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 rootsxrocks

When I unpacked the upgrade into a folder on the server and then moved it in to replace the admincp it changed the permissions on the folder admincp and includes to 700 and locked me out of the control panel , it was an easy fix by changing the permissions back to 755 but I have never had that happen using the same method with other plug ins and upgrades.

You should not unpack the upgrade on the server, because your root access is completely different from the apache/httpd/ftp user, but if you do, then you are assumed to know what you do. Rather than talking about an admincp replacement, you should say: merge. Attention has to be paid on certain ftp clients which say "replacement" (Windows).

As suggested elsewhere, the best solution is Filezilla or other another FTP client which uses the right terminology and functionality. I'm still not sure if native Windows does replace the folders or merge, but I have not to worry about it, because I do my FTP with more reliable tools.

Originally Posted by rootsxrocks

Now about that Flash.
I am not able to make one work proper either. I simply wanted to try it out with a flash file I found from another user.
after trying a few combinations I am able to get it to partially appear but it is not interactive nor does not scale like it would if you go directly to it.
this is a direct link to the flash http://crackercoast.com/crackerchat/banners/banner.swf

The problems about flash have been talked a lot. With the wrapper it is not possible to fix broken flash banners. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of banner developers who do not set correctly the banner flags and thus we get ill-behaving banners. As a rule of thumb, if a plain banner does not execute correctly, then it will not work either embedded in the wrapper.

The only features you can change with the flash wrapper, are the way how the banner looks (resizing), and vary the landing page.

[jsmithmms]

Thanks for the suggestion! I did just double-check folder permissions and they're all at 755. Still receiving the same error.

[haimanpop]

Thanks
good job

[dknelson]

I have downloaded this and am playing with it. Looks like it has everything I need but I'm to sure where in a template to put the code. I'm attaching a picture. I want the banner to go where it says "global header 2". This is a standard location for VBulletin's built in ad manager. Can somebody tell me in what template and location?

Thanks

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by dknelson

I have downloaded this and am playing with it. Looks like it has everything I need but I'm to sure where in a template to put the code. I'm attaching a picture. I want the banner to go where it says "global header 2". This is a standard location for VBulletin's built in ad manager. Can somebody tell me in what template and location?

Thanks

It really depends on you ... just try and see if this is what you want ... it doesn't explode

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by jsmithmms

Thanks for the suggestion! I did just double-check folder permissions and they're all at 755. Still receiving the same error.

If you still have the problem, please PM me with an admin account for your forums and an FTP account in order to see what's going on. I am pretty sure that if the files are uploaded and visible to FTP, they should be also be available to the web server, but you never know

[dknelson]

Still not getting the banners to show up. Here is where I want to put it in my header. I want to use position 0 for this location. Can somebody tell me what code I should be using here? I feel that I am using the wrong code. I want to use the global_header2 location.

<div class="ad_global_header">
		{vb:raw ad_location.global_header1}
		{vb:raw ad_location.global_header2}
	</div>

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by dknelson

Still not getting the banners to show up. Here is where I want to put it in my header. I want to use position 0 for this location. Can somebody tell me what code I should be using here? I feel that I am using the wrong code. I want to use the global_header2 location.

<div class="ad_global_header">
		{vb:raw ad_location.global_header1}
		{vb:raw ad_location.global_header2}
	</div>

In one of the available selections (or just somewhere in the templates) you world insert:

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

There is also a movie showing what it needs to do

[dknelson]

Got it. Thanks. I wanted it to show just below the login bar in the header. Working perfectly now. Thanks.

[dknelson]

I don't know if anybody needs this or not but if it will help anybody, here is how I have them displayed in my header and how to do it. I like this because it displays on every page. CMS, Forums, etc.

First, I created the banners in Position 0

The go to Style Manager, All style options.

In "Header", find:

{vb:raw ad_location.global_header2}

Replace with:

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

Image attached of what you will end up with.