have one thing that I have not been able to figure out yet.
I want the banners to display in all my forum header but I do not want it to display on my home page or any CMS page headers.

Is there an easy way to do this?

[control1110]

I can't seem to get this add on to display any ads at all. I have set up the code in the header1 ad location <!--@vbbanners:0@--> and also tried putting it in the template and no luck I have no ads showing

[FannBlade]

Originally Posted by control1110

I can't seem to get this add on to display any ads at all. I have set up the code in the header1 ad location <!--@vbbanners:0@--> and also tried putting it in the template and no luck I have no ads showing

Same problem here.

[Videx]

Always give links when reporting problems like this. And try to leave up at least a test banner until others can look at it.

Also please assure us a test banner - a simple .jpg without any banner code - appears correctly?