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]

Originally Posted by SVTCobraLTD

For some reason this is showing up in a different language in the admincp for 3.8. Rotating Banner System is in english but the rest is in another language. See screen shot.

I've downloaded the package, checked the product, and it doesn't contain the Italian text.

Probably you did install also the Italian language package, although the help specifies when it should be installed: on Italian boards only. Most probably you will have to uninstall the Rotating Banners Product and install again to get rid of the unwanted text.

[armthehomeless1]

Originally Posted by meissenation

Freaking awesome that this works in vb4. I had disabled it assuming it didn't work and decided to enable it just to see. Much to my surprise it works perfectly in vb4 without any modifications necessary. I actually came here to link this thread to someone else and saw you confirmed the same already about vb4.

This is definitely one of the top 5 mods for Vbulletin.

y2ksw, will you be officially releasing this for vb 4.x??

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by armthehomeless1

y2ksw, will you be officially releasing this for vb 4.x??

I would like that. The current version is definitely not working for me with 4.01.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by armthehomeless1

y2ksw, will you be officially releasing this for vb 4.x??

Not before version 4.1.x which was announced for great changes in the admin panel to happen. Since it does work in 4.0.0 for now and 3500+ bugs are waiting yet to get fixed, I have really no hurry to do a major change which maybe has to be changed again later.

Once the admin panel changes have finished, this product will be upgraded, in the hope to maintain the compatibility for the large vBulletin version range it still has: from 3.6.5 to 4.0.0

I will continue this product until me or vBulletin dies

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I would like that. The current version is definitely not working for me with 4.01.

4.01 seems to have plenty new bugs, but I haven't tried yet and officially I don't know ...

Please try this: go to the options and change the placeholder to:

@vbbanners:%d@

Then, make sure you have a working banner (position 0) globally enabled and place:

@vbbanners:0@

into a normal post and save (without preview). If the banner works, it must show up. If it does, in version 4.0.1 the pages render differently and maybe HTML comments are stripped off just before printing on screen. If it doesn't show, something has gone lost, but probably will turn back working with 4.0.2

[djbaxter]

Currently, in options it says:

PHP Code:

<!--@vbbanners:%d@--> 


Are you saying to replace that with just

PHP Code:

@vbbanners:%d@ 


In any case, it doesn't matter - I tried both ways and nothing shows up in the posts except the text @vbbanners:0@

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Currently, in options it says:

PHP Code:

<!--@vbbanners:%d@--> 


Are you saying to replace that with just

PHP Code:

@vbbanners:%d@ 


In any case, it doesn't matter - I tried both ways and nothing shows up in the posts except the text @vbbanners:0@

Ok, it means from 4.0.0 to 4.0.1 the hook global_complete ceased to work.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Ok, it means from 4.0.0 to 4.0.1 the hook global_complete ceased to work.

Is there any reason to expect this to change in 4.02, though?

Added: that hook still exists and is working for other products I have installed.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Is there any reason to expect this to change in 4.02, though?

Added: that hook still exists and is working for other products I have installed.

I will not touch the product until 4.1.x, since vbulletin 4.0 has been published before it was truly ready to use, IMO. If I would start fixing now, it would become a nightmare to maintain. Sorry about this.

[djbaxter]

I'm sorry to hear that. Since they haven't even released 4.02 yet, that basically means 4.x users are abandoned.

I'll keep playing with it to see if I can get it working. Otherwise, no doubt someone else will come up with a 4.x banner rotator sooner than 4.1...