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

[zackw]

Hi, we've ran this product for some time but after updating the forum to the latest version the banners aren't showing up. I checked settings that the product is enabled and so forth, but no good. The banners stopped appearing. What can I check or do?

If I have to remove and reinstall the product, can I save all the data? There are about 30 or 40 banners that I don't want to create again!

[Videx]

Originally Posted by NovoCiv

I can't get this to work at all.

Verify your banners show up in those spots normally while not using this mod. If you can't get them to show up without RBS, you'll never see them with it.

Originally Posted by zackw

Hi, we've ran this product for some time but after updating the forum to the latest version the banners aren't showing up.
If I have to remove and reinstall the product, can I save all the data?

During the upgrade you probably reverted the templates where the placeholders were. Just place them again, or just put them in the default ad locations and you won't have to worry about that happening again.

Your banners aren't saved in this product, they're in your banners folder. I take it you weren't the person that set this up, but you're going to have to learn it if you want to use it.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by toofazt

I'm not sure I follow... I have a company paying me to have their link in a text ad. Could you give me an example of how I would write the link to give them the best search results while still using the click counter?

Thanks again

Originally Posted by toofazt

This company didn't want a graphic banner, they wanted a text banner. They got what they wanted, I just want to make sure I'm getting them the most for their money.

You have asked and I have answered. If you don't know what it means, there isn't much I can do. Please Google for nofollow and continue reading with Google documents about SEO. This argument goes far beyond this product, but I felt I needed to tell you about potential side effects ... which are explained in detail by Google

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by NovoCiv

I can't get this to work at all.

I just want to show random images somewhere that an ad would normally go and no matter what I do I can't get any of the images to show up.

I don't understand this mod and I followed the video...

Maybe if you tell us what you don't understand, we are able to tell you more about it.

This mod doesn't do any guess-work. It requires you to make changes to your template(s) on your own and most probably you have best results going first with the default banners before starting to think about implementing your own.

Most of the users of this mod first delete the default banners, then try and of course, they don't get the expected results. There is a practical reason for the existance of those banners, and I can only reccomend to use them first, with the simple and plain example shown in the movie and in the help files.

I don't do you any damage with these banners, they are guaranteed to work. Once you have mastered to show those (level: extra-easy), you probably will copy one and change it ... or try your own.

Once you have accepted that the mod needs a little attention and have made a few experimants, you will discover its power ... and never will let it go again

[Panzer Max]

Great mod, very nice, thanks!

[zackw]

Originally Posted by Videx

Your banners aren't saved in this product, they're in your banners folder. I take it you weren't the person that set this up, but you're going to have to learn it if you want to use it.

I realize my graphical banners are in a folder, I'm talking about the actual data, I wasn't sure if it stores info in the database, or in an XML file somewhere. Just wondering how to back it up.

[Videx]

It's in the db and will be in your regular db backups. It would be nice if products erased all traces of themselves upon uninstallation including db stuff, but I've never seen that to be the case. Still, I wouldn't remove or reinstall except as a last resort since that seems unlikely to fix the issue. Have you checked the templates for the placeholder as I suggested?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by zackw

I realize my graphical banners are in a folder, I'm talking about the actual data, I wasn't sure if it stores info in the database, or in an XML file somewhere. Just wondering how to back it up.

Originally Posted by Videx

It's in the db and will be in your regular db backups. It would be nice if products erased all traces of themselves upon uninstallation including db stuff, but I've never seen that to be the case. Still, I wouldn't remove or reinstall except as a last resort since that seems unlikely to fix the issue. Have you checked the templates for the placeholder as I suggested?

If you have uninstalled the product, it has cleaned up after itself and deleted banners and the rbs_banners and rbs_hits tables.

This would explain why banners have gone. However, since you have surely (have you?) a backup of your forums, made as reccomended by vBulletin Solutions before any upgrade, you should be able to restore the rbs_banners and rbs_hits tables easily

[solohdes]

I have royal flush skin, THIS, and this hack don't work in my skin. I created a banner, but does not appear. Any idea why and how to fix?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by solohdes

I have royal flush skin, THIS, and this hack don't work in my skin. I created a banner, but does not appear. Any idea why and how to fix?

First, assure us the banner appears fine when placed in the default ad spots (not using this mod). And give us a link so we can see it.