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

[rhender]

Seems like it is working now, maybe it just took a second to update.... sorry for all the posts. Still slightly confused. I need to watch that darn video.

[licensinglinks]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

I have recently installed Google AdSense. I notice that the impressions displayed in my AdSense account are significantly less (10 TIMES LESS!!!!) than the impressions the RBS is reporting.

In short, AdSense tells me I've only served a total of 128,000 ad impressions, but RBS tells me that I've delivered way over ONE MILLION ad impressions in total.

I just don't know what to believe!

What's the flipping heck's happening here and how do I fix it???

......or is there nothing wrong with RBS and Google's just ripping me off?

Anyone any ideas???

[Videx]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

Anyone any ideas???

Adsense is probably showing you a shorter time period. I think RBS's counters are only reset when you do it manually.

[Gripi]

hi.. i saw in 2.3.3 version:

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.

but.. in here, the time still go randomly, sometimes 15.00, sometimes 17.00.

and let say i already set the start date to 1 March 2012, the end date 2 March 2013, then i save it. then i open the banner configuration again, without changing anything in the configuration, i press the save button, then open it again, the start date become 2 March 2012, and the end date become 3 March 2013.

is this a bugs?

[licensinglinks]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

I have recently installed Google AdSense. I notice that the impressions displayed in my AdSense account are significantly less (10 TIMES LESS!!!!) than the impressions the RBS is reporting.

In short, AdSense tells me I've only served a total of 128,000 ad impressions, but RBS tells me that I've delivered way over ONE MILLION ad impressions in total.

I just don't know what to believe!

What's the flipping heck's happening here and how do I fix it???

......or is there nothing wrong with RBS and Google's just ripping me off?

Anyone any ideas? Does RBS count bots? Is that why the number's so high?

[viper357]

Originally Posted by Gripi

but.. in here, the time still go randomly, sometimes 15.00, sometimes 17.00.

and let say i already set the start date to 1 March 2012, the end date 2 March 2013, then i save it. then i open the banner configuration again, without changing anything in the configuration, i press the save button, then open it again, the start date become 2 March 2012, and the end date become 3 March 2013.

is this a bugs?

I have the same issue, whenever I save a new or old banner, it forwards the time by 8 hours, so if I set the banner to expire on 1 March at 1pm, when I click save it will change the time 8 hours ahead to 9pm, if I click save again it will go forward another 8 hours and change the expiry date to 2 March 5am.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by licensinglinks

I have recently installed Google AdSense. I notice that the impressions displayed in my AdSense account are significantly less (10 TIMES LESS!!!!) than the impressions the RBS is reporting.

In short, AdSense tells me I've only served a total of 128,000 ad impressions, but RBS tells me that I've delivered way over ONE MILLION ad impressions in total.

I just don't know what to believe!

What's the flipping heck's happening here and how do I fix it???

......or is there nothing wrong with RBS and Google's just ripping me off?

The Google count is approximative and may exclude also all those counts where its spider is visiting, while RBS makes no such distinction and counts literally all impressions. There is no way to fix it, but you are free to ignore it

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by viper357

How do I roll back to a previous version of RBS? My email notifications are not working at all now since the latest upgrade?

Just replace the files from a previous version. Some options may not work, but there should be no other drawback, since new versions have only additional features.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by rhender

Ok, awesome Videx. Thanks so much. Yes, a total noob instruction PDF or video would be fantastic... as without it, I feel kind of lost. Thanks again, hopefully I can get this going now.

EDIT: Sweet. I got it. I had to deselect an option in the forums that are able to view the ad. I had to command click to deselect so that it shows on all forums. YES!!!!!

Does the google ads thing pay money for clicks if I leave it up???

EDIT: Also, the google ad thing cycles through like 5 times before my first real advertiser displays. Is there a way to change that so I don't upset my advertisers?

Another EDIT: I added the 2nd advertiser to the ad manager, with the vbbanners code... and also added it to the mod's section with the html image... and it started to show up next to the first ad, in the header... ???? I had it listed as 2 in it's display order in the ad manager. Is that wrong? Do I need to change the vbbanners code to vbbanners:1 so that is next in the ad display?

I added the Bloody Beginner Guide to my task list Actually, such a guide would be useful for generally all plugins. The question is, how bloody are beginners?

If you leave the default Google banners on, they pay me a little for my work. Globally, this is about $1 monthly, good enough to pay a cup of coffee once and then, but I appreciate

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Videx

Adsense is probably showing you a shorter time period. I think RBS's counters are only reset when you do it manually.

Right. RBS does show them from the start and there is no reset.