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 desmomax

thanks but when i try to import language i receive this versione error:


Questo file ? stato creato usando una diversa versione vBulletin rispetto a quella che stai utilizzando.

La tua versione: 3.8.7
Versione file: 4.1.9

just ignore the version

[desmomax]

nice it works!

i see the banner is changing just after a refresh of the page and not rotating it, is it normale?

i put the code in my header but i can see the banner only inside forum and topic display and not, for example, in my homepage or other pages. Is it possible to set up to see in all pages or most of them?

many thanks

[whoareyou82605]

Maybe i am missing something? After some time reading through the posts and the pdf i cant make my banners show, I placed the codes in multiple locations to try but no banners will show.
I have no idea why this isn't working or maybe mi missing something really stupid?

[bzcomputers]

Originally Posted by desmomax

nice it works!

i see the banner is changing just after a refresh of the page and not rotating it, is it normale?

i put the code in my header but i can see the banner only inside forum and topic display and not, for example, in my homepage or other pages. Is it possible to set up to see in all pages or most of them?

many thanks

The "rotating" is doing what it was programmed to do - rotate through the ads you have under the same Position # on each refresh of the page. It does NOT rotate after a certain time limit. Rotating after a certain amount of time is against the rules for almost anyone who publishes ads and will get you blocked / banned / dropped from their advertising programs.

Depending on where you put the code will depend on where it shows up. If you put it in the Advertising - Manage Ads - Header location it will show on all pages.

[MySaltyreef]

hi i am currently using your hack for vb4.2.2, its flawless and does the job better than expected, are you planning on doing it for vb5 ?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by MySaltyreef

hi i am currently using your hack for vb4.2.2, its flawless and does the job better than expected, are you planning on doing it for vb5 ?

Due to a number of changes in the plugin system of vbulletin 5 it will not be possible to port this product without making a lot of substantial changes. It will not be possible to integrate the banners by the means of now, and requires to become stand-alone and maintained externally. I do have the project ladder ready, but it will take a lot of time to get it done and most probably isn't what people really want.

I'm not sure, if an add-on rather than a plugin is more useful. I am also opting to break into the base code, as in the very beginning of vbulletin, in order to show banners cheap, easy and fast as in vbulletin 4. But this is not an option to most of the users, and also not to me, having then to create special installation procedures for every release.

Maybe however vbulletin will decide to add some classic methods to their code, which allow us to do what we want, without reinventing the wheel once again.

[DoumDoum5058]

Hi,

Can you explain me what is the position 0, position 1, position 2, position 3 and so on this hack



What does each position in VBulletin?

Thank

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DoumDoum5058

Hi,

Can you explain me what is the position 0, position 1, position 2, position 3 and so on this hack



What does each position in VBulletin?

Thank

You may choose what they do. You would insert a placeholder in your templates and then (or before) fill that position with 1 or more banners.

[MySaltyreef]

hi me again, i am currently running version 2.3.2, as i said it works flawlessly and perfectly but i am scared to update in case i loose my 30 odd banners or am i just being silly ?

and i'm pretty bummed about vb5 and not having your banner system !

[bosanci28]

So , just to clear my self, with this plugin/mod can i put banners anywhere in the forum? or...

Thanks.