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 kingmotox

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/ ?

If the banners are recorded with the full URL, it makes no difference where they are.

You may try to create the suggested folder and duplicate the banner images, but I believe it really doesn't matter.

[acast]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

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; 
}

Ok, and how can i put the code of the css in the header so i can use this addon with my design? Do you know how can i do it looking that code?

Thanks for your answer friend.

[jlew24asu]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

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.

ok thanks I'll give it a try.

[Automaton]

I just had my guy install the rotator it it is great!The idea I had about mixing it with the subscription seems to bee too much.
I am wondering however if you would be willing to make a couple of changes to the mod.

1. It would be nice to have a common page banner manager where all the banners were listed. Rather than scrolling through each of them, if we could see all the banners and the peramiters of the variables entered it would be awesome. So basically the one page would display:
Banner name
Start date
End Date
then all the other click boxes. This way we could make mass changes to the banners right in one spot if we want to.

2. Email notice for ending campaign
I would be nice if we could enter and email address or 2 that would get a notification when the subscription is almost up. This way it will automatically send an email to the email addresses we want. Maybe site admin, maybe the advertiser. Perhaps both

3. Email notice for stats
Perhaps have a setting where every so often (weekly, monthly - time frame selected by admin) the stats of that banner get emailed to the email address that we list.

4. Move Save-scroll-new-delete feature.
Add another scroll, save contol to the top of the page, just like it is on the bottom of the page

5. Scroll and Save
Ad an option so that we can scroll and save at the same time, with one click. So every time you hit forward, or revers it save the current settings. Or at least asks if you want them saved.

Sorry if this is a ton of stuff but I think it would improve the rotator..

Thanks so much!

[jlew24asu]

it works. great mod thank you!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Automaton

1. It would be nice to have a common page banner manager where all the banners were listed. Rather than scrolling through each of them, if we could see all the banners and the peramiters of the variables entered it would be awesome. So basically the one page would display:
Banner name
Start date
End Date
then all the other click boxes. This way we could make mass changes to the banners right in one spot if we want to.

2. Email notice for ending campaign
I would be nice if we could enter and email address or 2 that would get a notification when the subscription is almost up. This way it will automatically send an email to the email addresses we want. Maybe site admin, maybe the advertiser. Perhaps both

3. Email notice for stats
Perhaps have a setting where every so often (weekly, monthly - time frame selected by admin) the stats of that banner get emailed to the email address that we list.

4. Move Save-scroll-new-delete feature.
Add another scroll, save contol to the top of the page, just like it is on the bottom of the page

5. Scroll and Save
Ad an option so that we can scroll and save at the same time, with one click. So every time you hit forward, or revers it save the current settings. Or at least asks if you want them saved.

I scheduled these and other suggestions for the next release.

[Automaton]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I scheduled these and other suggestions for the next release.

Great!
Any idea how long befor the next release comes out?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Automaton

Great!
Any idea how long befor the next release comes out?

I have only time in the weekends, and occasionally a few minutes during the week. But I have seen, many of you have left at least one demo banner, and this of course frees up a few extra hours monthly to upgrade and add your requests. So thanks to all of you, too

[kingmotox]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If the banners are recorded with the full URL, it makes no difference where they are.

You may try to create the suggested folder and duplicate the banner images, but I believe it really doesn't matter.

That did not work. How can i get this to work in the header when it needs to use a full url. Can you give me an example of the code i should use.

Thanks

[inbrissy]

I'm probably missing something, but in the options it says about Scheduled Tasks.. What filename do I put in for scheduling the emails to go out about the banner events?

I'm not sure what to put in the scheduled event for that.

Thanks