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

[attroll]

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

Are you using a flash banner or a jpg graphic?

1. Is the banner ENABLED.
2. Check the position box. If it is set to Position 0 (horizontal) then you code should look something like this:

PHP Code:

<div align="right"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> 


3. Do you have the link to the image and does it display when you type that into an address area of the browser.
4. Put a check mark in track and see if the amount starts increasing.
5. Check the start and end dates. I always start mine the day before the current date, making it yesterdays date.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by 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?

You may select one or more forums from the list.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by attroll

Are you using a flash banner or a jpg graphic?

1. Is the banner ENABLED.
2. Check the position box. If it is set to Position 0 (horizontal) then you code should look something like this:

PHP Code:

<div align="right"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> 


3. Do you have the link to the image and does it display when you type that into an address area of the browser.
4. Put a check mark in track and see if the amount starts increasing.
5. Check the start and end dates. I always start mine the day before the current date, making it yesterdays date.

Also, triple check spelling. Allmost all problems about banners not showing up are spelling errors!

If the options placeholder is:

PHP Code:

<!--@vbbanners:%d@--> 


then:

PHP Code:

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->
<!--@vbbanners:1@--> 


etc will work, but not:

PHP Code:

<!--@vbbanners:0d@-->
@vbbanners:0@ 


[licensinglinks]

How can I get a banner to display after the 1st post? I don't want it to display in the signature of the first post (one of the in-built options).

I just want it do display between the 1st and 2nd post.

Any idea?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

I don't want it to display in the signature of the first post (one of the in-built options). I just want it do display between the 1st and 2nd post.

Actually, the default vb4 style doesn't have any delineated "between post" area. It goes straight from the previous sig to the header on the next post. I suspect you're thinking of large border lines or something and those aren't there without a custom style. I dunno, maybe you could design banners with said lines that would make it look like it was more "between posts".

[funinbc]

can I use this mod for....

I want to make a picture a day of the best pictures posted. I also want to put a link back to the post where the image was taken.

is this the best mod to do this?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

How can I get a banner to display after the 1st post? I don't want it to display in the signature of the first post (one of the in-built options).

I just want it do display between the 1st and 2nd post.

Any idea?

This code may do it (postbit_legacy only), but it also needs some adapting to your needs ...

Please take in account I'm a coder, and questions about styles should not be posted here, as I'm unable to tell you the truth about them

Above: {vb:raw template_hook.postbit_start}

PHP Code:

<vb:if condition="$post['islastshown']">
<li id="lastpost_ad" class="postbitlegacy postbitim postcontainer old">
    <div class="posthead">
            <span class="postdate old">
                    <span class="date">Avviso pubblicitario</span>
            </span>
    </div>
    <div class="postdetails">
        <div class="userinfo"></div>
        <div class="postbody">
            <div class="postrow">
                <div class="content">
                    <div id="lastpost_ad_message">
                        <blockquote class="postcontent ">
                            <div align="center"><br />@vbbanners:2@</div>
                        </blockquote>
                    </div>
                </div>
            </div>
            <div class="cleardiv"></div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <hr />
</li>
</vb:if> 


Below: {vb:raw template_hook.postbit_end}

PHP Code:

<vb:if condition="$post['isfirstshown']">
<li id="firstpost_ad" class="postbitlegacy postbitim postcontainer old">
    <div class="posthead">
            <span class="postdate old">
                    <span class="date">Avviso pubblicitario</span>
            </span>
    </div>
    <div class="postdetails">
        <div class="userinfo"></div>
        <div class="postbody">
            <div class="postrow">
                <div class="content">
                    <div id="firstpost_ad_message">
                        <blockquote class="postcontent ">
                            <div align="center"><br />@vbbanners:2@</div>
                        </blockquote>
                    </div>
                </div>
            </div>
            <div class="cleardiv"></div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <hr />
</li>
</vb:if> 


[licensinglinks]

Thanks for the help. I will try it.

[licensinglinks]

Cool - it worked fine. Thaks

Just a question about the one that appears after the last post:
Is there a way of only making that one appear if there's more that 3 posts? The problem is that if there's 2 posts, then you get a double ad which doesn't look good!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

Cool - it worked fine. Thaks

Just a question about the one that appears after the last post:
Is there a way of only making that one appear if there's more that 3 posts? The problem is that if there's 2 posts, then you get a double ad which doesn't look good!

There is no such function available.