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

[drdoc]

Originally Posted by bzcomputers

Trust me over time they will appear approximately the same number of times. If this wasn't true there would have been more people complaining about over the last 5 years this mod has been available.

I agree with you that over time they will appear approximately the same number of times. thx a lot for continuous help from install to banner placements:up:

[CPOWA]

Just download and installed. Great product!

I have one question: How do I advertise my own banners in certain areas and have them take advantage of being part of the rotating banners product. Eg: My own ads offering my company's services and products, in the header and below navbar or anywhere for that matter?

If this has been asked and answered, I apologize. If so, could someone list a post number or approx page within this thread?

Thanks

Ah, found my answer. I didn't see the Rotating Banner System link at the bottom, in the ACP. I was looking in Options only.

[inigo]

I have a question regarding the likehood new option.

How is it calculated? I suppose is a number of times per period of time, isn' it?

For example I have had a banner in Pos 0 for the last 3 months, with 30.000 impressions, and 100 likehood, and now I add a new Pos 0 banner, with likehood 80.

One has 30.000 impressions and the other 0, but I suppose the script is calculating the number of impressions per time unit, so from the moment i add the second banner, the previous 30.000 impressions of banner nr.1 are not counted .

Is this correct?

Thanks!

[bzcomputers]

Originally Posted by inigo

I have a question regarding the likehood new option.

How is it calculated? I suppose is a number of times per period of time, isn' it?

For example I have had a banner in Pos 0 for the last 3 months, with 30.000 impressions, and 100 likehood, and now I add a new Pos 0 banner, with likehood 80.

One has 30.000 impressions and the other 0, but I suppose the script is calculating the number of impressions per time unit, so from the moment i add the second banner, the previous 30.000 impressions of banner nr.1 are not counted .

Is this correct?

Thanks!

Yes, what has occurred in the past will have no weight on what occurs in the future.

100 = Normal (Default) Weight
80 = Less Weight, it will show 20% fewer times in the future than your banner weighted 100

[inigo]

Thanks very much!!!!

[digeditor]

I'm baffled. I've followed the Add New Ad instructions in the PDF which came with the install.
I've added <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> to give me two side by side (non-swf) banners. I've sized them 300 X 150 and 250 X 125, but no matter how hard I try they stack one above the other.

I want A B centered side by side, but I get

A
B

I even removed the second @vbbanners:0@ to see if they would rotate - which wasn't what I wanted, but they continue to stack. I'm on vb 4.2 The ads are all position 0 horizontal.

Is this because the space side by side below the navbar can't handle them side by side?

How big is the space below the navbar?

EDIT: With a bit more playing, I replaced @vbbanners:0@ with @vbbanners:2@ and that worked. But I still don't understand why putting @vbbanners:0@@vbbanners:0@ doesn't put them side by side.

Another question. I'm obviously not understanding the

URL If you are using an Image banner, please insert here the destination URL field.

I thought it would allow the ad when clicked on to take you to wherever the URL pointed.

When I click on my ads, nothing happens.

Jim

[bzcomputers]

Originally Posted by digeditor

I'm baffled. I've followed the Add New Ad instructions in the PDF which came with the install.
I've added <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> to give me two side by side (non-swf) banners. I've sized them 300 X 150 and 250 X 125, but no matter how hard I try they stack one above the other.

I want A B centered side by side, but I get

A
B

For side by side centered use this:

<table align="center"><tr><td><!--@vbbanners:0@--></td><td style="width: 20px;">&nbsp;</td><td><!--@vbbanners:0@--></td></tr></table>

Adjust the width (20px) to whatever you want for spacing between the images.

Another question. I'm obviously not understanding the

URL If you are using an Image banner, please insert here the destination URL field.

I thought it would allow the ad when clicked on to take you to wherever the URL pointed.

When I click on my ads, nothing happens.

Yes, that is the way it is suppose to work. You could also use the TEXT box and use code like this (it does the same thing):

<a href="YOUR DESTINATION URL HERE" target="_blank"><img src="YOUR IMAGE URL HERE" alt="ON HOVER TEXT HERE" /></a>

[SPEEDKILLZ]

I am having a few problems. 1 how do i get my ad over and under the welcome name (see attached img) and also how do i add multiple ads to rotate in the same spot?

[digeditor]

Those all worked. Thanks bzcomputers.
No matter what I put in the URL nothing happens. I've got to use the TEXT field. Weird.

[digeditor]

There's a template for the Header(?) which you would put your reference (@0 etc) into.
To rotate those ads. you would need to assign them all to the same position