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

[Videx]

You're overthinking it. The "URL" is where you want someone to go when they click a banner (e.g. http://advertiser.com). The "Image / Flash" is a link to the banner on your site (e.g. "../banners/adbanner.jpg).

[LuDawgs]

Originally Posted by Videx

You're overthinking it. The "URL" is where you want someone to go when they click a banner (e.g. http://advertiser.com). The "Image / Flash" is a link to the banner on your site (e.g. "../banners/adbanner.jpg).

Ahhhh....ha! Thank you, I'm an idiot.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by addamroy

y2k, wanna let me know what the chances are of you looking into this for us?? https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1852

I think you missed it

Ha! You wanna black magic!

I imagine you are talking about a static HTML page on CMS?

Please try iframe, it's the one ... for example:

PHP Code:

<iframe src="url_to_any page" style="border: none; overflow: hidden; width: 100%; height: auto;" >
Please wait while loading ...
</iframe> 


Please do the styling with somebody else, I just tried to guess right

[addamroy]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Ha! You wanna black magic!

I imagine you are talking about a static HTML page on CMS?

Please try iframe, it's the one ... for example:

PHP Code:

<iframe src="url_to_any page" style="border: none; overflow: hidden; width: 100%; height: auto;" >
Please wait while loading ...
</iframe> 


Please do the styling with somebody else, I just tried to guess right

Not on CMS, just a static page.

The iframe works but there's no way to show a different iframe automatically when an advertiser wants to view their ad statistics. I need the banner stats file itself to be formatted to match the forum.

In this thread here by Lynne, it teaches you how to create your own custom vbulletin page.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=228112

So what I tried to do was simply, take the code from the rbs banner stats php file and add it to the template for the custom page. The only problem is for some reason when you copy/paste the code from the original stats file into the template for the custom page it breaks the page, it's not formatted correctly.

Any way you can help me (or us) achieve that?

[Alan_SP]

I think that you need to look into template for that page, not php code.

I don't have RBS installed, so I don't know what template is used, but you need code that is in the template.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by addamroy

Not on CMS, just a static page.

The iframe works but there's no way to show a different iframe automatically when an advertiser wants to view their ad statistics. I need the banner stats file itself to be formatted to match the forum.

In this thread here by Lynne, it teaches you how to create your own custom vbulletin page.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=228112

So what I tried to do was simply, take the code from the rbs banner stats php file and add it to the template for the custom page. The only problem is for some reason when you copy/paste the code from the original stats file into the template for the custom page it breaks the page, it's not formatted correctly.

Any way you can help me (or us) achieve that?

There is no way to "rotate" also the statistics. If you need the forum styles, you also will have to create a plugin with the styles for those pages and compile the recordsets accordingly for your customers. There is no way to guess which pages are going to show to a customer rather than another. It is not in the scope of this project to show custom pages for statistics to individual customers beyond the simple and plain thing. The iframe-d reports may be included in CMS pages and thus gain the forum style in some way, but still, you will have to filter the pages in some way for each customer and I believe this is not too easy.

If this is going to be a request of say 100 paying users of this product, I may think about it. But just for one, I'm sorry, that's too much work for a small looking, but quite complex addition

You may try to modify the statistics page to make it look better. I believe a fairly clever designer may give it a visual boost via CSS ...

[addamroy]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

There is no way to "rotate" also the statistics. If you need the forum styles, you also will have to create a plugin with the styles for those pages and compile the recordsets accordingly for your customers. There is no way to guess which pages are going to show to a customer rather than another. It is not in the scope of this project to show custom pages for statistics to individual customers beyond the simple and plain thing. The iframe-d reports may be included in CMS pages and thus gain the forum style in some way, but still, you will have to filter the pages in some way for each customer and I believe this is not too easy.

If this is going to be a request of say 100 paying users of this product, I may think about it. But just for one, I'm sorry, that's too much work for a small looking, but quite complex addition

You may try to modify the statistics page to make it look better. I believe a fairly clever designer may give it a visual boost via CSS ...

Thanks for the reply but I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at entirely.

I understand there's no way to rotate the iframe, I'm not trying to do that.

Let me try to explain this better, because I'm pretty sure it's not as much work as you think it is.

All I'm trying to do, is format your statistics page to look like the forum.

The link I provided, is instructions from Lynne on how to create a custom vbulletin page. Read that thread.

So, the custom page is editable via a custom template in the style manager.

You paste the content of your custom page into this template... Which means, ideally you should be able to copy and paste all code from rbs_stats.php into the custom template.

So now your 'custom page' should be doing the same exact thing rbs_stats is doing.

The only problem is the code is not formatted correctly when you paste it into the new template. It might be as simple as removing a couple <?php's and a couple >'s might solve the problem but I'm not sure.

Does that make more sense?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by addamroy

Thanks for the reply but I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at entirely.

I understand there's no way to rotate the iframe, I'm not trying to do that.

Let me try to explain this better, because I'm pretty sure it's not as much work as you think it is.

All I'm trying to do, is format your statistics page to look like the forum.

The link I provided, is instructions from Lynne on how to create a custom vbulletin page. Read that thread.

So, the custom page is editable via a custom template in the style manager.

You paste the content of your custom page into this template... Which means, ideally you should be able to copy and paste all code from rbs_stats.php into the custom template.

So now your 'custom page' should be doing the same exact thing rbs_stats is doing.

The only problem is the code is not formatted correctly when you paste it into the new template. It might be as simple as removing a couple <?php's and a couple >'s might solve the problem but I'm not sure.

Does that make more sense?

The statistics are made of PHP code and HTML. There is no way to just paste the contents in a new template and hope it will run. It needs coding (and maintaining) on one side, where the maintainment is my concern.

If I had a page I would also have to follow up each time vBulletin updates. As it is now, I can easily forget about it and keep it going from version 3.6.5 onwards with no additional problems.

If you look into rbs_stats.php, you I have already included the basics, because it is a custom page. But it doesn't use templates, because they wouldn't show on 3.x boards

[addamroy]

Ahh I see. Bummer, not as simple as I thought

Thanks for putting up with me though.

[webmaster74]

Where do I find information on how to upgrade to the new version ?

I can't find a readme file in the package, and can't find this information here

Enough to disable the product and install the new one ?

do I need to uninstall the product first before upgrading?