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

[Pessimist]

y2ksw

2 small fixes

HTML not valid (& -> &amp:
XML, line 351:

PHP Code:

            $url = $bburl . '/rbs_banner.php?id=' . $rs['id'] . '&userid=' . $rbs_userid; 


replace with&

PHP Code:

            $url = $bburl . '/rbs_banner.php?id=' . $rs['id'] . '&userid=' . $rbs_userid; 


Charset missed:
rbs_stats.php, add after line 90:

PHP Code:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> 


Or better use as variable instead UTF-8 (value should be as language charset). Also, if language Russian and Charset set to windows-1251:

PHP Code:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1251" /> 


I hope you understand what I mean

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Pessimist

y2ksw

2 small fixes

HTML not valid (& -> &amp:
XML, line 351:

PHP Code:

            $url = $bburl . '/rbs_banner.php?id=' . $rs['id'] . '&userid=' . $rbs_userid; 


replace with&

PHP Code:

            $url = $bburl . '/rbs_banner.php?id=' . $rs['id'] . '&userid=' . $rbs_userid; 


Charset missed:
rbs_stats.php, add after line 90:

PHP Code:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> 


Or better use as variable instead UTF-8 (value should be as language charset). Also, if language Russian and Charset set to windows-1251:

PHP Code:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1251" /> 


I hope you understand what I mean

I've given up on all those fixes.

In some countries or browser settings the page validation fails. Also, the & and & problem is much more complex than it looks. & works on all server configurations, while & doesn't. I prefer to have it working all times.

Unless all standards are respected by all software developers, software bugs will persist. Hoping in such an event is utopic, but I still believe that it will happen one day

[mmalik4]

Hello,
newbie here...
I am trying to work the rotating banner system. Installation is a success but having a hard time to make it work.
I have made 2 test flash banner namely
http://www.traderc.com/advertise.swf &
http://www.traderc.com/hobbyking.swf

My question here, what is the next step how should i make the banner work.. looking for next steps. Again, newbee..step by step would be great.Thanks

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by mmalik4

Hello,
newbie here...
I am trying to work the rotating banner system. Installation is a success but having a hard time to make it work.
I have made 2 test flash banner namely
http://www.traderc.com/advertise.swf &
http://www.traderc.com/hobbyking.swf

My question here, what is the next step how should i make the banner work.. looking for next steps. Again, newbee..step by step would be great.Thanks

Enable the flash wrapper, specify in Image/Flash your swf (as above), in URL the landing page and don't forget the sizes and at least one option: embed or object or both

[Toorak Times]

I haven't set it up yet, but thank you very much. so many options...

[dsantana]

I just installed VB about a week ago and installed your mod right away... Couldn't get it to go at first because of my lack of VB knowledge but after looking at it for a few hours today and reading the supplied pdf I finally figured it out!!! Whew...

Thanks a ton for this excellent mod!!!

[Andyrew]

Why can I not use half of the ad templates in vb, I have added a banner in two templates but nothing shows up if I use any other remaining ad location templates.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Andyrew

Why can I not use half of the ad templates in vb, I have added a banner in two templates but nothing shows up if I use any other remaining ad location templates.

Try to add more banners or just duplicate the one you have. On a single page, each banner is shown at most for a single instance.

[mmalik4]

I cant still work it out any step by step instructions

Originally Posted by mmalik4

Hello,
newbie here...
I am trying to work the rotating banner system. Installation is a success but having a hard time to make it work.
I have made 2 test flash banner namely
http://www.traderc.com/advertise.swf &
http://www.traderc.com/hobbyking.swf

My question here, what is the next step how should i make the banner work.. looking for next steps. Again, newbee..step by step would be great.Thanks

[Videx]

Originally Posted by mmalik4

I cant still work it out any step by step instructions

Consider just using static banners or animated gifs until you can figure out the flash stuff. Once you get those working then you should be halfway there.