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

[ecky]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=662



All the rest depends really on you ...

This is the same post I was referring to. Maybe I asked the wrong question?

Where do I enter this piece of code?
Into a specific template or into the mod html text box? This is the area which is causing me the confusion.

Everything else works A1 on vb4.0.2, I just cant figure out how to install a side column. Could you explain in laymans terms please?

Thanks

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by ecky

This is the same post I was referring to. Maybe I asked the wrong question?

Where do I enter this piece of code?
Into a specific template or into the mod html text box? This is the area which is causing me the confusion.

Everything else works A1 on vb4.0.2, I just cant figure out how to install a side column. Could you explain in laymans terms please?

Thanks

I would like to, but unfortunately I have not enough time to solve also the HTML related issues.

Though, you may have a look at the templates FORUMHOME and FORUMDISPLAY in order to get an idea where to start with, but eventually you will end up to add a second column to many other templates, each of which has its own characteristics.

[ecky]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I would like to, but unfortunately I have not enough time to solve also the HTML related issues.

Though, you may have a look at the templates FORUMHOME and FORUMDISPLAY in order to get an idea where to start with, but eventually you will end up to add a second column to many other templates, each of which has its own characteristics.

Thats a step in the right direction. Your help is appreciated. :up:

[Tettinntil]

Originally Posted by Tettinntil

Using this with success on 3.8.4 and working fine on normal forum pages. But when integrating PhotoPost (Gallery), the banners I have put in the left column do not show. I see <!--@vbbanners:1@--> in the source, so it definitely calls for the code (which shows correctly on other forum pages). Any idea why it does not work?

New try. I have marked as installed, and would appreciate a reply...

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Tettinntil

New try. I have marked as installed, and would appreciate a reply...

There is not much I can add

There have been issues with PhotoPost, which is replacing partially the source code of vBulletin, and forgets sometimes about calling the terminating hook: global_complete.

If you see the placeholders in the HTML code, the RBS code in global_complete has not been executed.

I have no solution for fixing this problem.

[salvador21]

I have this working very nicely but cannot work out how to use a flash (.swf) file.

I don't understand what this means:

Image / Flash: If you define here a picture, it is shown together with the Name as a tooltip, and the URL as destination. For Flash banners, please insert here the swf file.

I tried entering the URL of the file, but that doesn't work.

Can anyone help please?

[Tettinntil]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

There is not much I can add

There have been issues with PhotoPost, which is replacing partially the source code of vBulletin, and forgets sometimes about calling the terminating hook: global_complete.

If you see the placeholders in the HTML code, the RBS code in global_complete has not been executed.

I have no solution for fixing this problem.

Thanks a lot - then there is no use for me trying to find a solution.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by salvador21

I have this working very nicely but cannot work out how to use a flash (.swf) file.

I don't understand what this means:



I tried entering the URL of the file, but that doesn't work.

Can anyone help please?

It would be a valid URL to a SWF file, like

http://www.domain.tld/myflash.swf

If this file is publically accessible and the name is conforming to HTML name standards (no spaces, special characters ecc, and if it isn't a script, it will be loaded by the Flash wrapper. Please note, that flash banners also need to specify their dimensions (width, height) in order to show up correctly.

If your flash banner can be shown normally on a HTML page, it really should work in the wrapper, too. However, if the file of the flash banner isn't a true banner, but a camouflaged Java Script or anything else, it won't. The wrapper will not interpret flash banners which aren't conforming to Flash.

If you are sure the flash should work, please send me via PM the link to your file and the expected width and height. I'll have a closer look to it

[salvador21]

Sorted, my fault entirely, I hadn't uploaded the wrapper!

BTW this is brilliant, I've nominated it. :up::up::up:

But, I think it is a bit unclear that you need to put a URL in the image/flash field. Yes it's kind of obvious but I think it would be good to make the instructions very explicit.

Also it would be good if banners could be disabled/enabled in the list, without having to go into each banner's properties to do this.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by salvador21

Sorted, my fault entirely, I hadn't uploaded the wrapper!

BTW this is brilliant, I've nominated it. :up::up::up:

But, I think it is a bit unclear that you need to put a URL in the image/flash field. Yes it's kind of obvious but I think it would be good to make the instructions very explicit.

Also it would be good if banners could be disabled/enabled in the list, without having to go into each banner's properties to do this.

That was actually a bug (missing check upon upgrade/installation) and got fixed today.

Version 2.2.6 though will not be released immediately, since I'm also adding, as suggested, some of the most important issues to the help file.