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

[Robert Waanders]

Hey Guys,

I'm having trouble placing the banner on my forum... IN options -> rotating banners system options I've changed the Nth Placeholder to <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, I have placed this option in the header template as: [ad_header_logo]<else /><!--@vbbanners:0@--></if>

I don't see any banners at all... What am I doing wrong, yes there are the default headers, and i have created a banner myself on position 0...

Robert

[oferelijah]

can you add support to the modcp?
i want my mod's to handle this.

10x

[RobbieZ]

I have a customized header already that uses 2 images to create one long one.

How do i include your header template with my customized one so the banner/s sits on top of my right image?

Thanks

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Robert Waanders

Hey Guys,

I'm having trouble placing the banner on my forum... IN options -> rotating banners system options I've changed the Nth Placeholder to <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, I have placed this option in the header template as: [ad_header_logo]<else /><!--@vbbanners:0@--></if>

I don't see any banners at all... What am I doing wrong, yes there are the default headers, and i have created a banner myself on position 0...

Robert

If you have changed the placeholder in the options to: <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, the banners never show up, because you actually try to use a constant. To make the banners work, they need to use a dynamid placeholder, where "0" must be "%d", thus: <!--@vbbanners:%d@-->

Some other valid examples:
@vbbanners:%d@
(mybanners:%d)
$my-ad-placeholder-%d-!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by oferelijah

can you add support to the modcp?
i want my mod's to handle this.

10x

I'm not sure if this is a good idea.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by RobbieZ

I have a customized header already that uses 2 images to create one long one.

How do i include your header template with my customized one so the banner/s sits on top of my right image?

Thanks

If you want to include the banners within CSS headers, you will have to create a script which loads and renders a custom vbulletin page with the banners only. I'm not sure though, if the CSS: url() is capable to load and handle scripts correctly. Please ask a HTML/CSS specialist for advice.

If the CSS is included in vbulletin (the CSS is not saved to disk), and the banners are image only, it should be fine to include a placeholder in the appropriate place. If you save your CSS to file, you will have to use a custom script.

[Robert Waanders]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If you have changed the placeholder in the options to: <!--@vbbanners:0@-->, the banners never show up, because you actually try to use a constant. To make the banners work, they need to use a dynamid placeholder, where "0" must be "%d", thus: <!--@vbbanners:%d@-->

Some other valid examples:
@vbbanners:%d@
(mybanners:%d)
$my-ad-placeholder-%d-!

Thanks for your reaction, Ok, I've placed <!--@vbbanners:%d@--> in the header and in the options, is that ok? I still have nothing on my screen... (there's something missing... i Think but I don't see it...

Robert

[RobbieZ]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If you want to include the banners within CSS headers, you will have to create a script which loads and renders a custom vbulletin page with the banners only. I'm not sure though, if the CSS: url() is capable to load and handle scripts correctly. Please ask a HTML/CSS specialist for advice.

If the CSS is included in vbulletin (the CSS is not saved to disk), and the banners are image only, it should be fine to include a placeholder in the appropriate place. If you save your CSS to file, you will have to use a custom script.

Therefore my image would have to become background CSS image. I understand. Thanks.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Robert Waanders

Thanks for your reaction, Ok, I've placed <!--@vbbanners:%d@--> in the header and in the options, is that ok? I still have nothing on my screen... (there's something missing... i Think but I don't see it...

Robert

You have to place <!--@vbbanners:%d@--> in the options and <!--@vbbanners:0@--> in the template, in order to:

- make the placeholder dynamic: <!--@vbbanners:%d@-->
- show a rotating banner in position 0: <!--@vbbanners:0@-->

Concept of the placeholder: Common string which may become <!--@vbbanners:0@--> to <!--@vbbanners:9@--> by code. %d is a C++/PHP formatting placeholder which makes it possibile to script numeric formatting instead of hardcoding. Normally, you would simply ignore the presence of this option. Adversely, you would change this option, only if <!--@vbbanners:%d@--> does not work in your system.

Concept of a banner: Numeric constant which represents a number of banners to be shown at a position between 0-9. The script searches for <!--@vbbanners:0@--> to <!--@vbbanners:9@--> (previously inserted in your templates) and replaces each occurence, if available with a randomly assigned banner, to be shown at exactly that position.

[Robert Waanders]

Hello Giovanni,

Thank you for your very, very usefull posting. For some reason, i don't get the banners to show... very strange... I will puzzle on..

Robert