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 Automaton

Please keep me posted. I am very interested in this type of product

I believe at the current state of brain storming, best is to go by steps and use thus the inbuilt subscription feature. I'm not sure yet how to upload the banner and make sure it will be only one at a single time - maybe using the user profile.

[kingmotox]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I would suggest to replace the @vbbanners@ placeholder (vBulletin Options, bottom) with something like <!-- @banner@ --> (HTML Comment) in order to hide advertising in scripts which eventually don't call the vBulletin standard page closure, and thus jump over the global_complete hook.

i tried that but then it didnt work at all. did i miss something for the code?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by kingmotox

i tried that but then it didnt work at all. did i miss something for the code?

After changing the placeholder, also the styles' placeholders must be edited accordingly, else it won't find any to replace and thus would not show anything.

[kingmotox]

ok i changed the place holders so it still works in the forum but i still dont have anything on the classifieds?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by kingmotox

ok i changed the place holders so it still works in the forum but i still dont have anything on the classifieds?

If the classifieds script does not use the standard closure of vbulletin, you will not see ads on those pages. With the suggested changes, you will not see the placeholder though, and still show ads on your forums.

There is nothing I can do about scripts which hook only partially into vBulletin - it is a choice of the developers how far their products integrate. If the product calls the vBulletin hook global_complete and does not exit prematurely, the ads are rendered

[jlew24asu]

is their anything different I need to do since I have CMPS?

[acast]

Hi, i have the enlighten style, this is the code in the CSS (the logo is there, not in header):

/* ***** SETS LOGO AREA FOUND IN HEADER AND ALL OF IT'S PROPERTIES ***** */
#logo {
background: url(enlighten/misc/header_logo.gif);
width: 470px;
height: 102px; 
float: left;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0; 
}

/* ***** sets background for header area - No need to change this ***** */
#hdr {
background: #F7632F url(enlighten/misc/header_back.gif) ;
width: 100%;
height: 102px;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0; 
}


/* ***** SETS HEADER RIGHT SIDE AREA FOUND IN HEADER AND ALL OF IT'S PROPERTIES ***** */
#hdr_rs {
background: url(enlighten/misc/header_rs.gif);
width: 34px;
height: 102px; 
float: right;
padding: 0; 
}


/* ***** SETS HEADER RIGHT SIDE AREA FOUND IN HEADER AND ALL OF IT'S PROPERTIES ***** */
#hdr_rs {
background: url(enlighten/misc/header_rs.gif);
width: 34px;
height: 102px; 
float: right;
padding: 0; 
}

What i have to do to have the banners where is the header_logo?. Thanks if someone can help me.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by acast

Hi, i have the enlighten style, this is the code in the CSS (the logo is there, not in header):

(cut)

What i have to do to have the banners where is the header_logo?. Thanks if someone can help me.

Sorry, the rotating banners won't work with CSS. For use with CSS, you could use only static banners or a script made specificly for CSS image replacements, which is however not supported by all browsers.

A script replacement in CSS would read like:

#logo {
background: url(anywhere/script.php);
width: 470px;
height: 102px; 
float: left;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0; 
}

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by jlew24asu

is their anything different I need to do since I have CMPS?

With vbAdvanced there is no additional work to do. Other CMPS may or may not work, depending whether they load the vBulletin engine or not. All non-vBulletin pages must load the vBulletin engine and call the global_complete hook in order to render the rotating banners.

[kingmotox]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If the classifieds script does not use the standard closure of vbulletin, you will not see ads on those pages. With the suggested changes, you will not see the placeholder though, and still show ads on your forums.

There is nothing I can do about scripts which hook only partially into vBulletin - it is a choice of the developers how far their products integrate. If the product calls the vBulletin hook global_complete and does not exit prematurely, the ads are rendered

they said the banners need to exsist in the photopost folders the same way as the banner program uses them. Would i put a folder like /www/photopost/images/ ?