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

[attroll]

I am feeling really dumb because the mod said it was straight forward and I have done everything that looks like it need to be done and I still cannot get any banners to display.

I created a banner in Horizontal (0) Banner List
Here is the code I put in the text block.

PHP Code:

<a href="http://www.mysite.net/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.mysite.net/forum/wb_style/misc/logo.png" /></a> 


I enabled he banner
I placed this code in the ?ad_global_below_navbar?

PHP Code:

<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> 


The banner will not display.
Am I missing a step of doing something wrong?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by attroll

I am feeling really dumb because the mod said it was straight forward and I have done everything that looks like it need to be done and I still cannot get any banners to display.

I created a banner in Horizontal (0) Banner List
Here is the code I put in the text block.

PHP Code:

<a href="http://www.mysite.net/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.mysite.net/forum/wb_style/misc/logo.png" /></a> 


I enabled he banner
I placed this code in the ?ad_global_below_navbar?

PHP Code:

<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div> 


The banner will not display.
Am I missing a step of doing something wrong?

Does one of the default banners view?

Probably you will have to use the template ad_navbar_below, because this one is used on all pages. The ad_global_below_navbar template is shown only under certain circumstances.

[attroll]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Does one of the default banners view?

Probably you will have to use the template ad_navbar_below, because this one is used on all pages. The ad_global_below_navbar template is shown only under certain circumstances.

Yes, I tried the default banner and I also tried the ad_navbar_below and it still does not display.

I don't know what I am doing wrong. Hoping for some help and advise here.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by attroll

Yes, I tried the default banner and I also tried the ad_navbar_below and it still does not display.

I don't know what I am doing wrong. Hoping for some help and advise here.

Do you have vbSEO and its HTML cleaning enabled? Are you editing the right style? Does the start and end date/time fit your server time? Have you enabled other restrictions? Does the image exist?

Please continue with ad_navbar_below and maybe with the default style first, just to be sure everything works as it should.

Then, please put the image URL into the Image field and the landing page into the URL field. Keep the Text field empty unless you want to show a banner which isn't a plain picture.

Does it now work?

Sorry all the questions but I prefer to make them now all together

[attroll]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Do you have vbSEO and its HTML cleaning enabled? Are you editing the right style? Does the start and end date/time fit your server time? Have you enabled other restrictions? Does the image exist?

Please continue with ad_navbar_below and maybe with the default style first, just to be sure everything works as it should.

Then, please put the image URL into the Image field and the landing page into the URL field. Keep the Text field empty unless you want to show a banner which isn't a plain picture.

Does it now work?

Sorry all the questions but I prefer to make them now all together

What are you referring to when "Do you have vbSEO and its HTML cleaning enabled?".

Yes,
I am editing the correct style
The start and end dates are withing the time frame
I have not enabled any other restrictions
Yes the picture does exist.

This is on my test site. I put it there to get it working before I go to my live site.
If you would like access to the site to check it out, I can give it to you just let me know.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by attroll

What are you referring to when "Do you have vbSEO and its HTML cleaning enabled?".

Yes,
I am editing the correct style
The start and end dates are withing the time frame
I have not enabled any other restrictions
Yes the picture does exist.

This is on my test site. I put it there to get it working before I go to my live site.
If you would like access to the site to check it out, I can give it to you just let me know.

If you had vbSEO installed, there was a footnote in the help files regarding this addon and a relative setting ...

If I could have access to the test site, it would simplify our conversation a lot

[attroll]

I do not have vbSEO installed in this site.

I will send you a PM with access to the site.

[foudu1030]

Hi,
I do upload to Root (rbs_iframe.php) ?
It's only file ?
Tahnks

[attroll]

Let me make sure I understand this correctly.

If I have ten banners created for for "position 0" and I have them all enabled. Then those 10 banners will rotate constantly?

If that is the case it is not working because the banners all show up in "position 0" at the same time.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by attroll

Let me make sure I understand this correctly.

If I have ten banners created for for "position 0" and I have them all enabled. Then those 10 banners will rotate constantly?

If that is the case it is not working because the banners all show up in "position 0" at the same time.

I cannot even imagine how you managed to get that to happen. Can you post a screen shot?