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

[ohadpartuck]

hi,
I am trying to validate my site and getting this error:

general entity "userid" not defined and no default entity
?.s-maof.com/Forum/rbs_banner.php?id=1&userid=0" target="_blank"><img src="http?

I am trying to replace it to


?.s-maof.com/Forum/rbs_banner.php?id=1&amp;userid=0" target="_blank"><img src="http?

where in the code could I find that?

[ohadpartuck]

never mind - I managed - it's in the - dbtech/vbnavtabs/includes/functions.php

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by ohadpartuck

never mind - I managed - it's in the - dbtech/vbnavtabs/includes/functions.php

I don't think so ... vbtech isn't rbs

Please verify after the changes, the banners are still cliccable, since a some servers don't accept "amped" URL's without side effects.

[sadiq6210]

Great mod. Thank you very much

-------------

In next release you may improve this:

In the file (includes/functions_rbs.php)

Replace this:

$url = sprintf('%s/rbs_banner.php?id=%d&userid=%d', $bburl, $rs['id'], $rbs_userid);

With:

$url = sprintf('%s/rbs_banner.php?id=%d&userid=%d', $bburl, $rs['id'], $rbs_userid);

Before:





After:

[ohadpartuck]

thanks. they are.
you are wright,btw, I changed it in the mods now that I think about it..

[y2ksw]

Yeah ... we have this problem handled for many times, and all I can tell about is, once again: not all web servers accept "amp"-ed & symbols. The unamped version is however handled everywhere and I prefer to have always cliccable banners than rather some not.

[ohadpartuck]

by servers you mean browsers? becasuse if you mean servers I have only one and I am not going to change it any time soon . I think getting rid of the validation errors is a noble enough cause.

[y2ksw]

I mean servers. Since not all are Apache nor IIS, and not all redirect mechanisms work the same way, some of the web servers redirect "amp"-ed URL's to nowhere.

I agree with you, that most servers should by now adhere to the standards, but since the problem has happened in the past and still there are strange things in the wild, you maybe are better off with changing this piece of code yourself

[godoveryou]

Originally Posted by Videx

So, a non-technical explanation: It's highly unlikely that those hourly attacks are anything more than bots trying to find an easy way in. Don't worry - as long as you keep vb and the server updated they really aren't too much of a worry.

I don't think "check your access rights" is the same as saying "set all your file permissions to allow yourself to be hacked". In general, vb files should all be 644 and directories 755.

I missed the part where you explained what error(s) you're getting, and where you gave us a link and test login (if required) to look at things. Have you already simply asked your tech people (your host's tech support?)? It's very common for them to set security in such a way that you can't run your own files. When that happens they can set exceptions. If you ask them nicely.

No not the host's support, we have a dedicated server security admin as SEO forums attract a certain 'type' of web user. As soon as I put it in his hands, he had it running in under 5 minutes. The problem was unique to our server's configuration.

So that just goes to show you that I shouldn't handle these things...

But none the less, I wanted to apologize to anyone that may have been offended or misunderstood my previous posts. Sometimes I type things that end up sounding a lot different than how I meant them, so... I totally take the blame there.

Again, apologies.

[sonic83]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

No, they aren't. Impressions is the number of times a banner has been shown. The more active banners you have in your database, the less will be the impression count on each, provided they are evenly distributed.

Thanks for the reply y2ksw. But I do not understand exactly the difference CMS to charge for my sponsors.

I did not understand this part, may explain it a little more?

Originally Posted by y2ksw

The more active banners you have in your database, the less will be the impression count on each, provided they are evenly distributed.

thanks