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

[webmaster74]

y2ksw, I need your help. Banners are not showing up on my site and I have no idea why.

[johnscanlan2]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Maybe you are taking it too serious. Could you please just take any existing template and paste the following code, after a clean (re)install:

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

and save?

The default banners will show. Then, eventually, you could start to make changes and see what happens.

I agree 100%. Seems most folks way over think this great app. I find 99% of the time when it fails to work, it is due to something I goofed up. If you have a moderate familiarity of HTML this this gem becomes a powerhouse.

1.) My most common errors has to do with leaving out something in the code above.

2.) Next biggest error is the start and expire dates. If your dates are outside of the current date or wrong, nothing shows up.

3.) Next, I put the graphic banner in a separate directory and then make darn sure the software knows where to look. Example:

/sponsors/Joesgasstation/banner1.jpg
/sponsors/ajax/banner1.jpg

I find many inexperienced vb folks get confused over where the files are. So if this program can't find them, nothing shows up.

Perhaps when I get a chance I'll do a Dummies Guide RBS. It really is a simple program that even I way over thought in the beginning. Once I figured it out, I was banging my head on the wall over not being able to see the ease of use of this great little program.

I currently have 25 advertising spots, some rotating, some not, on my site.

John Scanlan
Columbus OH

[rhody401]

I have about 40 spots going, for various purposes on my site. (Some in the header, some between posts, some for unregistered users, some on the main menu only, etc)

It is a fantastic plug-in, and highly configurable.

I like that you can assign "run dates", provide stats, and can keep comments on each banner.

Everything you should need is in the docs, and in this thread.

[dknelson]

I've been using this for some time now and it's a great mod. I just installed it on another forum and have the same problem I had on the first one.

The only way I can get it to work is to actually edit the template to place the code in the hook location where I want it to show up. It works great that way.

If I try to add it to the VBulletin Advertising "New Banner", it never shows up.

If I try to edit templets and put it any ANY of the "Ad Location" templates, they don't show up.

The only way it works is if I edit the actual template, Header, Breadcrumb, etc. and place it directly in the template.

Can anybody tell me why?

[y2ksw]

If you use custom styles, they may not implement part of the template hooks.

[dknelson]

Thanks, but it's a default style on the new site.

[y2ksw]

Then, eventually you have vbSEO installed and HTML cleaning enabled, or some other HTML cleaning active. Or, you are doing something wrong, but I have no idea, what.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by X-or

hi, thanks for this :-)

but is it only for ads?

or can I simply use this for picking a random banner among a pool for my site

It's for anything you like. I've used it also to show random phrases from famous people.

[y2ksw]

How simple must it be to be simple enough?

[rhody401]

It's pretty simple

You just put one small string of text where you want the banner(s) to appear.

I have a rotation of small ones in the header ad location 1, primary banners on top and bottom of each page, and a general banner every 5th post. (all are managed by this great tool)

It provides statistics for each banner, and a link someone can click remotely to check it in realtime.

I have been using it at www.ppfacorner.com for over 3 years now.