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 MySaltyreef

sorry i am a total noob at this, where do i insert @vbbanners@ if i want it to show at the top of every page?

Please watch the movie (link in the very first post) to see how and where to operate. Also, reading the help file may help a lot.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by attroll

I have been experiencing a issue with flash banners. When I have a flash banner show up under my navbar and then I click in one of my drop down boxes in the navbar the flash banner appears on top of the drop down box. This cover up the items in the dropdowns. How can I prevent this from happening?

When you have flash banners which show over menues, they are not transparent. This is a general problem with flash banners and eventually you fix it with the attribute wmode="transparent" and explicit code. However, using the wrapper you should not have this problem, because it is transparent.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by mdreamer

Hi,

Thank you for your replay. I have 2 questions:
1. If my flash has an internal URL I can't track clicks? do i get this right?
2. I guess when you wrote the Text field you meant the field with the description:
"
TextThis field may hold any kind of script (e.g. Google AdSense) and/or HTML which will be inserted in your pages. Please make sure it works and that all tags are closed properly.
"
When you say "leave the other fields empty" - what fields are you referring to?

Thanks
Maayan Dreamer

1. If you use the wrapper, you can.
2. Create a new banner and just fill the fields you really need. This is what I mean

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

Any follow up help with this problem that appears under vbCMS?

Thanks

Regards,
Doug

Maybe the div tag is defined in CSS in a way it will look weird on Safari

Sorry, it's just an idea. I have no real clue about HTML.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Londonladadz

I've figured out the first issue.


I have a quick question and this this might be nooby, but how would I centre the banner located in ad_navbar_below?

Many Thanks!

gotcha! You didn't read the help

<div align="center">...</div> will do the job.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by MySaltyreef

if i want 2 banners one under the other in the ad_navbar_below can i just add another position under the current as an example

i have put

<!--@vbbanners:9@-->

can i use it like this

<!--@vbbanners:9@-->
<!--@vbbanners:8@-->

You better use:
<!--@vbbanners:9@--><br />
<!--@vbbanners:9@-->

Because: you can reuse the same position as often as you want for the same banner type on the same page. All you need is enough banners in your database

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Londonladadz

Right I've got it centred, thanks for the reply.

When I disable the google ad, that comes with the plugin. The ad disappears even though I have one installed. So, to confirm:

URL: URL to linked website that is being advertised
Image/Flash: Image URL

So as an example
URL: http://www.google.com
Image/Flash: http://www.example.com/image.png
Tick click tracking
I leave the flash banner options as I'm not using flash, just an image
Max Clicks: 300

Thats correct right? As I dont seem to see an ad when I disable the google ones. Im expecting for a proper face palm moment but as long as it gets sorted ill happily take the palm!

Check also the time frame. I have found that many servers are out of sync quite a lot (few hours to few days) and thus banners will not show because they are "expired" or not yet to be shown

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Maybe the div tag is defined in CSS in a way it will look weird on Safari

Sorry, it's just an idea. I have no real clue about HTML.

Thanks Giovanni ...

I even tried removing the <div> code and just leaving this as the only thing in the template:

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->

... and it still appears at the top of the forum instead of the bottom, overwriting the navbar area ...

Regards,
Doug

Edit: Problem fixed ....

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

New template contents:
<div align="center" class="block"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>

For some reason, Safari browsers on any platform including iPhones/iPads needs to see the code changed as shown in the New template.

[y2ksw]

Nice, I knew you would have checked it out

[jbizzle]

I'm trying to add the ads in between two forum categories, is that possible? I can't figure out how..